The 2020 Election: A Referendum on Trump

Mesean Sadri, Staff Writer

When Joe Biden launched his campaign for President, his message to voters was that he’ll restore the “soul of the nation” and return to normalcy. Over a year after his initial campaign announcement, his message remains largely unchanged. Behind the substance-free performative messaging lies a campaign devoid of any concrete policy agenda for the working-class. There is no central animating issue in the Biden camp as there was with Bernie Sanders and Medicare for All or with Andrew Yang and universal basic income. In fact, a poll from the Pew Research Center indicates that 56% of Biden supporters are voting for him because he is not Trump. Another 19% support Joe for his leadership, 13% support him for his personality, and a measly 9% support Joe Biden for his policy positions. It’s quite evident that Biden and the Democratic establishment are staking election victory on a popular rejection to Trump, and this strategy will likely work. However, the left is in for a rude awakening when the democratic establishment uses a Biden victory as confirmation that neoliberal corporatism and hollow platitudes appeal to voters.

The Trump campaign goes all out on law and order messaging
Source: Patrick Semansky/ AP

Trump’s incompetence and absence of leadership on the coronavirus have left over 215,000 Americans dead. American billionaires have gotten $845 billion richer during the pandemic, while 40 million Americans filed for unemployment, 12 million lost their employer-provided health insurance, and 30-40 million are at risk of eviction. While there is plenty of blame to put on Congress’s inaction, the ultimate question voters will decide at the polls is whether or not their material conditions have improved since 2016. This is grim news for Donald Trump who is overseeing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and a rising death toll due to his inaction on the COVID-19 pandemic.   Additionally, Trump has abandoned the populist rhetoric that propelled him over the finish line back in 2016. Trump was successful in the rust belt because he went after disastrous trade deals like NAFTA and TPP, which outsourced millions of jobs and gutted the Midwest. He strongly denounced the Iraq War and promised to end U.S. involvement in wasteful and expensive regime-change wars. He essentially outflanked the neoliberal Democrats and ran to the left of them on a few key issues, and this strategy convinced enough independent voters to give the billionaire businessman a shot at the White House.  However this time around, Trump is going all in on the culture war and “law-and-order” messaging in order to distract from the dire economic situation that transpired under his watch. Aside from those who already have a vested interest in politics, the vast majority of Americans do not care about Confederate statues or Antifa, especially during an unprecedented global crisis.  Combine a weak electoral strategy with widespread economic suffering and any incumbent president should expect to lose handedly. But you can always leave it up to the Democrats to make a straightforward race a lot more difficult than it needs to be.

Democrats constantly make efforts to appeal to a mythical  slice of centrist voters and moderate Republicans. Although progressives are often treated as a fringe part of the party, a Pew Research poll found that 47% of Democratic voters identify as liberal, along with 38% as moderates and 14% as conservatives. The more liberal-minded faction of the Democratic party makes up a plurality of blue voters, but the Biden campaign believes they don’t need to excite this base of progressives because their vote is already guaranteed by virtue of Trump, the alternative, being so bad. This is exactly the problem with the Democratic establishment. They make no concessions to the left on policy issues that are popular with all Americans like Medicare for All, legalizing cannabis, and raising the living wage. Republicans are successful because they never moderate their message to appeal to Democrats, and they embrace the far-right agenda to excite their base. The left, on the other hand, is constantly vote-shamed and chastised for daring to ask better from the Democrats. In a lesser-of-two-evils political system, Democrats move further and further to the right to appeal to Republicans, while destroying trust and enthusiasm in their core base. After all, they just need to be better than the Republicans right?

With the stakes of this election so high, the Democrats cannot risk to run a campaign that abandons the progressive wing of the party. It is worth mentioning that Biden avoids adopting popular ideas from the left because the donor class, which funds his campaign, is vehemently opposed to any of the ideas that come from the Bernie-wing of the party. These working-class issues could completely guarantee an election victory for Biden. A May 2020 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 78% of Democrats and 61% of independent voters favor Medicare for All. Another poll from The Hill-HarrisX conducted in late July found that 67% of Americans support providing Medicare to every citizen, with 87% of Democrats and 69% of independents supporting the measure. If Joe Biden came out in support of universal healthcare, the election would be over. Americans need a sense of stability and clear policy vision for the future during a time of so much uncertainty. A return to “normalcy” will not put food on the table for working people and BIPOC who have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. One demographic in particular, Latinx voters, are especially receptive to concrete policy goals. The Bernie campaign shattered records with Latino voters in all of the early primary states and in California because his voter outreach to this community was centered around policy. People of color are understandably much more skeptical of politicians who seek out their votes every few years, only to deliver nothing that substantively impacts their communities. By pursuing a policy-centered approach, the Biden campaign can secure a large enough coalition to not only beat Trump, but to beat him in a landslide, which is necessary given that Trump has refused to endorse the peaceful transition of power. 

Joe Biden has scored the endorsements of three prominent progressives.
Source: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg via Getty Images

It’s not easy to advocate for bold leftist ideas when many leaders on the left such as Bernie Sanders, AOC, Ilhan Omar, and others have essentially demonstrated that their vote is going to Biden no matter what. By conceding that the other side is so reprehensible that progressives are forced to vote blue, the left loses all of its political leverage in demanding better from Democratic leadership. We are doomed to fall into another election cycle of the lesser of two evils unless there is a massive paradigm shift within the Democratic party. The Democrats must realize that by failing to address the root causes that led to Trump in the first place, we are bound to see the rise of another Trump-like figure. When the 2024 presidential election arrives, the left must make it clear that its voters will not vote for the Democratic Party unless offered a clear policy agenda that benefits the working class. Voting is the only form of leverage that the working class has, and progressives cannot simply hand Democrats power and expect they do the left’s bidding. The left needs something to vote for, not something to vote against.