It doesn’t take much to keep a 72 year-old man up at night. And caffeine and over-hydration are not what I’m talking about. What worries me is the country’s race toward fascism, cheered on to the amens of fake-Christian nationalists and accompanied by the angry whiteboy tunes of Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” or Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond.”
But right at the top of my worry list is the Democrat Party’s lack of concern that its presumptive nominee, the current president, is such a bad choice he could actually lose against an opponent with 91 criminal indictments. That’s not just my opinion; it’s a view supported by multiple polls (for example, here and here and here). Joe Biden’s candidacy is such a terrifying prospect that it is irresponsible for the DNC to not be looking for a replacement. And it would be irresponsible not to be writing essays like this one.
Bidenomics
Aside from the fact that he’s not Donald J. Trump — which is really the only reason to vote for him — Biden’s entire campaign is based on “Bidenomics,” a time-worn bag of post-Keynesian tricks for tweaking the economy. By traditional measures that consider inflation, the consumer price index, the health of the investment industry, the value of the dollar, personal debt, consumer spending, or view “employment” generously to include those working three dead-end jobs at a time or “gig economy” jobs without benefits, “Bidenomics” is going gangbusters. Biden’s bag of tricks, according to his PowerPoints and dry talking points, is “working.”
“Bidenomics” is no doubt the product of some genius’s riff on “Reaganomics,” the trickle-down theory that what benefits Big Business must ultimately help the American worker. By now almost everyone knows trickle-down economics was a big lie, what another Republican called “voodoo economics.” And maybe that’s the problem: Americans are simply tired of having their Presidents lie to them about economic policies. Whatever its merits, Bidenomics was destined to fall on deaf ears.
Yet for all the centrist Democratic cheerleading (see examples here or here or here) Americans have not been convinced by Bidenomics’s rosy numbers. The title of a recent article by Monica Potts in FiveThirtyEight says it all: “Biden Says The Economy’s Doing Great. Lots Of His Own Voters Don’t Believe Him.” Americans’ precarious personal finances are rarely acknowledged. It’s not the health of the dollar, the Dow, the Consumer Confidence index, or even inflation that terrifies Americans. Millions of Americans are one medical disaster or one week of unemployment away from complete financial ruin. They can’t afford housing, they can’t afford healthcare, they can’t afford childcare, and they’re struggling to pay off medical debt, credit card debt, and student debt. Both food insecurity and financial hardship are only worsening.
And then there’s Biden himself.
Voters just don’t want Biden
Reflecting America’s misery and hopelessness, Biden’s abysmally low approval ratings from working people shouldn’t come as any surprise. An AP-NORC poll found only 34% of Americans approve of Biden’s economic leadership. 78% say the economy is fair or poor, according to a New York Times Cross-Tabs survey. A Reuters-Ipsos survey found that 69% of Americans think the economy has deteriorated since Biden assumed the Presidency. Biden’s popularity with Black voters has dropped from 82% to 52% in three years. A Yahoo/YouGov poll found that only 27% of Americans thought Biden was fit to be President compared to 31% who felt the same about Trump. Here in Massachusetts, 59% would prefer that Biden never run again.
Why, then, doesn’t the Democratic Party believe any of these people?
Ignoring people, believing pundits
FiveThirtyEight’s Galen Drake and guests made a good-faith effort to explain the disconnect in “Why Americans Aren’t Feeling ‘Bidenomics’.” Jeanna Smialek, who covers the Fed for the New York Times, suggested, “inflation feels worse than the job market feels good.” Axios’s chief economic correspondent Neil Irwin, conjectured that the disconnect was due to diminished earning power. To their credit, they actually looked for missing datapoints to explain the disconnect.
Compared to that, however, liberals seem to be consuming a lot of sweet, empty calories in the many puff pieces written to defend Bidenomics. The New Republic’s Timothy Noah simply pooh-poohed Bidenomics’s critics, asking “What Drives Blind Denial of Economic Good News?” His TNR Colleague Michael Tomasky called Biden a “terrific president” and chastised Democrats for not being enthusiastic enough: “Democrats are walking around in some state of somnolent indifference about Joe Biden. They need to snap out of it.” The American Prospect’s Ryan Cooper asked, “Can Democrats Sell ‘Bidenomics’?” Then proceeded to write off Americans’ lack of enthusiasm for Bidenomics as unchallenged propaganda from the right, claiming: “Most ordinary voters appear to be doing reasonably well in their own personal finances. Witness the consumer confidence index, which recently hit the highest level since January 2022, before the major inflation surge. But then they turn on the news each night and hear dire stories about inflation, supply chain difficulties, housing prices, interest rates, and so on, with little or no consistent pushback from Democrats.”
I’m not so willing to dismiss voters’ own assessments of Biden. They’re the ones voting in 2024, not the pundits.
Biden the faux unionist
For all his “Joey Scranton” shtik, Biden is not, and has never been, a genuine champion of working class Americans. Biden may have had working class parents, but he began his professional life as a lawyer, owns four homes, is worth at least $10 million, and since 1972 has had a guaranteed pension and healthcare from the Senate. In the negative sense that most Americans experience it, Biden has never had to “work” a day in his life.
While “Union Joe” claims to be the most pro-union president in U.S. history, the Revolving Door Project notes Biden’s “encouraging” appointments to key executive positions in his administration — Jennifer Abruzzo to General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Julie Su to Labor Secretary at the Department of Labor. “Unfortunately, the list of the administrations’ pro-labor achievements basically ends there.” The article goes on to mention chronic underfunding of the National Labor Relations Board, his breaking of the rail strike last November, the UAW’s concern about Biden’s reckless funding for non-union automotive startups, and Labor’s absence from trade deal negotiations.
For instance, Biden’s “Build Back Better” program promised to reverse the corporate takeover of trade policy seen in the NAFTA and TPP agreements. But with the new corporate-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, Biden’s business-as-usual approach consists of giving an outsized voice to corporations in matters of trade policy.
Biden and the Democrats
As party leader, Joe Biden may be skillfully holding the Democratic “big tent” together with chewing gum, bailing wire, and duct tape. But the tent is a centrist tent, always has been, and always will be. Those of us who are not centrists get cranky when we see that the party could be a much more effective and passionate advocate for average Americans than it is. But face it: the Democratic Party operates on corporate largesse and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) itself just hired a union-busting consultant leading an effort to deprive workers of labor protections. The current DNC Chair is Jaime Harrison, among other things a former lobbyist with the Podesta Group, which services major U.S. corporations. Chris Korge is the DNC’s Finance chair. Korge too is a former lobbyist, fundraiser, and real estate developer.
Mixed signals on Abortion
You might recall that Biden was not endorsed by NARAL in 2019 because of his support for the Hyde Amendment, which bars using federal funds for abortion. Just this year, when asked his views on Roe v Wade (he does feel the Supreme Court “got it right” back then), Biden still couldn’t resist showing where he actually stands: “I’m a practicing Catholic. I’m not big on abortion.” Despite the mixed signals, and to be fair, Biden does actually support abortion and contraception — and NARAL finally endorsed him this year. But with abortion and contraception threatened nationally, an 80 year-old guy with needlessly-vocalized reservations may not be the best choice to fight for reproductive rights for women.
Defending Private Prisons
Despite publicly opposing private prisons, Biden’s administration filed suit against the state of New Jersey citing the “Supremacy Clause” in the Constitution in a case in which New Jersey was trying to get rid of private prisons operated by CoreCivic.
Supporting the Surveillance State
The Biden administration announced its intention to renew Section 702 of the invasive and unconstitutional Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
A long history of racism
Many people have not forgiven Biden for his 1975 anti-busing crusade that the NAACP called “an anti-black amendment”, or his shabby treatment of Anita Hill during Clarence Thomas’s Senate confirmation hearings in 1991. Over a long and damaging career in the Senate, Biden managed to be associated with all types of racist legislation — attaching the death penalty to over 60 crimes, minimum sentencing for nonviolent drug offenses, civil asset forfeiture, and establishing different sentencing for powder vs. crack cocaine. Biden demonized “super-predators” and attacked George H.W. Bush for being soft on crime.
In 2020, when Biden was campaigning, he was asked about undecided Black voters. His reply shocked everyone: “If you’ve got a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” That same year 500 Asian-Americans asked Biden to take down a racist anti-China ad that his campaign created.
Last year Biden proposed $30 billion in funding to hire more police, a move critics slammed as a betrayal of Black people and one completely hostile to appeals for demilitarizing and slimming police forces. Biden’s DOJ argued that people born in U.S. territories do not have a Constitutional right to U.S. citizenship.
Unsurprisingly, during his presidency Biden’s support from Black and Hispanic voters has been tanking.
Sticking with Trump’s Immigration policies
Biden retained Trump’s restrictive refugee caps as well as Trump’s Title 42 asylum denials (on the basis of public health) longer than necessary.
Botching Student debt relief
After botching version 1.0 of his own student debt relief program, the Supreme Court literally manufactured a plaintiff without standing to gut student debt relief. Biden’s “Plan B” is predicated upon the Department of Education invoking the Higher Education Act to dispose of the debt, a strategy many doubt can work.
Support for criminalizing marijuana
Biden still thinks marijuana is a “gateway drug.”
No support for enlarging the Supreme Court
Both Massachusetts senators and a large number of Senators and House representatives want to expand the Supreme Court. But Biden’s not on board.
Sacrificing the Social Safety Net
Progressive Democrats were not happy about Biden’s cuts to Medicaid, Pell grants, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in order to resolve the debt ceiling impasse. NAACP President Derrick Johnson warned Congress, “To our many allies and partners in Congress who have claimed to support Black Livers, we are grateful for your past support and need you to know: this is a moment of choosing.” In gutting social programs for the most vulnerable in society, Biden and the Democrats chose wrong.
Foreign policy a complete disaster
Biden’s ambassadors have been plucked mainly from the ranks of corporate lobbyists, big donors, and Big Oil. He just nominated war criminal Elliott Abrams, convicted of lying to Congress, to join the State Department Bipartisan Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. Biden’s foreign policy is driven by three war hawks: Anthony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Victoria Nuland (who most famously was recorded in 2014 ordering up a new Ukrainian president).
Biden’s neocon war whisperers have him continuing to expand NATO, selling cluster munitions to Ukraine, and raising military spending to new and obscene levels. His Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines is another hawk who supports torture and managed to conceal CIA spying on senators from Congress. Biden has continued the secret wars of his predecessors, including weekly drone attacks. He won’t even call the coup in Niger (by US-trained generals) a coup.
There is no authoritarian state Biden won’t praise. From Israel to India, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Hungary, the Philippines, it’s White House visits, state dinners, hugs and fist bumps — even for a Saudi dictator who dismembered a Saudi-American journalist. As long as there is a strategic objective, Biden will turn on the flattery for any authoritarian regime.
Biden blocked resumption of the Iran nuclear deal that Trump abrogated in 2018 by introducing new preconditions and pronouncing the original agreement “dead.” Recently, Biden recklessly placed 3,000 troops on commercial ships in the Persian Gulf, a move that the Washington Post called a “remarkable escalation” with Iran.
The President is betting the ranch on a Saudi-Israeli peace deal which would (besides spinning mendacious fantasies of a Two-State solution) give Saudi Arabia a package of military aid, replenish Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s empty tank of political capital, reduce Saudi flirtations with China, and aim more nukes at Iran. As Fred Kaplan points out in Slate, this is an incredibly stupid idea: “Would the mullahs of Tehran hold still if their mortal enemies in Riyadh suddenly signed accords that gave them nuclear technology and formal military backing from Washington? It is a fair bet that they would accelerate their uranium-enriching programs if just to obtain a deterrent.”
Environmental policy in the dumpster
Biden began his presidency by naming Big Oil appointees to the State Department. He then set about rolling out pipelines, LNG terminals and has permitted more gas and oil exploration on public lands than Trump, including in the Arctic. In May and June 2022 the Biden Administration auctioned off more than 140,000 acres of public land for gas and oil development.
Rather than boosting alternative energy, Biden has embraced carbon capture and carbon accounting schemes that do little to actually reduce environmental CO2. And environmentalists have noticed: “We don’t want to see New Mexico have a continued legacy of sacrifice zones, so we’re here demanding the ending of fossil fuels and investment in renewable energies,” said Julia Bernal, the executive director of Pueblo Action Alliance on the occasion of a Biden visit to New Mexico. “No hydrogen, no carbon sequestration, and no false solutions in general.”
In August, under Biden, US crude oil production actually hit a new all-time high. Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter blasted Biden’s hypocrisy, especially on methane which is a byproduct of fracking: “If the White House is serious about reducing methane pollution, it should [ban] fracking and [prohibit] the use of methane for heating in new construction. President Biden should also use his executive authority to stop the buildout of new gas infrastructure, ban the export of methane in the form of liquified natural gas, and stop fracking on federal lands as he promised during the campaign. […] So far, White House policies have bolstered the interests of corporate polluters by dramatically increasing fossil fuel permits and aggressively promoting the growth of fracked gas exports – a catastrophic move that will increase methane pollution and keep countries hooked on fossil fuels for decades.”
Disappointingly, Biden’s DOJ maintains that “there is no constitutional right to a stable climate system.” And, even with the world burning and melting, he still won’t declare a climate emergency. This is a president who may talk the talk but says “nah” to the walk.
Biden or not?
These are only a few of the many reasons no one should ever vote for Joe Biden.
But after all of the foregoing, here’s the one and only reason I still may end up voting for him.
I might prefer a particular third-party candidate for his love of all the values I care about — a candidate whose morality and humanity extend even to democracy and human rights outside the United States. A candidate who mercifully drops the American exceptionalist jingoism and instead looks critically at how race, class, and inequality play out in our nation. A man who is actually willing to do something to solve real problems for real people.
Unfortunately, there is absolutely no chance that this principled man will ever win the next election. And there is every chance a fascist will return with his “base” to deliver the coup de grâce to our dying democracy.
Many are calling for Biden to step aside. That includes half of all Democrats. And that includes me. I have hopefully given readers sufficient reason to do the same. However, if and when it becomes clear that no hope for an alternative to Biden remains, I will join in supporting him over the fascist with the spray-on tan and an army of pitchfork, bible, and AR15-wielding nut jobs.
But I hope the Democratic Party will come to its senses long before that happens and select a better, stronger, more appealing, and more principled candidate for President of the United States.
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