If President Biden—or any Democratic replacement—wants to get back in the race, they need a positive moral vision to run on, not just dire warnings.
By Adam Johnson, In These Times
It’s convenient that what is good for Democrats’ November electoral prospects would also happen to align with my personal ideological preferences. But as I’ll explain, this belief is not just motivated reasoning: There are empirical and fairly obvious reasons why if the Democratic candidate, whoever that happens to be, wants to make up ground in the polls, they need to offer voters more than just status-quo, disparate, one-off policy prescriptions and wall-to-wall anti-Trump rhetoric. Instead, they need to offer something richer, more positive, and more uplifting and coherent: a politics of care, health, life and education to contrast with the politics of fear, xenophobia, book-banning and white nationalism emanating from presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. They need, in other words, a Progressive Project 2025.
To be clear: Anti-Trump rhetoric is important, as is highlighting the real dangers that the actual Project 2025 — a far-right wishlist courtesy of the Heritage Foundation — poses to the climate, academia, abortion rights, the working class, people of color, and what’s left of the liberal, regulatory state. But simply warning and fending off overtly fascist encroachment is not sufficient. And we know this because poll after poll continues to show a Democratic voting base that is demoralized, listless and increasingly cynical. That cynicism is only increasing in the face of an incumbent president who’s refusing to step aside and let another Democrat run even as he’s dropping in the polls following a disastrous debate performance and concerns about his age and ability to serve, with the majority of Democratic voters and an increasing number of his fellow party elected officials saying they want a different candidate to lead the ticket in November.
And we have somewhat of an A/B test to show this. In 2020, the Biden campaign, wisely — if disingenuously — embraced much of the rhetoric and activist energy of an assortment of movements that were peaking at the time. Anti-“kids in cages” immigrant rights activism, George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests, anti-war (in this case, specifically U.S.-Saudi bombing of Yemen) voices, and climate change activism were all thrown some red meat by the Biden campaign, if not put center stage. This, in concert with a more expansive vision of a progressive “FDR”-style government, gave voters more than just anti-Trump scare stories. It gave them a vision to embrace, not just one to guard against. And, for the most part, it worked: It increased youth turn out 11 points compared to 2016, excited the base while bringing in anti-Trump moderates, and handed a clear victory to Democrats.
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