Has there ever been a drearier time to be a progressive Democrat, or for that matter a political junky of any ideological stripe? Progressives, in particular, are stuck between a rock and a hard place with “no direction home,” as Bob Dylan once put it.
The incumbent president is unpopular. Period. Biden was picked in 2020 (1) because Democrats lacked the nerve to nominate Bernie Sanders, who was both electable and genuinely popular, but anathema to the Democratic big money, and (2) because Biden was viewed as the safest bet by a party consumed by fear of a Trump reelection.
Kamala Harris, the successor in waiting should actuarial tables and bad luck catch up with the octogenarian incumbent, is equally unpopular. Her 2020 selection was based not on being the best possible vice-presidential choice, but on her appeal to two specific constituencies: feminist women and Black Democrats. In an unrigged race to ascend to the top position, she would come third or fourth at best.
The truth about Joe Biden is that he’s already fulfilled his historical purpose, which was to unseat Donald Trump and spare the country further immediate humiliation or embarrassment — or worse. He’s accomplished some good things since (under pressure from Sanders and other progressives), although of late, he’s reverted somewhat to being the good ol’ boy centrist Biden of years past; old, knee-jerk habits die hard.
The debit side includes backtracking on climate to please fossil-fuel interests, giving in on the debt-ceiling hostage-taking to avoid confronting Republicans, and rejecting Supreme Court reform in the name of tradition and continuity. Throw in formal invitations and state dinners for those reprehensible autocrats Netanyahu and Modi, and the overall look is not a good one. But the president does earn kudos for his Ukraine stand, for pushing student-loan forgiveness, and for at least rhetorically backing organized labor.
The question now is where Democrats go from here. They’re saddled with a chief executive who totally lacks inspirational qualities and also evidently lacks the energy or desire to take the fight to the GOP; we’re headed, it seems, for a 19th century-style “front-porch” campaign. There’s a sense of complacency surrounding the White House, whose Biden team assumes Trump will be their opponent and that he’s eminently beatable again. Not so fast.
Trump, whose name, for good or ill, will be indelibly associated with this time in US history — it will be the era of Trump, not the era of Biden — has been consistently underestimated. Ron DeSantis is only the latest to have done so. Some of this is the Trump political persona, his ability to act and make others react, and his uniquely effective appeal to the worst instincts of human nature (greed, selfishness, hatred of those who are different or disagree). Some of it also stems from his ability to capitalize on the changing nature of the opposing Democratic Party: its evolution from a working-class to a suburban upper-middle-class party, leaving aggrieved former blue-collar partisans behind.
Democrats are sure Trump’s personal and political immorality, his flouting of laws, norms and polite engagement (the thing they most detest about him), is readily apparent to everyone else; all they need do is point it out, and the public will see what they see and recoil in disgust. The many legal indictments against Trump, they are convinced, will swing opinion against him, even among his most rampant supporters.
There are many instances from history that suggest otherwise. One that jumps to mind is the case of roguish Massachusetts politician James Michael Curley (1874-1958), fictionally immortalized in Edwin O’Connor’s 1956 novel “The Last Hurrah” (and the movie version starring Spencer Tracy). Curley, under federal indictment on charges of mail fraud, nevertheless won Boston’s mayoral election handily in 1945, then served five months behind bars before returning to a hero’s welcome following a presidential pardon and subsequently completing his term. Curley’s loyal constituents, Boston’s poor immigrant groups, couldn’t have cared less about his moral lapses; he was their champion to the end, regardless of what the good-government types said.
Not that Donald Trump is Curley, but there are parallels. MAGA Republicans will never desert Trump, no matter what, and they’ve already processed and disregarded the indictments Democrats are sure will bring him down. Missing documents, sexual predation, election tampering: It’s all “fake news,” or simply unimportant to most Republicans and many independents, regardless of the attention given it on MSNBC.
Despite the singular Trump obsession of the left, the election will be decided on other issues, most of them humdrum and mundane; that is, if an increasingly cynical, detached and disillusioned public votes at all. Democrats will try to generate enthusiasm with abortion rights and identity concerns. Republicans will continue their hysterical culture war against the gay and the trans (the latter representing no more than 0.6% of the population, according to the website YouGov). Both parties will seek to use immigration as a wedge issue; the Democrats will call for more immigrants, the GOP for none at all, but no serious policy proposals will be offered.
Two huge issues overshadowing all else, climate and the economy, will be ignored if the parties can manage it — climate because it’s the ultimate political third rail, the economy because dealing forthrightly with it risks interfering with corporate prerogatives.
The objective — this is what we’ve come down to — will be winning election without discussing anything much of consequence. There will be no inspiration or uplift, no soaring rhetoric. The campaign will be tedious and pedestrian except for whatever contrived excitement Trump might seek to conjure up. Another generation will be turned off of politics and government.
Still, one wild card could upset the steady, comatose march toward either semi-competency under the Democrats or borderline insanity under the Republicans. That, of course, is the unlikely candidacy, media-driven for the most part, of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Once a respected crusading environmentalist, now a conspiratorial, pro-gun, anti-vax crank, RFK Jr should not be president and would dishonor his family’s legacy if he somehow reached the highest office.
But the fact that Kennedy is attracting 20% of a restive Democratic vote disenthralled with the inarticulate and vision-challenged fetishistic bipartisanship of Joe Biden speaks volumes. Uncle Joe may squeeze in one last time, but then an intra-party dam will burst.
Wayne O’Leary is a writer in Orono, Maine, specializing in political economy. He holds a doctorate in American history and is the author of two prizewinning books.
From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2023
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