So, you may have noticed that there is a… debate… let’s call it that about whether Joe Biden should drop or not. And within that debate, people have taken notice that prominent progressive figures are backing Joe Biden.
Ocasio-Cortez’ live stream on Instagram (Youtube).
Bernie sanders’ op-ed (NYT), or on the Late Show (Youtube 3x) and MSNBC (Youtube).
Elizabeth Warren too (Boston.com).
This is apparently a surprise, according to Newsweek:
Bloomberg opinion columnist Matthew Yglesias wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday morning, "I guess I get the gamesmanship of it on some level but the choice of Bernie/AOC/[Senator Elizabeth] Warren to position themselves as the Ridin With Biden dead-enders still seems very weird to me."
The answer is a story about trust.
In 2020, when he won the primary, Joe Biden did the unthinkable, turned to progressives and compromised (CNN). That’s right. The thing frickin’ France can’t do (Daily Kos), Biden got done. And with a unified party he beat Donald Trump.
Then came 2021 and centrists got busy trampling that agenda with a passion. After infrastructure passed (CNN), everyone expected the rest to be dead, but Joe soldiered on (CBS). And while all he could deliver was the Manchin agenda, he proved he could be trusted with the one area where he had leeway, studen loans (AP).
Joe Biden reached out and walked the walk. He is a centrist, not a progressive, but he is trustworthy and has ushered the most progressive agenda in decades as a result.
Of course progressives would back him in return.
…
And look. This is off-topic but this… debate… is not about elites or donors or whatever boogeyman of the day. It’s about electability. It was about electability in 2016. It was about electability in 2020. Why is anyone surprised that the party is freaking out over electability in 2024? Those who argue against Biden mention electability. Those who argue for Biden mention electability. Except progressives.
Because, and I’ll repeat the narrative I used on France, for centrists it’s all about preserving stuff against the extremist storm and wait for it to go away somehow. Hunker down, pick the safest option and pray you dodge the bullet again. For progressives it’s all about change, because a lack of change brings despair and despair breeds extremism. So I don’t think progressives care if Biden is electable, they care that he can enact change and as a result not only better the lives of tens of millions, but also put an end to MAGA.
I don’t know if that’s actually how centrists and progressives see things in the US — I am a Swiss foreigner — so feel free to scold me, but it’s not the point anyway.
The point is progressives put their trust in Biden when they compromised in 2020, Biden proved loyal to them over the last four years and so naturally progressives are being loyal to him. That’s not weird. That’s how it’s meant to work.