Elections are About Change vs. Stay the Course
This year is atypical: we have a former President running against an incumbent where the base of either side consumes media with opposing narratives, one based on fact, the other on the “truth” of lies told a thousand times. Political and democratic norms are being abandoned, and apocolyptic prophesy is everywhere.
Can this year’s race even be viewed through a lens of change vs. stay-the-course or is it something different, something novel? Viewing the situation through that lens might help us see the contours in a way thata helps us navigate our way to victory.
Trump: Change Agent
Despite having held the office already, Trump is running as the change agent to great success based on the current polls, especially those of the swing states. His base has been convinced of “stolen” elections, the Biden “crime family”, a “rigged/corrupt” justice system, “open” borders, etc. They have been worked into a rabid frenzy desperate for change. It isn’t a change in policy they crave, it is a change back to White Christian National dominance and the revenge it makes possible. His base is energized and enthusiastic.
Trump’s Advantages
- The Electoral College’s Republican bias
- A vast right wing media echo chamber
- A timid, enabling main stream media
- Sycophantic Republican officials ready to serve his every need
- A hyper-partisan Supreme Court willing to take action on his behalf
- Shamelessness coupled with the fact that a lie told a thousand times becomes the “truth”
TRUMP’S HEADWINDS
- The backlash to January 6th among Republicans and Independents
- He’s a 34 time convicted felon facing sentencing this month
- The continuing backlash to the reversal of Roe vs. Wade enabled by his Supreme Court picks
Biden: Stay-the-Course Candidate
Biden’s message is mixed. He is trying to tout his incredible list accomplishments, economically, environmentally, foreign policy, etc., but struggling to get the message out. That is the traditional stay-the-course messaging strategy. His stay-the-course message is compounded with a stay the American course / Save Democracy appeal, Consequently, it is often unclear what his message is. Is it both? One over the other? Shifting all the time? Uncertain?
The energy among his base does not have the enthusiasm of 2020 as reflected by the polls.
Biden’s Advantages
- Humanity, humility, and honesty
- Incumbency, experience, a large and organized party apparatus, and money
- A female Vice President in a year where Roe vs. Wade will be a prime motivator
- A stellar economic, environmental, and foreign policy record
Biden’s Headwinds
- Inflation, which led the administration to undersell his economic accomplishments during his term, making it hard to rectify the electorate’s current understandin
- His charisma and communications skills are spotty
- His appeals to bipartisanship are a double edged sword — possibly appealing to independents but off putting to a base that wants nothing of the Republican wish list and agenda
- Because of Trump’s Gish Gallop, Biden is taken off message every time he feels the need to counterpunch to correct the record, and he’ll never counterpunch fast enough to make a difference.
- Concerns about his age
Staying the Course...Risky
Staying the course and succeeding will take enormous effort, and many believe it will be a thread-the-needle exercise. The angst on the Democratic side is palpable. There are open calls to change candidates countered by rationalizations that it is too damn late, time to fall in line and get busy.
At the same time, the Supreme Court is demonstrating that a stay-the-course victory might not lead forward, but to many steps backward. We might stave off facism, but continue to lose our liberties and form of government.
It is difficult to energize the base to stick their finger in the dike, knowing that we don’t have a majority on the Supreme court, have gerrymandered Congressional districts that distort representation and a Senate that over represents rural America. We know that progress can only come on the margins. It’s depressing. We all feel it.
Waiting for demographic change to swing our way and for Supreme Court vacancies to align with a Democratic President are what we are told we must hold out for. Promises to save the right to choose and Social Security fall flat when the electorate knows we will lack the power to actually make that happen.
We don’t have the time of luxury. There are too many existential issues and we are losing the younger generation of voters. We need change and we need motivation. What can we do?
Joe Biden Needs to Steal the Change Agent Mantle
Biden can be a better, more motivating change agent than Trump. He can turn dejection into motivation and make promises that are both appealing and have the potential to actually effectuate change.
It leverages the series of recent Supreme Court rulings to harness the associated anger in a direction that can only work to the benefit of Democrats, will drive the narrative of the race, and will appeal to the entire Democratic coalition, no matter how young or old, liberal or moderate.
Here is the platform that turns Biden into that change agent we need.
Part A: Expand the Supreme Court
I promise to expand the Supreme Court and nominate candidates who will restore a woman’s right to choose, get money out of politics, and return to respect for precedent.
Our current Supreme Court has a 6-3 Conservative/Liberal makeup with three of the justices appointed by a President who lost the Popular vote, one of whom (Neil Gorsuch) holds a seat that should have been appointed by Barack Obama, a Democrat.
Biden could expand the court to eleven Justices but a conservative majority would persist until one of the Conservatives retire, expanding the court to 13 would be required to create the potential for a liberal majority. Today’s Supreme Court debacle granting Presidential immunity for criminal acts of office may enable further options to create vacancies.
Part B: Expand the Senate
I promise to expand our democracy by inviting Puerto Rico to become the 51st state in the union and to work with Congress so that Washington DC can become the 52nd. It is time to extend political representation to our fellow Americans.
This would add 4 new Senators as well as 6 congressional seats for Puerto Rico and 1 for DC, all of which are highly likely to go to Democrats.
At present, those additions would put the Democrats in power in both bodies. Adding those to the current makeup would yield
- Senate: 52 Democrats, 49 Republicans, 3 Independents
- Congress: 220 Democrats, 219 Republicans, 3 Vacancies
Part C: Eliminate the Filibuster
I promise to work with the Senate to eliminate the arcane rule of the Senate known as the filibuster that allows 40 Senators representing a minority of the country to block any legislation and kill progress on any front.
The Filibuster is not part of our Constitution, only an arbitrary rule adopted by the Senate. It exacerbates the representational bias already existing in the Senate by requiring 60 votes to stop “debate”, thus enabling a minority of 40 senators to bring democracy to a standstill.
Here are the current statistics on the fractions of the US population represented in the Senate by Party (Source: Personal spreadsheet assembled from 2023 US State Population Data)
As we see, our Senate is being driven by a set of Senators representing a minority of the US population because the current rules favor rural, sparsely populated states. As things stand, a Democrat Senator from California represents 38,965,193 people whereas a Republican Senator from Wyoming represents only 584,057, but both wield exactly the same power.
Even mustering a majority has become precarious now that Manchin and Sinema have left the party. Could Biden even fill a Supreme Court vacancy prior to the 2024 election? I have my doubts.
Granting DC and Puerto Rico statehood is not sufficient to overcome the Filibuster. We would have a majority of Senators, but they’d be neutered by the Filbuster. It must be eliminated.
I took the top nine “most liberal” Republican Senators (green column below) based on their lifetime “Progressive Scores” and adjusted the fractions of the US Population whose Representatives would be needed to overcome a filibuster. Those included all Democrats, all 3 Independents, and the 9 Republican Senators shown here. For the record, those 60 Senators would represent 62.9% of the population, a number still higher than 60% of the Senators.
(Yes, I know that is an absurd list of Republicans we’d have to win over, but hey, we have to win over nine Republicans to break a Filibuster. You’re welcome to chose a different set than mine and redo the calculations, but it will still be bleak. )
Conclusion
IMHO the current path we are on is perilously risky because it depends on Democrats “coming home” to save Democracy. “Come play defense with us, sure we’ll still get eviscerated by the Supreme Court, Gerrymandering and the Filibuster, but you’ve got to support the team to slow that down a bit and save democracy.” That’s the message today. It isn’t working.
There is a strong desire for generational change among our party, but Biden can’t be that sort of change agent. Depending on voter’s to turn out because of the logic of our argument without any other emotional appeal won’t work. Our emotions are what drive us most of the time, not our analytical mind. That’s why we eat that cookie when we know darn well that the Doctor told us we need to lose weight.
The strategy above allows Biden to be the change agent, acknowledges and addresses some fundamental problems with our system, and leverages the narrative that the Supreme Court has handed us on a silver platter. Biden can stand firmly, point to a new future and rally us to join him on the journey to change. He’ll be playing offense rather than defense, and change the dynamic at a critical moment.
Will it be hard? Sure. Will it take the entire Democratic Party and us to help deliver Joe’s message? You bet. But that would take some of the weight off Joe’s shoulders. He needs our help.
We need change. We need energy. We need to win.