Could Biden Be a Transformative President?

A transformative President should have three things going for him/her:

1. Win big so you have a strong reservoir of legislative support and at least the perception of a mandate.
2. Know how to work the levers of political power so as to actually get large-scale legislation passed.
3. By dint of a unifying, popular persona and vision, bring the country along with you as change is implemented.

A plausible case can be made that Biden is well-positioned to do all three of these things. The non-ideological, non-insurgent nature of his candidacy, which infuriates so many on the left, should actually make it easier, not harder, to accomplish these goals. Just ask FDR.

Of course, you also need a big agenda with transformative potential. Biden has that as well, as a number of recent articles have documented. It is difficult to look at the list of ideas he is putting forward, with their associated price tags, and fault his campaign for a lack of ambition.

So will he be able to be such a President if he wins? An unequivocal maybe! But the potential is there and is greater than many think precisely because Biden is what he is: a non-ideological pragmatist.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/f260830a-c2f2-11ea-b178-bb…

https://www.nytimes.com/…/po…/biden-workplace-childcare.html

https://www.vox.com/21322…/joe-biden-overton-window-bidenism

"The most transformative presidents in our nation’s history — Lincoln, FDR, LBJ — were not ideologues."

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VOX.COM

Progressives don’t love Joe Biden, but they’re learning to love his agenda

"The most transformative presidents in our nation’s history — Lincoln, FDR, LBJ — were not ideologues."

Let's Face It: Biden's Running a Smart Campaign!

And--dare I say it?--it's pretty much as I argued a Democrat should run and not the way recommended by the base mobilization is everything/get nonvoters to vote/there are no swing voters/the white working class is hopeless crowd. In other words, persuasion, baby! It's a beautiful thing.

And the pundits are catching up too! Ezra Klein:

"The key to Biden’s success is simple: He’s slicing into Trump’s coalition, pulling back the older, whiter voters Democrats lost in 2016. The Biden campaign’s insight is that mobilization is often the flip side of polarization: When party activists are sharply divided by ideology and demography, what excites your side will be the very thing that unnerves the other side. Studies of House elections show this dynamic in action: Ideologically extreme candidates perform worse than moderates because they drive up turnout on the other side.

Biden’s theory of wavering Trump voters is the same as his theory of wavering Republican senators: He thinks they want to vote with him but need help getting over their political hang-ups about voting for a Democrat. And so he is trying to give them that help. He praises the old Republican Party, refuses to pick a side in American politics’ hottest fights. Biden has resisted calls to abolish private insurance, ban fracking, decriminalize immigration, and defund the police. It’s cost him enthusiasm on the left, but it has denied Trump the clear foil he needs. That’s left Trump confused, pathetically insisting Biden holds positions Biden doesn’t hold and getting fact-checked live on Fox."

Gerald Seib:

"Is there a hidden Trump vote? The good news for President Trump is this: There just might be.

The bad news for the president: The universe of potential hidden supporters is heavily populated with the kinds of people who happen to be more comfortable with Joe Biden than they were with Hillary Clinton four years ago....

[W]orking-class whites are far more comfortable with Mr. Biden than they were with Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Biden projects more as working-class Joe from Scranton, a beer-and-shot kind of guy with a long history of police-union support, than as a representative of the urban, liberal Democratic elites that many blue-collar voters distrust and disdain. It’s no coincidence that Mr. Biden came out early against the movement to defund police departments.

“The guy just doesn’t project a sense that he doesn’t like white working-class people, or considers them beyond the pale, or that they aren’t worth talking to,” says Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who has long urged Democrats to work to maintain the party’s historical allegiance of working-class voters."

https://www.wsj.com/…/trump-hunts-for-hidden-votersbut-bide…

https://www.vox.com/…/biden-trump-2020-winning-polls-polari…

Joe Biden refuses to play into Donald Trump’s hands.

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VOX.COM

How Biden is winning

Joe Biden refuses to play into Donald Trump’s hands.

The Ballad of Larry Summers

I wonder what that would sound like? At any rate, I recommend this profile of the Amazing Larry Summers (how can we miss him if he won't go away?) by Bob Kuttner. It's really quite a tale; the many, many policy mistakes that Summers has sailed through with complete self-confidence and without ever admitting error. How does he do it? I'm not sure Kuttner satisfactorily explains this, but it's a great read anyway. This article can and perhaps should be read in conjunction with Reed Hundt's A Crisis Wasted, within which the ubiquitous Summers has a starring role.

Now of course Summers is a born-again aggressive Keynesian who sneers at deficit-phobes and shouts his support for big spending from the rooftops. And he's managed to worm his way into the Biden camp's circle of economic advisors. Should we trust this man? Well, people do change but...I dunno, his record makes me very, very nervous.

The surprising survival of a rebranded Larry Summers, who once again is counseling a Democratic presidential candidate

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PROSPECT.ORG

Falling Upward: The Surprising Survival of Larry Summers

The surprising survival of a rebranded Larry Summers, who once again is counseling a Democratic presidential candidate

Ohio: The Popular Front Against Trumpism Broadens

Welcome to the fight! I love the idea of this Grant project. And especially this:

"[W]e take our cue from one of Gen. Grant’s early important successes during the Civil War -- the Battle of Fort Donelson in early 1862. During the battle, Gen. Grant said that, “no terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.”

With all due respect, we offer the same terms to President Trump today."

The 538 poll average has Biden up by 2 in the state. UCLA + Democracy Fund Nationscape survey has Biden up by 3 (pooling data since April 1). Last November, John Halpin and I wrote:

"For the Democratic candidate, even increasing Black turnout and support back to their strong levels in 2012 (they both declined significantly in 2016) would still leave them with a 4-point deficit in the state. The most efficacious change for the Democrats would be to cut Trump’s advantage with white noncollege voters, concentrating on white noncollege women, where Democrats’ deficit in 2016 was 30 points less than among men. Shaving 10 margin points off Trump’s advantage among white noncollege voters would, by itself, bring the Democratic candidate within 2 points in the state."

According to Nationscape, Trump's lead among white noncollege voters is down even more than 10 points--in fact, more than halved (down from 31 to 15 points).

There you have it.

We take our cue in opposing Donald Trump's re-election in Ohio from one of Gen. Grant's early successes during the Civil War -- the Battle of Fort Donelson in early 1862, when Grant said that, “no terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.” We’ll see you in Ohio, Mr...

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CLEVELAND.COM

Operation Grant seeks to stop President Trump’s re-election in Ohio: John Weaver and Bill Kristol

We take our cue in opposing Donald Trump's re-election in Ohio from one of Gen. Grant's early successes during the Civil War -- the Battle of Fort Donelson in early 1862, when Grant said that, “no terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.” We’ll see you in Ohio, Mr...

What Progressives Got Wrong About The Emerging Democratic Majority--And How Joe Biden May Get It Right

My latest, on the excellent new site, Persuasion. I've been annoyed for years about how people misinterpreted The Emerging Democratic Majority thesis. Here, I set the record straight.

"In the months after Barack Obama’s historic victory, the conventional wisdom held that Democrats would now dominate the nation’s politics for decades. “There have been long periods where one party generally has the upper hand,” famous Democratic strategist James Carville remarked at the time. Obama’s victory, the title of Carville’s new book predicted, marked the beginning of just such an epoch: 40 More Years—How Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation.

Carville’s analysis was based on a simple narrative: Groups that favor Democrats are growing. Groups that favor Republicans are shrinking. Demographic change will keep swelling the Democratic ranks until Republicans have little choice but to surrender.

It is a narrative I know well, for it is based on a bowdlerization of my own work. In 2002, John Judis and I published The Emerging Democratic Majority. In our book, we argue that Democrats should take advantage of a set of interrelated social, economic and demographic changes, including the growth of minority communities and cultural shifts among college graduates.

But we also emphasized that building this majority would require a very broad coalition, including many voters drawn from the white working class. This crucial nuance was quickly lost. And so, many Democratic pundits, operatives and elected officials have falsely come to believe that demographics are destiny.

The result has been a decade-long electoral disaster. With the exception of Obama’s victory in 2012, Democrats lost just about every important election for the next eight years. By early 2016, the party was down to 44 seats in the United States Senate, 188 seats in the House of Representatives, 18 governorships and 3,164 seats in state legislatures—the fewest elected offices Democrats have held nationwide since the 1920s. Then came the coup de grace: Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to become the 45th President of the United States.

If Democrats don’t correct their misunderstanding of what it takes for them to win elections, the next decade could turn out to be just as bitter as the last. But even after ten painful years, their most influential operatives continue to believe that demographic changes will inevitably give them a decisive advantage. So it is time for me to set the record straight."

John Judis and I came up with the idea of an emerging Democratic majority. A dangerous misinterpretation of it helped elect Donald Trump.

PERSUASION.COMMUNITY

Demography Is Not Destiny

John Judis and I came up with the idea of an emerging Democratic majority. A dangerous misinterpretation of it helped elect Donald Trump.

The Cards in Trump's Hand Are Dwindling

On a day of dreadful polling news for Trump (Quinnipiac had him down by 15!), perhaps the worst news comes from the Change Research battleground surveys. Change Research has been running a bit low on their Biden margins in the battleground (which they usefully define as MI, PA. WI, FL, AZ and NC, definitely the six most important states) but in these most recent surveys they have Biden ahead by at least 6 in all the battlegrounds except NC, where they him up but just a point.

More important, arguably, they show Trump underwater on job approval not only overall and on COVID-19 but also on the economy and helping your pocketbook, the one area of strength for him that has been slow to decline. But here, and in a number of other recent surveys, economic disapproval is winning out. On top of all the other ways voters disapprove of Trump, that is very bad indeed--perhaps fatal.

https://www.cnbc.com/…/cnbc-and-change-research-release-res…

Could Cancel Culture Hurt the Democrats?

Sure it could. At the current moment, Trump is so detested that his ability to exploit excesses associated with this culture is limited. But greater harm is certainly possible in the future, both in this election season and beyond. Amy Walter has the following in one of her recent columns:

"it’s hard to be an effective messenger when just 41 percent of Americans approve the job you are doing as president and just over a third think you are doing a good job handling racial issues.

Even so, warns one GOP strategist I spoke with this week, there is real concern among suburban voters about where this so-called ‘cancel culture’ or what we called in the old-days, PCism, is headed.

This strategist, who has been deeply involved in both quantitative and qualitative work with suburban voters across the country, acknowledged that these voters are not interested in preserving Confederate statues or flags. They are sympathetic to Black Lives Matter and supportive of the protests against police violence.

But, this person points out, they are also wary of how far this reckoning will go. Over the last week or so, they’ve raised the question of “where does it end?” They cringe at reports of statues of Christopher Columbus being tossed into a lake and are upset to read of another public figure fired for a controversial Facebook post that they put up years ago.

However, the challenge for Trump in being able to exploit these concerns is that these voters “are mostly done with him” and think that “he makes everything worse.” As a messenger, this person said, Trump has “zero credibility” with these suburbanites.

In the era of Trump, Democrats have become more and more reliant on suburban voters. But, as one Democratic strategist wondered aloud the other day: are Democrats simply renting them until Trump is no longer in office? This GOP strategist argues that one way to lose them is to assume that they want to move as far on social, racial and cultural reckoning, as many within the Democratic Party and/or the left would like to go.

And, this worry of an ‘overcorrection’ of Trump-ism, isn’t happening only in suburban living rooms and kitchens. Earlier this week, more than 150 prominent artists and public thinkers signed onto a letter titled “A Letter On Justice and Open Debate,” that ran in Harper’s. This letter mirrored what the GOP strategist told me were “simmering” concerns from suburbanites: worries about public shaming and retribution for expressing opposing or non-PC views."

So, be worried. There are a large number of voters who are currently on the Democratic train who will be tempted to get off in the future if Democrats do not clearly dissociate themselves from the movement's excesses. Dislike of Trump can only go so far in keeping Democratic voters Democratic.

As we have seen over the past week, the president is eager to frame this election as a war over the symbols, monuments and statues that celebrate America’s historic figures. As a White House aide told the Wall Street Journal the other day, Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech was “a defense of Americ...

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COOKPOLITICAL.COM

Will “Cancel Culture” Stop Democratic Momentum?

As we have seen over the past week, the president is eager to frame this election as a war over the symbols, monuments and statues that celebrate America’s historic figures. As a White House aide told the Wall Street Journal the other day, Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech was “a defense of Americ...