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The Biden Factor

Eli Zaretsky

During the US presidential debate last Thursday night something predicted and feared occurred: not that Biden performed poorly but that he was clearly out of his element. From the very first moment he seemed frightened, confused and out of place. He repeatedly garbled answers and slurred words. ‘Senior moments’ are certainly familiar to me, but that does not describe Biden’s trailing sentences, vacant stares and confusion. The immediate takeaway was that the Biden camp has been obfuscating the president’s decline. While this is a pattern in American politics – as with Franklin Roosevelt’s wheelchair or Jack Kennedy’s back problems – it is more serious when the problem is cognitive. Growing numbers of Democrats have called for Biden to step aside, but for the moment this does not seem likely. Meanwhile, it is worth pausing to ask how it came about that Biden is able to hold the party hostage, especially in the face of what it repeatedly defines as a quasi-fascist threat.

The immediate roots of the debacle lie in the process by which Biden secured his nomination in 2020. The party did everything it could to stop Bernie Sanders. Sanders won the popular vote in the first three primaries – Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada – although Pete Buttigieg ran him close in Iowa and New Hampshire. By contrast, there was little enthusiasm for Biden. Before the South Carolina primary on 29 February, Sanders had secured 45 delegates to Biden’s fifteen. Polling showed Sanders leading in most of the sixteen Super Tuesday states that lay ahead, though not in South Carolina.His greatest weakness was among older Black voters. Biden, with the endorsement of Representative James Clyburn, decisively won the South Carolina primary. Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar immediately dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden, who went on to be nominated.

To be sure, Biden went on to beat Trump and to have a relatively successful presidency, at least in his first two years. As Walter Benjamin reminds us, however, we should be wary of writing history from the perspective of the victors. In my view, something died in the Democratic Party with the subversion of the Sanders campaign. Sanders himself was muted, and hopes for substantial change, centred on young people, were staunched. An event like that is like a maelstrom; events flow in and other events flow out, but the real action takes place beneath the surface. As is common when a sitting president runs for re-election, Biden was essentially unchallenged in the primaries this year. The party is running a one-issue campaign yet again: Donald Trump.

This self-made disaster should be put in a larger context: the project of the Democratic Party is to keep the left out of power, even when this conflicts with the party’s self-interest. The roots of this project lie in the origins of America’s two-party system in the Jacksonian era. The purpose of a two-party system was, as Martin Van Buren said, to avoid ‘geographical divisions founded on local interests or, what is worse, prejudices between free and slaveholding states’. Since that time there has been only one period in which the United States might have developed a left-wing party: the 1930s and early 1940s. That was also the only period in American history that saw redistribution of wealth. Today’s Democratic Party was formed as a reaction against the New Deal. We saw the image of its spirit in the film Oppenheimer, when Harry Truman (played by Gary Oldman), confronted with an argument that questions the premises of the Cold War, says: ‘Get that cry-baby out of my office.’ Whether there is a way out of the current impasse remains unclear.

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  • 3 July 2024 at 12:01pm
    Aron says:
    The obvious omission here is whether Sanders could have beaten Trump. Anyone who has observed the ghastly spectacle of the mainstream press contemplating Corbyn's Prime Ministership will be very cautious on this front.

    The Democrats are running an anti-Trump campaign because at every election since 2020 this has worked for them. They won the midterms; in 2023 "the party outperformed the partisan lean by an average of 10 percent".
    • 3 July 2024 at 1:00pm
      Eli Zaretsky says: @ Aron
      I think Walter Benjamin's point is that if we only look at the question of winning, and especially who won, we miss a lot of the story. Yes, Sanders might not have gotten the nomination and if he did he might have lost. But if he lost we would be past the 2d Trump term, and Sanders would be in a good position to win in 2024. Right now the Dems have only a 35% chance of winning, even before the Biden debate. There is a larger question here of the place of the Left in a modern democratic society
    • 3 July 2024 at 1:02pm
      Eli Zaretsky says: @ Aron
      On Corbyn: might he have won if he had opposed Brexit, and been pro-active on anti-Semitism, manufactured though that issue in good part was.
  • 3 July 2024 at 12:05pm
    Ted Eames says:
    The Democrats have relied on a double gamble. The first was that Trump's court cases would either eliminate him or fatally weaken him. The second was that Biden's cognitive abilities would somehow hold up for another 4 years.
    Both were disastrous bets from the start.
    Trump's second term will make his first seem benign. Thank you, Democrats.
    • 3 July 2024 at 1:06pm
      Eli Zaretsky says: @ Ted Eames
      Yes, I agree. The court cases are part of my point. The Democrats have based everything on anti-Trumpism. The cases have hurt the Democrats who do seem to have politicized the justice system and they have hugely helped Trump, whose numbers have gone up each time. It looks like Gulliver (Trump) and the Lilliputians (Democratic prosecutors) right now.
  • 3 July 2024 at 3:23pm
    Roy Lee says:
    If Bernie lost how many more lives would have been lost to the pandemic? I wish Bernie was in office instead of Biden but the primaries are about who can win, not who you want to win. That is the reason we chose Biden. We're clearly past that now and if the President can make up the tragic debate performance he has a much better chance than a replacement. As for whether he will complete a full term, who knows and frankly who cares. Hopefully voters will realize that defeating Trump once and for all is the only thing to worry about.
    • 3 July 2024 at 3:30pm
      Eli Zaretsky says: @ Roy Lee
      It's not the only thing to worry about. First, it is not clear that Sanders would have lost. He would take working class votes away from Trump, but would lost moderate suburban voters. US politics is very complex. No one can be sure of what would have happened. Of course, if Sanders lost the centrists would blame the left but they do that anyway.
      Second, we need to worry about the party's identity. Right now it is empty because it has suppressed its left. you have the same problem here with Starmer. Winning is important but it is not the only consideration.
    • 3 July 2024 at 3:50pm
      prwhalley says: @ Eli Zaretsky
      For what it's worth, back in the first Trump term one of my work-mates, like me, the first in his family to go to college and get a 'professional' job, told me that his father and all his buddies, all union carpenters, had supported Bernie, but once he lost to Clinton, switched their vote to Trump. I was astounded, but now I clearly see why they would do that.
    • 3 July 2024 at 5:41pm
      Eli Zaretsky says: @ prwhalley
      Totally. Unbelievably, the Republicans get the working class vote and the Democrats get the educated elites. This is not restricted to the US. Trump got his hey word to describe the system-- rigged-- from Sanders.
    • 3 July 2024 at 7:43pm
      Laurene Miller says: @ Eli Zaretsky
      Couldn't this just be that progressives--who tend to be educated middle and upper-middle class--aren't very good at winning over working class voters? This includes Sanders. I live in a purple New England state where the old hippies and Ivy League grads adore Sanders but the guys at the autoshop or who drive the snowplows despise the idea of investing the government with any more authority than it already has. I do thing that Sanders is not as alienating to those voters as people obsessed with identity politics and speech policing, but they are just never, ever going to vote for a socialist.
    • 3 July 2024 at 8:21pm
      Peter L says: @ Roy Lee
      Part of the problem is the "we" of this "we chose Biden." The Democratic Party closed ranks against Sanders and made Biden the figurehead, a bet on the combination of the old and new face of an increasingly morbid neoliberalism (and, on the new, we should not forget Obama's role in this closing of ranks). Even after their primary defeat, the momentum and coalitions that were behind Sanders helped initially push Biden towards policies liberal commentators happily associated with a new "New Deal," at times greenish (further proof, perhaps, that the 30s and 40s were still charged with a little of that "time of the now," as Benjamin would have put it). But that has long since been left behind in theory and practice for a tracking right on fossil fuels, immigration, and the virtually unwavering support for Israel's siege of Gaza.
      The initial commenter also assumes the enduring strength of the Democrats and an anti-Trump messaging, rather than some fortuitous bumps that helped put them over the top in recent elections (Trump's handling of the pandemic, if that hasn't disappeared into the mist of forgetting, or the end of Roe v. Wade). But more than just Biden's historically dismal approval rating, or the post-debate cracks in the façade of liberal and centrist confidence, or the betrayal felt by more left-leaning youth, the Democratic Party must contend with the not negligible leaking away of black and latino support (despite the quibbles about differing polls). Along with those union carpenters, and large sectors of the working class more generally. The percentage of youth who are not just disappointed with Biden, but supportive of Trump, has also grown more than the confident Democratic "we" would suggest. The other lesson would be Macron, who repeatedly ran on the unique threat posed by Marie Le Pen and the RN, while he continued to track right and attack the left. They thought that move would work well until it didn't.
    • 3 July 2024 at 9:53pm
      Eli Zaretsky says: @ Laurene Miller
      Sanders was actually very successful with working class voters both in 2016 and 2020. no doubt, the idea of socialism has been poisoned but there are ways around that. The kind of crises we face require bold thinking-- as Trump has demonstrated! What we are really seeing is the collapse of the Democratic Party. in the US so sticking to the old cliches doesn't work either.
    • 3 July 2024 at 9:56pm
      Eli Zaretsky says: @ Peter L
      I agree Peter. The only thing that is going to work is an alliance of the Left with the liberals, as in France. Trump is succeeding because he stole so much of the Left's thunder. There are other reasons as well to be sure. but we cant underestimate the depth of the crisis.
  • 3 July 2024 at 9:01pm
    radiator valve says:
    This sort of scaremongering is doing Putin's work which is to get Donald Trump back into the White House again. Yes, Biden didn't make a great show in the debate. But that was ONE debate. Have you watched his other speeches over the last few years? Coherent, intelligent and emphasising the importance of democratic principles. I would have liked a Bernie presidency too just as I would have liked a Corbyn for prime minister but you have to be pragmatic about these things. The opinions of the majority of the populations of the USA and the UK have shifted more to the right over the last forty years and will not vote for what they see as the far left (which it obviously isn't) But try convincing them of that in the present media ecosphere. Biden has reached out to those on the left of the party such as bringing Bernie in to legislate against the huge profits made by pharma companies on insulin. If you want those sort of policies to be put into effect, then you're going to have to hold your nose and vote for Biden. If you want women's right to choose to be codified in legislation, then ditto. If you want the corrupt Supreme Court to be dealt with, ditto again. What's at stake here is much bigger than Biden's so-called cognitive decline. And, after all, surely that is what a vice-president is for, to take over if the leader is incapable of being able to lead? Or have you got a problem with Kamala Harris as well? If Trump wins a second term, due to this sort of sniping from the Democratic side, as is what happened with Hilary in 2016, then you can say goodbye to any future opportunities for free and fair elections. And you'd be unleashing chaos on the rest of the world as well with who knows what consequences.
    • 3 July 2024 at 10:00pm
      Eli Zaretsky says: @ radiator valve
      who is doing the scaremongering? The centrist Democrats in the US took over the party and marginalized the Left, which was where all the energy and new ideas were. They did it by saying there was only one reason-- Trump, which was like Putin or Saddam Hussein or Hitler-- someone to scare the masses with. There is no substitute for integrity in th e long run and -- contra Keynes-- the long run is what counts.
  • 3 July 2024 at 10:29pm
    CambridgeUSA says:
    I can't believe what I am reading. Bernie Sanders is 82 and although I admire him, he sounds old and crotchety and sometimes even nasty. Biden could be the walking dead; a zombie, and I would vote for him again, not just because he is the only hope we have, but because, other than his support for Netanyahu, I agree with his policies and I think he has done a good job. AND - should he resign after beating Trump, I have no reason to think Kamalah would do a worse job than Trump. Go Biden.
    • 4 July 2024 at 12:18am
      Eli Zaretsky says: @ CambridgeUSA
      I am not advocating Sanders now; this was four years ago. But the larger issue is the identity of the Democratic Party. Right now, Trump claims to be speaking for the "little man" and "little woman" and the Democrats are not really answering that.
  • 4 July 2024 at 12:08am
    John Fredrich says:
    Continuing along that thread in history, Truman's Point Four incased his "scare the hell out of 'em", (cf. the voters, about the Soviets), and lock in permanent generous percentages in military spending as the central feature of US foreign policy. This is part of the creed of the Democratic Party oligarchy that Joe Biden fronts for. His deplorable conduct in arming the Israeli genocide in Gaza is not an anomaly but rather an central feature of the American imperial and colonial project.
    • 4 July 2024 at 5:32pm
      Eli Zaretsky says: @ John Fredrich
      I completely agree. the US Ukraine policy is equally deplorable, though I doubt LRB readers will agree. Maybe I am wrong.

  • 4 July 2024 at 5:07am
    hry says:
    I've been thinking about Walter Benjamin a lot of late. Catastrophe not as a rupture, but as continuity, things going on as they are—in this conception, both Trump and Biden are the candidates of catastrophe. (How could anyone look at Gaza and not think that Benjamin had it right? What was "saved" by Biden's 2020 victory?) Benjamin seems a good antidote to the chorus of liberals who believe that we live perennially on the precipice of catastrophe, always about to fall into The Bad Place. In actuality, we're already in it.
    • 4 July 2024 at 5:33pm
      Eli Zaretsky says: @ hry
      Yes, I am writing a book onBenjamin. Great figure.
  • 4 July 2024 at 8:00pm
    stephen eisenman says:
    "the project of the Democratic Party is to keep the left out of power" -- absolutely correct but rarely said. And yet Biden passed a series of spending bills that rivaled in size those of the New Deal. Why have they not generated more support? It's fine to blame the Democratic Party -- they deserve lots of blame and more. But maybe the voters need blame too?
    • 4 July 2024 at 10:33pm
      Eli Zaretsky says: @ stephen eisenman
      one thing history shows is that it is not only the size or even the nature of a reform that counts the most. It is the place that the reform occupies in public consciousness. The New Deal reforms were relatively weak-- for example, social security in its original form, but they reframed public understanding about capitalism and the nature of the state. The Democrats under Biden did not do that in part because they had marginalized their left, and everyone knew that, including the Left. People like Sanders made their peace with it, in part because they regarded Trump as such a threat, but look at Sanders himself to see the cost.
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