As the Left Turns

By Judson Berger

Friday, July 08, 2022

 

Democrats haven’t abandoned someone this quickly since Donald Trump decided to run for president as a Republican.

 

Persistently paltry poll numbers combining with a string of defeats at the Supreme Court, economic pressures that refuse to bend to the will of tweets, and the associated gloomy prospects for Democrats in the midterms are cracking the coalition that helped get President Biden elected.

 

Politico warned back in November 2020 that this coalition was “broad but unstable,” comprising minorities, young people, women, independents, and some Republicans. He’s now underwater with all of them (save for minorities, who are evenly split on the job-approval question) in the latest Monmouth University poll. As progressives and others bolt the Wilmington zeppelin, the tableau conjures the spectacular evacuation scene from Spaceballs in which, as troopers scramble for safety, Mel Brooks’s President Skroob grabs his subordinate’s shirt and barks, “You gotta help me, I don’t know what to do, I can’t make decisions — I’m a president!”

 

Michael Brendan Dougherty sums up the mess:

 

The giant sucking sound you’re hearing is the panicked divestment of elected Democratic politicians, progressive activists, and the mainstream media from the Biden administration. The word is definitely out that the president’s stock is going to zero — and it’s time to get out while you still can.

 

Two weeks ago, in a foreboding sign for the White House, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — with a finger to the political winds blowing on Instagram — announced that she wasn’t ready to support Biden in 2024. Then came California governor Gavin Newsom, asking “Where’s my party?” as Republicans and conservatives continue to score political wins. Newsom’s question sparked 2024 speculation for him, and then he stoked the flames even higher by buying ad time in Florida, demonstrating that he could identify and take on the real Republican threat, who is sitting behind a desk in Tallahassee: DeSantis.

 

That Newsom ad, going after Florida’s governor on his state’s airwaves, was a particular display of chutzpah. Perhaps it’s a play to reverse the traffic pattern of California residents leaving for Florida. Or, as Jim Geraghty notes, it could be a “not-so-subtle hint to Democrats across the country that if they want to reconsider their presidential options for 2024, he’s available and interested.”

 

This CNN article captures the frustration on the left toward the Biden presidency in its 18th month. “Debra Messing was fed up” is the first line, and one that should be preserved in amber so that future generations might understand the American political-power dynamics of 2022. The piece describes what are really two sets of complaints. One is that Biden is not meeting the “moment” with urgency, after the Dobbs ruling and other setbacks and amid persistent inflation. The other is that Biden and his team aren’t performing the basic work of running an administration:

 

Multiple Democratic politicians who have reached out to work with Biden — whether it’s on specific bills, brainstorming or outreach — often don’t hear anything back at all. Potential appointees have languished for months waiting to hear if they’ll get jobs, or when they’ll be done with vetting. Invitations to events are scarce, thank you calls barely happen. Even some aides within the White House wonder why Biden didn’t fire anyone, from the West Wing or at the Food and Drug Administration, to demonstrate some accountability or at least anger over the baby formula debacle.

 

Jim lays some blame on the staff. It’s not just insiders harboring these doubts. A recent Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey found 71 percent of Americans don’t want Biden to run again, numbers that roughly align with the percentage viewing the country on the “wrong track.” This, from Brittany Bernstein’s news story, is astonishing: “Just 30 percent of Democrats said they would vote for Biden in a Democratic presidential primary.” In fairness, the survey did not present this as a binary choice and allowed respondents to name a variety of potential candidates — but that’s a troubling number for an incumbent president who hasn’t even weathered his first formal shellacking.

 

So what now? Democrats have a couple not-negligible factors that could redound to their political benefit. We have yet to see how Dobbs and subsequent state-level abortion restrictions might motivate voters, and the revelations of the January committee could continue to stoke anti-Trump (and by extension, anti-Republican) sentiments. But there’s little indication that either of those issues overpowers inflation. Ditching Biden for someone with better hair — someone who “fights!” — might be a wallpaper-over-the-mold solution.

 

As Michael notes, this is about much more than Biden:

 

For now, cutting ties with Joe Biden doesn’t just mean the beginning of a desperate search for a new future leader of the Democratic Party and a potential president. At this moment, progressives are casting about for the means, the will, and the talent to effect a revolution against the features of the Constitution that allow Republicans to hold power at all.

 

Upending the Constitutional Order will make for one heckuva campaign platform.