Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Vice President Joe Biden (D-DE) |
When I am asked for my political ideology, the phrase "practical progressive" will come up. I am, for all intents-and-purposes, very liberal, arguably more liberal as I've gotten older and seen a bit more of the world than I was in college, and was traditionally supposed to be at my "most" liberal. If I were taking one of those tests where you figure out whom you should vote for based solely on the issues, I would decidedly favor Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren to Joe Biden. A lot of the major public policy pushes they support around healthcare, climate change, student loans, and immigration are ones I also share & support.
But I'm also someone who has seen how Washington works, and I know that before you shoot for the moon, you have to build a rocket, and so I voted for Biden in the primary. Biden is more popular, for reasons that I'm not going to dissect here today, with more of the electorate than Bernie or Warren. People will complain "Medicare-4-All polls well!" but frequently liberals (for whatever reason) aren't able to translate an issue they support into support for the candidates themselves. The best way to look at this is to look at minimum wage increases, which are a frequent statewide ballot initiative. In 2018, Missouri passed a minimum wage increase by 25-points, a huge margin, signaling strong support. That same year, Missouri hosted a very important Senate race between Democrat Claire McCaskill and Republican Josh Hawley. Polling showed them close, and one of the big issues of the campaign was the minimum wage increase. McCaskill supported it, made it central to her campaign, and Hawley opposed it. At the end of the day, though, Hawley won the election. Countless Missouri voters voted both for a ballot initiative & the man who opposed it, proving that while ticket-splitting is not as common as it used to be, it doesn't mean belief systems are becoming more uniform. This is not an isolated incident. Arkansas & South Dakota in 2014, as well as Arizona in 2006 and Florida in 2004 had exact copies of McCaskill's situation in 2018-the minimum wage increase passed, the Democrat in the competitive Senate race whose party supported that increase failed.
This is all to say that voters are complicated, and since Biden had the best shot in the polls, I supported him. But the point here isn't why someone should support Biden in the primary-it's why Sanders & Warren supporters should support Biden in the general. From what I see online, the complaints against Biden fall into one of two camps-either "Biden is not as progressive as Biden/Warren, so I can't support him" or "Biden won't push hard enough on climate change/student loans/minimum wage/other pet issues."
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer |
The second concern (about Biden not matching your more left-leaning views) I have a better solution for you, though, than not voting for Joe Biden. This one feels more of a vital complaint to me so I'm going to give it a little more credence, so here goes.
Movements should never be about one person. As much as you admire Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders (and I'm not here to say you shouldn't-they have made an incredible mark on American politics, especially in this past primary), their ideologies should be about more than them. We have seen Trump proclaim "I'm the only guy who can fix it" and we all know that to be totally untrue; don't make the same mistake of assuming Sanders or Warren are "the only person who can fix it." The focus should be on getting the issues that progressives believe in passed, not necessarily getting hung up on who passes them.
Donald Trump can sit in that Oval Office and veto legislation out of a Democratic House & Senate until he's blue-in-the-face, and his supporters will love him for it. Voting for him (either by checking his name or simply not voting for Biden-again, they're the same thing) doesn't do anything to further student loan relief, climate change legislation, and gun control. BUT, Joe Biden doesn't have that luxury. Joe Biden is a Democrat, and unlike Donald Trump, he doesn't have a cult-of-personality behind him that makes him impervious to criticism from his supporters. He's, in fact, a left-of-middle candidate that is in a party that is heading further left. Progressives need to use that to their advantage not by pressuring Biden-the-Candidate to change his policy positions, but by putting in power advocates that will make Biden-the-President move to the left.
This is not achieved by saying "if Biden doesn't support Medicare-4-All, I won't support him." That's pointless, and doesn't really get past the point that you need two houses of Congress to make any sort of Medicare reform feasible. It also doesn't have anything to do with whom Biden picks as his vice president. Mike Pence was supposed to be a moderating force on Donald Trump's behavior; picking a devout born-again Christian who probably doesn't even swear as Trump's running-mate didn't do jack in changing his public antics. Picking someone like Elizabeth Warren or Stacey Abrams might make you feel better about voting for Biden, but it does little practically, and if anything takes Warren out of the Senate as someone who can criticize the President from the left. The VP has little public power. They are never going to fight the president publicly, because if they do, they won't be able to help make decisions. They are constitutionally required to have a pulse and break Senate ties-that's it. Progressives who pretend that Biden picking a liberal running-mate will suddenly move him to the left have no concept of how Washington works. The VP has as much practical responsibility as the president allows them to have-this is not a balanced relationship. Biden would be well-advised to pick someone who would be qualified to be president (a senator or governor), someone whom he thinks he could work well with, and someone that will help the ticket achieve actual votes. But if you're someone that wants him to be more liberal when he's the president, the VP is a terrible place to do that.
The way to push Biden to the left is not by blackmailing his campaign or insisting he pick a running-mate that doesn't match his politics...it's to give him a Congress that forces him left. Joe Biden is not going to veto legislation that came out of a Democratic House and Senate. It's not something that's done. Trump only started issuing vetoes when Nancy Pelosi got to be Speaker. Barack Obama only issued two vetoes while the Democrats held the House & Senate, and George W. Bush only did one in the five years where the Republicans also controlled Congress during his term. The President is going to put pressure on Congress, sure, but he isn't going to risk continually vetoing progressive legislation out-of-Congress. It'll make him unpopular with his own party, and will open him up to a primary challenge in 2024 (and despite other conspiracy theories you read, it's doubtful that Biden won't pursue a second term). Biden won't want that-so even if the legislation is more left-leaning than he campaigned on, he's likely to sign it if it came from Schumer & Pelosi.
MJ Hegar (D-TX) |
Joe Biden is the best candidate that progressives can hope for in 2020-that's done. The only way to make movement forward is to ensure you're casting a vote for him to beat Donald Trump. How progressive of a president he'll be-that's still in the hands of voters, and depends entirely on how blue they're willing to paint the halls of Congress. It's okay to mourn the loss of your candidate. But don't throw in the towel or pretend that your voice can't be one for change. Concede that you're voting for Biden (even if reluctantly), and then pick a new champion in a Senate or House candidate, and get to work making sure he's held accountable.
2 comments:
John; I love your analyses on these issues. You are 100% correct on this. As you imply, it is unfortunate that many of the "I won't vote for Biden" voters even think the country will not improve with him over Trump. I also like how you pointed to the "mental gymnastics" part. Too many of them try to convince themselves that their non-Biden votes are not for Trump. That's simply not the case, because if they waste their vote on someone who has no chance of winning, they are denying votes to remove Trump from office.
Keep it up!
Thanks so much for the encouragement-I love getting comments on here!
And I agree-unless we get to a point where we have RCV or at the very least have eliminated the electoral college, there's no practical effect to voting for someone other than Biden or Trump, or in most general elections, voting for anyone other than the Democratic or Republican Party. I'm curious to see how Alaska's Democratic Party continues its run trying to adapt to a willingness to vote for someone other than a Republican, if not necessarily a Democrat, this year. It definitely worked in 2014, and nearly worked in 2018. Gross & Galvin essentially running as Democrats (but "Independents" on the ballot) will be fascinating in 2020, and potentially a model for other states with independent streaks (Minnesota, Vermont, & Maine come to mind)
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