Joe Biden’s Biggest Problem is the Enthusiasm Deficit

By ERICA ETELSON

A Democratic candidate who cannot excite the base faces dim prospects in 2020. As the 2018 mid-terms and a growing body of evidence demonstrate, the key to mobilizing voters is door-to-door canvassing. All the expensive TV ads, cute Facebook memes and slick mailers in the world, don’t match the power of an earnest canvasser who makes a personal connection with a prospective voter. That’s bad news for Joe Biden, because progressive activists won’t be inspired to do the hard work of turning out the vote for him.

We understand what’s at stake. We know that Biden would, if nothing else, deprive Trump of the ability to lock in a right-wing Supreme Court bench for a generation. The vast majority of us would, if necessary, vote for Biden in order to dispatch with Trump.

But our willingness to pull the lever for a lesser-evil candidate is one thing, mustering our personal resources to get out the vote for him is quite another. Canvassing requires stamina, time and high-spiritedness. It puts wear and tear on our cars, our bodies, our families. Candidates who inspire us fuel our morale. Candidates we dislike create cognitive dissonance — the mismatch between what they stand for and the more beautiful world we long for, drains our energy and depresses us.

I canvassed in a central California swing district that flipped blue in 2018. We knocked on doors and told voters what we liked about the Democratic candidate and what we expected him to do for the working-class white and Latinx residents. We didn’t talk at all about Trump and only a little about the Republican incumbent’s trail of broken promises. What mattered was that we – the canvassers — believed enough in our candidate’s integrity that we could speak with heartfelt enthusiasm.

I might wish that I were a robot that could be programmed to mobilize votes in support of lackluster candidates, but I’m a flawed human being and Joe, I’m just not that into you. From what I can see, Biden has little to show for his 36 years in the Senate and eight years in the White House. To his credit, he spearheaded the Violence Against Women Act, supported non-binding resolutions on climate change, blocked Jeff Sessions’ Supreme Court nomination, championed two gun control measures in the 1990s, helped Obama get the Affordable Health Care Act passed and came out in support of marriage equality in 2012. These were decent center-left accomplishments I would expect of any Democrat of that era. But when I consider that Democrats controlled the Senate for 20 of Biden’s 36-year tenure, I’m underwhelmed.

Biden’s career spans a period of US history during which the American Dream was smothered in its sleep. Working and middle class jobs were offshored, union bargaining power tanked, and businesses were allowed to lavish CEOs with astronomical salaries even as they laid off workers, froze their wages, raided their pension funds and poisoned the drinking water and air with toxic waste and pollution. Black children’s access to integrated schools was diminished due to Biden’s vehement opposition to busing, a concept he castigated as “asinine,” in the 1970s. Middle class families’ home equity drowned in a pool of sub-prime mortgages. Their health insurance premiums, prescription drug prices and medical debt soared, and their kids’ college tuition spiraled into the stratosphere.

All of this happened under the watch of Biden and the bi-partisan establishment. And thanks to generous tax cuts for the rich and endless, costly wars that Biden enthusiastically supported, darn if there was just no money to remedy these crises. As things fell apart and desperate people turned to crime and drugs, Biden used his position as Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee to push through the 1994 federal “three strikes” law, boastfully dubbing it the “Biden Crime Law.” And when millions of Americans declared bankruptcy, Biden championed a 2005 bankruptcy bill opposed by most Democrats. The law, which made it harder for individuals up to their eyeballs in medical debt and student loans to file for bankruptcy, was a sweetheart deal for the Delaware-based credit card industry that had for decades lavished Biden with generous campaign contributions.

Biden knows the drill. “You have to go to those people who have money. And they always want something,” he said in 1974. The financiers still have the money, but I don’t see them knocking on doors for Biden, no matter how many Wall Street-friendly bills he champions.

Erica Etelson is a resistance activist and author of the forthcoming book, Beyond Contempt: How Liberals Can Communicate Across the Great Divide. Follow her on Twitter @Erica_Etelson.

From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2019

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