Biden: The road to perdition
“Men argue, nature acts.” – Voltaire
African-Americans have been the backbone of the Democratic party for decades, and they broke for Biden in large numbers during Super Tuesday. They did the same in this week’s primaries in places like Michigan, for example. But not young African-Americans. A Morning Consult poll released February 28th said that 46 percent of black voters under the age of 45 would vote for Sanders. Biden had the support of only 15 percent of that age group, just behind Mike Bloomberg’s 17 percent. Those over age 45, however, were around twice as likely to back Biden over Sanders.(1)
Thirty-three percent of the younger black voters also said the U.S. should move away from capitalism and toward socialism, compared with 13 percent of those over 45. Younger African-Americans are more concerned about the economy than older respondents. Older voters respond more to identity politics than issues of class differences and economic inequality such as Sanders emphasizes.
An analysis of Super Tuesday results published in Politico concluded that Sanders’ framing of Trump as a threat to the poor and the working-class isn’t the best way to win the support of older African-Americans.(2) A message emphasizing the threat that Trump poses to racial progress, according to the survey, would be more effective. Sanders’ conceptualization accords with his views as a Democratic Socialist inspired by a Marxist analysis.
On Super Tuesday, his message didn’t work for different reasons, notably Congressman Jim Clyburn’s endorsement of Joe Biden. But another reason was the assumption in his electoral approach that younger and new voters would be inspired to cast their ballots if they heard a sufficiently progressive message from a new type of politician -– even if old and a veteran of the Senate and other elected offices. The actual turnout did not support this assumption, which is required for the triumph of a peaceful revolution. On this point, he’s correct. To carry out the deep changes that Sanders has been championing, it wouldn’t be enough to win the presidency. Democrats would have to win both the Senate and the House as well, and even then they would need a mass movement to push for the proposed changes.
In a March 9 CNN poll, voters were asked whether it should be a higher priority for the next president to restore the government to the way it was before Trump took office or to go beyond restoration to make major changes to the way the government works, and 72 percent chose major changes, just 25 percent restoration. Even among Biden supporters, 58 percent said it is more important to make major changes to move beyond where the government was before Trump.(3)
However, with their devotion to Joe Biden, older African-American voters may be about to break the party’s back and undermine the very ideal of racial progress that motivates them more than economic factors, but requires fundamental changes in our society. If Biden wins the nomination, the Democrats would have twice in a row rejected the spokesperson for Democratic Socialism in America in favor of a “safe” choice that resulted in disaster the first time around. This brings to mind the words of Democratic strategist Rebecca Katz: “Sometimes the safest choice is also the riskiest choice. John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Al Gore were all safe choices.”
The problem is that the “safe choice” ignores the fast-paced historical changes of the current generation and the urgent problems it faces. Foremost among these is the threat of run-away climate change. What all Democratic primary candidates were offering, except for Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, was far from sufficient in urgency or scope to prevent a global catastrophe –- if you believe the science, as Democrats are supposed to. We are talking about the survival of the human race and most life on earth, but instead, like Nero, we are largely playing the fiddle outside Rome. What good would it do to elect a “moderate” if we continue on the path to extinction?
Take the goals of universal health care, a living wage, a more equal distribution of wealth and income, or racial justice as other examples. These are not discreet problem areas isolated from the rest of the body politic. All are part of a web of legislation, institutions, ethical and moral principles, government policies, and many other threads holding us together and allowing for progress, if harnessed. To improve in any one area, we need to improve in all areas. We need, in other words, a national transformation. We need to imagine where we want to go before we go there. And we need to believe it’s possible to achieve great changes before we can achieve them. “Yes we can!” was Obama’s felicitous slogan. Ironically, he who claims his legacy seems to have abandoned it.
For that reason, it will be harder to drive the turnout that Democrats need to defeat Trump in 2020. And the results of Super Tuesday (and this week’s results) suggest it’s going to get harder. The conundrum is that Democrats need to attract black voters in 2020 at rates comparable to 2012 to flip four key states away from Trump — Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and win the election, but they cannot alienate Sanders’ loyal followers and depress their participation.
Those who support Biden fear the “socialist” label effect, but set aside the fact that Bernie beats Trump according to almost all of dozens of head-to-head polls.(4) They also seem to have a blind spot for Biden’s gaffes and incoherence. His cognitive decline is not more apparent only because of the media’s favoritism toward him. Don’t they notice Biden’s mental incompetence? Are they OK with replacing a deranged sociopath with an incoherent and disoriented speaker, or don’t they see it?
Trump sees it, and has started repeating the meme that Biden can’t put two sentences together. Never mind Trump is the king of incoherence and word salads. Recently, he said if Biden is elected, “They are going to put him in a home and other people are going to be running the country.” Also, at a “town hall” on Fox, Trump cited verbal stumbles by Biden and said, “There’s something going on there.” Later, he tweeted that Biden would destroy Medicare and Social Security “and not even know he’s doing it.”(5)
It’s not just Trump and his propaganda ministers, such as Sean Hannity, Anne Coulter, and Tucker Carlson, that have been making fun of Biden. The award-winning and best-selling progressive writer Glenn Greenwald tweeted recently: “The steadfast, willful refusal of Dem political & media elites to address what is increasingly visible to the naked eye — Biden’s serious cognitive decline — is frightening indeed, not only for what it portends for 2020 but what it says about the ease of snapping them into line.”(6) Matt Stoller, another progressive who backs Sanders, also tweeted: “Democratic insiders know Biden has cognitive decline issues. They joke about it. They don’t care.”(7)
What will happen if and when Joe Biden “debates” Trump before millions of voters and he starts to falter in a way that has been wrongly described as stuttering? (See my article on the subject, “Joe Biden Stutters?”).(8) How will he respond when Trump mocks him? What if he starts talking in word salads like he did at the February 25 Democratic debate in South Carolina? To my amazement, some pundits praised Biden as having a “forceful performance.” All he did was repeatedly raise his voice inappropriately, rudely interrupt other candidates on the stage, disrespectfully appropriate more time for himself (although he actually was allowed more time than anyone else but Sanders), aggressively accuse the moderators of not paying attention to him, and, at one point, stop his spiel mid-sentence and say, with a look and gestures that flashed MENTAL BLOCK, “Why am I stopping? Nobody stopped me. Why am I stopping?” Good question, Joe.
As another example of his “forceful performance,” here is his answer on whether he would allow Chinese firms to build critical infrastructure in the U.S.:
No, I would not. And I spent more time with [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping than any world leader had by the time we left office. This is a guy who is, who doesn’t have a democratic, with a small ‘D,’ bone in his body. This is a guy who is a thug, who in fact has a million Uighurs in ‘reconstruction camps,’ meaning concentration camps. This is a guy who you see what’s happening right now in — in Hong Kong, and this is a guy who I was able to convince should join the international agreement at the Paris agreement because, guess what, they need to be involved. You can cooperate and you can also dictate exactly what they are, when in fact they said, ‘We’re going to set up a no-fly zone, that you can’t fly through our zone.’ He said, ‘What do you expect me to do?’ when I was over there. I said, ‘We’re going to fly right through it.’ We flew B-1 bombers through it. We’ve got to make it clear. They must play by the rules. Period, period, period.(9)
And it’s not just Biden’s cognitive decline that is strangely brushed away by some liberals and older African-Americans. To quote a tweet from one “stuffedNplush,” “Joe Biden was against gay marriage as recently as 2012. Pete endorsed him. Joe Biden said abortion wasn’t a woman’s right in 2006. Klobuchar endorsed him. Joe Biden opposed busing. Kamala endorsed him. Joe Biden is an architect of mass incarceration. Booker endorsed him.” Now that they have dropped out of the race, they still endorsed Biden because, like much of the Democratic establishment, they would rather lose the election than cede control of the party to Sanders.
Actually, Biden isn’t so great on race. Besides his opposition to busing, he supported the disastrous 1994 crime bill, for example, and has made a number of cringe-worthy comments such as marveling aloud a few years back about how “clean” then-Senator Barack Obama was, or recalling the “good old days” when he palled around with fellow Democrats who were staunch segregationists, such as James Eastland, the Mississippi senator of the 1940s through the 1970s. “He never called me ‘boy,’ but he always called me ‘son,’” Biden said. “Well, guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done,” Biden bragged. “We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done.” Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker — both running for president at the time —accused Biden of cavorting with the most heinous enemy.(10)
Add to those issues his work on behalf of big banks and credit card companies; the Anita Hill debacle; his support for the Iraq war; the ongoing investigations involving his son Hunter as well as son-in-law Dr. Howard Krein, brothers James and Frank, and sister Valerie; other investigations involving Ukraine which the Justice Department will weaponize against him; his lies about his mediocre academic record, his plagiarizing the speech of a British Labor Party leader and the remarks of Hubert Humphrey, Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy in his own speeches, his additional plagiarizing of a paper in the first year of law school, his support of the Hyde amendment, which bars the use of federal money for abortions, and his criticism (decades ago) of the Roe v. Wade decision. All of these issues will come out and make him an easy target for the right wing media to destroy.
So, thanks to the prevalence of identity politics within a segment of high-participation, older African-American voters, the push Biden has received from the world of punditry, the turning of a blind eye to his fundamental inability to communicate effectively, and his extensive baggage, we could have a choice between the worst president in history and the weakest Democratic candidate ever. It could be the road to perdition, unless younger African-Americans can convince their elders to come to their senses.
Amaury Cruz is a writer, lawyer, and political activist from Miami Beach. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a Juris Doctor.
1 https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-three-times-more-popular-joe-biden-young-black-voters-poll-morning-consult-1489720
2 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/07/why-bernie-sanders-economic-message-isnt-enough-to-win-over-black-voters-118197
3 https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/09/politics/cnn-poll-biden-lead-sanders/index.html
4 https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_sanders-6250.html
5 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/07/2020-dementia-campaign-123106
6 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1235537325930749953
7 https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1235717812699594753
8 https://progresoweekly.us/joe-biden-stutters/
9 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/07/2020-dementia-campaign-123106
10 https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/mar/9/race-hustler-joe-biden/
