It’s hard not to be dismayed by the New York Times poll out this weekend showing Donald Trump leading Joe Biden in five of six swing states. Though we should caveat these numbers with the fact that we’re a full year out from the election, it’s also important that we not look away from the danger they suggest faces the nation. Just on the surface, the fact that so many Americans see Trump as an acceptable choice is a painful and shocking indictment of American politics, media, and society. After the failures and cruelties of his time in office — including the unnecessary deaths of thousands due to his incompetence in addressing the covid pandemic and his attempted coup to remain in office — it is hard not to feel that something has gone terribly wrong for so many Americans to be collectively proclaiming, “Please, sir, may I have another?” My award for the single-most dismaying data point goes to the finding that “Mr. Biden also maintained the trust of voters by an even slimmer margin of three points over Mr. Trump on the more amorphous handling of “democracy.”” What on god’s green earth? Trump tried to END democracy via the first coup attempt in our nation’s history, and he’s running neck and neck on the “democracy” question? Oy to the freaking vay.
In his campaign for the presidency, Biden positioned himself as someone who would restore normalcy to American after the depredations and stresses of the Trump years. Over the past three years, he has embraced this role of moderating presence, talking up bipartisanship with a feral GOP while pulling his punches on so-called “cultural issues” like the ongoing GOP campaign of incitement against trans Americans and the demonization of teaching African-American history. Parallel to claiming for himself the calm center of American politics, the Biden administration has talked up the strength of the American economy and the benefits it’s been bringing to millions of Americans.
Yet both of the fundamental identities on which Biden has anchored his presidency have been rocked by realities that are to greater or lesser extents beyond his control. On the economic front, much polling has shown broad public dissatisfaction and fear about the state of the economy, despite the stellar low unemployment figures and declining inflation rates. Without diving into the possible explanations for this pessimism (though the highest inflation in a generation, overly pessimistic reporting, and continuing inequality and insecurity in the American economy are my favorite suspects), we have to acknowledge that it presents a huge threat to a president who has not been shy about talking about Bidenomics and the overall good health of the economy. The resulting perception that not only is the economy bad, but that Biden can’t seem to make it better even as he keeps talking about how good it is, would logically seem to further drag down Biden’s economic polling numbers — a perception of incompetent leadership and supposed economic disarray bound up in one dismal package.
In a parallel way, the instabilities of domestic and foreign politics have, not surprisingly, proved beyond Biden’s ability to calm (more understandably in the case of the latter). In a predictable way, his claims to moderation and normalcy have been undermined by the ongoing radicalization of the GOP, which has treated the president’s calls for bipartisanship with contempt and whose overall posture has arguably shifted into an ongoing, slow-motion insurrection against American democracy. Even the GOP’s self-inflicted wounds in the speaker election saga may have proved costly to Biden with some voters, as the news out of Washington for weeks seemed filled with dysfunction if not outright chaos that made all of the federal government appear to be the probem.
I don’t think Biden’s decisions to sell himself as a force for stability on the political scene, or as a deliverer of prosperity on the economic scene, have been inherently outlandish. Both emphases appear rooted in Biden’s authentic identity as a classically middle-of-the-road politician with a bent for meat-and-potato middle-class politics. But in terms of the American economy, he has to some degree misjudged a sense of insecurity and instability among the public, even putting aside overly harsh coverage of the economy and the still quite real possibility that sentiments will improve as inflation continues to cool (though all bets are off should the U.S. economy seriously slow down or enter a recession in the coming couple of quarters).
And as regards America’s political conflicts, his miscalculation is related to a broader Democratic error in believing that the MAGA uprising is a force that will burn itself out, rather than a movement rooted in serious fissures in American society and politics that will require active and relentless opposition. I would greatly prefer that over the past 3 years, the Democrats had pursued a confrontational, scorched-earth strategy aimed at highlighting GOP lawlessness, racism, and increasing embrace of political violence, and that sought accountability for the crimes and outrages of the Trump years over a preference to let bygones be bygones in a fruitless quest to return to the pre-MAGA normal. And for Biden specifically, I would have loved to see him speak more honestly to the American people about the inescapable fact that we are living through a time of confrontation and danger, rather than being a mere state of mind away from returning to some golden pre-Trump era. On the economy, it also would have been terrific if the Democrats had spent a bit more political capital on working to remedy the persistent sense of precarity that haunts so many Americans, and talked more about major structural changes — whether to the safety net or to a tax system that has increasingly let the richest Americans not pay their fair share — that would give citizens a glimpse at a substantively more secure future.
At any rate, a year out from the election, nothing is irreversible or foreordained. Trump is no shoo-in for the presidency, and Joe Biden has time enough to build up momentum going into next year’s contest. This will inescapably involve drawing a contrast with Donald Trump and the authoritarian GOP — a contrast that the Republicans will very likely accentuate through their own dark political turn. Among other things, I judge that Trump himself will be unable to resist fomenting open violence and chaos as the election approaches — a challenge to the conduct of a free and fair election, but also a decisive opportunity for Biden to demonstrate that he has what it takes to claim a second term. And as others have noted in response to the Times poll, an increased focus on Trump’s flaws rather than Biden occupying the national stage alone should work out in Biden’s favor. The more Biden can position himself as the unflinching defender of the unfathomable chaos of a second Trump term, supported by the clear evidence of a deranged Trump on the campaign trail, the better his chances at rallying a decisive majority behind him. I noted above that Biden has made himself vulnerable by promising to be a stabilizing force even as U.S. politics continue to rock from GOP extremism — but Biden’s vow will start looking a lot more attractive to voters when a general election campaign focuses more attention on how very wild and chaotic the GOP and Trump truly are. As even the Times article notes, “Mr. Trump will be more in the spotlight in 2024, including his criminal trials, a growing presence that could remind voters why they were repelled by him in the first place.”