Where Democrats faltered: From Joe Biden to wars to prices

WASHINGTON: To understand the political tsunami that has hit America in November 2024, go back to November 2022.

The Democrats had just emerged relatively victorious in the midterm elections, retaining the Senate and losing the House by a narrow margin. Donald Trump’s more extreme loyalists had lost the election and predictions of a Red Wave had been rebuffed. And the mood was jubilant among liberals.

Joe Biden had a choice.

At that moment, after leading his party to a historic win in 2020 to “save democracy” and then the midterms, Biden, approaching 80, could have either announced that he would not seek renomination or decide to contest again. Biden didn’t make a commitment either way in the press conference right after the midterm results, but soon after, his aides let it be known that the president wasn’t in any mood to give up. And within a few months, Biden was back in the race, smug that he was the only man who could defeat Donald Trump.

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Tuesday’s verdict may give Biden’s apologists a chance to claim that if he had remained the nominee, Democrats may have won. There may be others who suggest that Trump won because Kamala Harris was the candidate on the other side. But while counterfactual history is hard to disprove, all evidence suggests that wouldn’t have been the case.

Instead, all the evidence suggests that the biggest mistake Biden made was deciding to contest, and Democrats made was in remaining too polite and allowing Biden to have his way till a disastrous debate performance this June exposed his age-related deficits and forced him out.

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What Biden’s exit at that stage would have done is to open up the Democratic primaries process. The party has an impressive bench and its raw talent would have been visible to the nation as contenders fought it out. Yes, Kamala Harris would have thrown her hat in the race too. But perhaps Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, California’s Gavin Newsom, secretary of commerce Gina Raimondo, Maryland’s Wes Moore, secretary of transportation Pete Buttigieg, and other Senators and Congressmen and Congresswomen would have joined the competition too. They would have dominated headlines. They would have gone through a process of robust debate. They would have owned Biden’s achievements — and his legacy is indeed credible — but also disowned parts of Biden’s legacy. They would have shown what was possible to American voters who sought change. And through that bitter process, a candidate with time and with credibility would have prevailed.

Instead, based on the lazy assumption that there was no one else, Biden locked in the nomination and froze the primary process. Democrats will regret this mistake for generations to come.

Bur beyond the candidate, there were four issues where Democrats faltered — on foreign policy, economy, culture and politics.

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For one, Democrats either got out of wars or got involved in wars without preparing their own home audiences for it. Take three instances. Biden’s ratings first fell in August 2021 and never recovered, when the US left Afghanistan in a manner that was disgraceful. The manner of its exit led to an immediate Taliban takeover, cost America the lives of 13 of its soldiers in a terror attack, and led to America killing civilians in retaliation. That image of Americans fleeing the Kabul airport was embedded in popular consciousness in ways that Democrats discounted. Biden then made the defence of Ukraine the central foreign policy mission of his term. To be sure, Russia was wrong in invading a foreign country. But America invested in defending Ukraine with resources for an indefinite period, without preparing its own citizens adequately for it. And so when popular appetite to continue supporting Ukraine dipped, the issue became a political liability. And finally, on Israel, Democrats lost on both ends. Progressives, students and Arab-Americans couldn’t forgive Biden for what they saw as complicity in genocide, while the more hawkish national security types and Zionists felt Biden hadn’t been supportive enough. Put it together and it’s clear that Harris walked into the election with serious foreign policy baggage that had severe domestic consequences.

Two, Democrats were never able to get their economic policy, or economic messaging, right. Yes, Biden inherited an economy devastated by the pandemic. Yes, Biden boosted infrastructure spending, brought back manufacturing, created jobs, and pioneered a new industrial policy with a focus on clean energy, innovation and technology. But inflation just wiped out any feel-good sentiment that the administration could have generated. Whether a more restrained stimulus bill post the pandemic, or lesser spending on some of these spheres, would have tamed inflation, or whether the Fed should have increased interest rates earlier, are now all matters of academic debate. But its real political impact was simple; citizens were angry, and Democrats, by touting economic achievements instead of recognising this pain, made citizens even more angry. Things could have been worse was the key Democratic message — and that’s not a political winner.

Three, even though Democrats got accused of weaponising the justice system against Trump, the Biden administration actually let the autonomous Department of Justice proceed at its own pace against Trump. The fact that not a single political case against Trump — be it on his role after the 2020 elections, or during the January 6 Capitol mob instruction, or as it pertained to classified files — even got to the trial stage reflects poorly on America’s justice system. This is not an argument for political vendetta. But if Democrats had been able to get their own attorney general to pursue cases at a more rapid pace, make Trump’s more serious legal liabilities an issue instead of the one case related to business fraud where he was convicted, the optics of this election may have been different and Trump’s very candidacy may have become untenable.

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And finally, on culture, Democrats are not speaking to Americans where most of the country is. This is particularly true on the question of sexuality. America has made rapid strides in recognising same-sex relationships and even the Republican platform has diluted its opposition to same-sex marriages. But by allowing Republicans to hijack the issue of transgender rights and play on fears of parents and even moderates, due to their own past rhetoric or policy pronouncements, Democratic leaders made a big mistake. They had moved way ahead of society and not prepared people enough for social changes and expressions of sexuality and gender identities of different kinds. This isn’t an argument against trans rights, but it is to suggest that political and social changes need to be broadly aligned for it to gain wider legitimacy and prevent a backlash.

It would be easy to blame Harris for this Democratic debacle. She may not have been able to distance herself from her past positions, giving Trump an opportunity to cast her as a radical from California. She may not have been able to distance herself from Biden’s baggage, a job that’s hard for a sitting Vice President to do. And she may still have lost the election, even if she had more time to campaign instead of the 100 days she got to pull together a campaign. But the 2024 defeat was not due to Harris’s deficits as much as due to Biden’s decision to stay on, and the Democratic Party’s failure to defend its foreign policy, economic and cultural record and hold Trump to account.

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