Why Biden can do no right
Donald Trump once declared he could shoot someone and not lose a single vote. That’s one of the few things he ever said that turned out to be true, metaphorically at least, because in his four years Trump did everything but shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and retained the support of his base. Trump got away with murder and worse—objectively collaborating with the spread of a deadly virus that soon will have killed 800,000 Americans; supporting the fossil fuels industry that would rather destroy the planet than lose profits; cruelly separating parents from their kids at the border causing incalculable pain. And that’s the short list. Yet, although he lost the election, tens of millions of Americans voted for him for president in 2020 amid a cratering economy and a raging pandemic. For some Americans, Trump can do no wrong.
Joe Biden has been president less than a year and, in that time, he has been doing everything he can to beat back the pandemic with significant success; putting money in American wallets to relieve the sting of the economic downturn; stimulating the economy so effectively that a record number of jobs have been created, consumer spending is through the roof, and Wall Street is soaring; passing a law to repair the country’s tattered infrastructure; and trying to rebuild our human safety net, the worst in the developed world after decades of Republican assaults. To top it off, this month there were fewer claims for unemployment than at any time since 1969. Who, a year ago, would have predicted that?
Yet, for some Americans, Biden can do no right. Many people and much of the media constantly complain about the state of the economy, specifically inflation, and shine a bright light on the president’s dropping approval numbers, which are still about as high as they ever were for Donald Trump.
Inflation, which is moderate by historical standards in this country and others, is the flip side of the dramatic economic recovery. Prices are rising because many people have lots of money and they are spending it like drunken sailors. Last year there was little inflation because people either didn’t have money or they were saving it until they were confident that the great pandemic would not end in a second great depression that could last decades.
One can only conclude that much of the public and the media are unfairly setting the bar at a very different height for Biden than they did for Trump. Why?
For one thing, pundits say that the Democrats have flubbed the messaging. True, they should be much harsher regarding Republican outrages and outrageous Republicans. Out with the velvet gloves, on with the brass knuckles. Beat the devil, as Alexander Cockburn used to title his column in The Nation.
Democrats also need to tout their successes, contrast them with Trump’s failed boasts. But the problem with the Dems is not just that they are too soft; the brass knuckles will take care of that. Their problem, which probably cannot and should not be solved, is that they are infinitely more honest and decent than the Republicans.
Republicans over the years have scored a lot of points against the Democrats by behaving vilely through racism, xenophobia, scapegoating, fearmongering, and distortion. The party of God has no ethical clothes. That is a tough problem because you cannot win a pissing contest with a skunk.
Blind partisanship is part of it. For the hard core MAGA crowd, Trump is always right, and Biden is never right. The double standard is amplified because the intensity of partisanship is asymmetrical. Many Democrats can see the smallest blemish on Biden and will call it out. Right-wing Republicans, that is most Republicans, will ignore even a huge ugly rash on Trump’s face or celebrate it as a beauty mark.
A polarization in perception is certainly one of the main sources of our current national divisions. But why does this perception gap exist? By now it is clear that Trump is the chieftain of the biggest, richest, most politically dominant, and historically most consequential of American tribes, the white tribe. To those who identify with this tribe, he is our guy, our leader, the defender of our values, interests, and preeminence against the outsiders. They cut him infinite slack.
Conversely, for this crowd, those white iconoclasts like Biden that don’t practice the secret handshake or communicate through racist, xenophobic, or classist dog whistles, are turncoats, apostates, heretics. They are wrong even when they are right and get results.
Tribalism, like other Republican dogmas such as dog-eat-dog capitalism, still has a strong but fading base. Republicanism increasingly will become a posthumous party, looking toward past national and partisan glories. Make America Great Again means America is not now but was once great and we must return to that great past. Significantly, the slogan is not “make America greater or better than ever,” which would imply progress into the future. MAGA is an appropriate theme for a declining tribe in a declining nation.
This is new. The United States, the American people, have always looked toward a greater future. Does a political party with both feet in the past even have a future? Ultimately, it’s hard to argue against results. I think all the foam and froth about inflation will begin to fade like fog. By the time 2024 comes around, the kinks in Biden’s program should have been ironed out. His accomplishments will look pretty good, especially in contrast to the disasters of the previous four years. And every day the orthodox camp within the dominant white party is losing ground to young internal dissidents and to the rest of us.
For years it has been clear that Republicans have been obstructing everything to run out the clock, to set in stone for all time their reactionary project for the nation before the final whistle blows. Will they manage it? Their time has almost run out.
