Sanders doesn’t try to convince progressives that America’s on the right track with Biden. It’s all about life being hell under Trump.
Since President Joe Biden has consistently subpar job-approval ratings, to win reelection he will probably need to make the 2024 race a comparative election between him and Donald Trump rather than a referendum on his own presidency. When presidential campaigns consider how to frame the choice before voters, their target is usually swing voters, who fall roughly in the center of the electorate. But 2024 is shaping up to be an odd election. The voters Biden needs to persuade to see him as a better alternative to Trump include many thought to be part of the Democratic Party base, particularly young and Latino voters. Since those voters may be choosing from Biden, a third-party/independent candidate, or nonparticipation, it’s critical for Democrats to convey a sense of real urgency about the consequences of anything other than a Biden victory.
That’s clearly what Biden’s most formidable 2020 rival and lefty partner, Bernie Sanders, is trying to do in a Guardian op-ed making the progressive case for the president’s reelection. The Vermont senator’s argument depends very heavily on raising the stakes of the 2024 election to almost unimaginable heights. He starts by calling the 2024 election a “pivotal moment” in American history. By “pivotal” he appears to mean “potentially apocalyptic”; he compares it to national trials as grave as the Civil War and the fascist assault on democracy in World War II. Sanders is not just fretting about a bad political turn like, say, Ronald Reagan’s rise to the presidency or George W. Bush’s horrific international policies: He wants all hands on deck lest America descend into an unimaginable hellscape of misfortune.
Even before he starts discussing the horrors of a Trump comeback, Sanders describes the challenges facing the country as terrifying: He cites corporate-driven inequality; corruption; deteriorating health care and life expectancy; AI and robotics; a “war against women”; militarism; and climate change. Sanders isn’t trying to convince voters that America is actually on the right track. Instead, he’s forcefully arguing the opposite while promoting activism, rather than “despair or cynicism,” as the appropriate response:
… We cannot simply turn away from the painful and complex realities that we face and bury our heads in the sand. We cannot stop reading the news or turn off the TV. The world is what it is. It is a mess. And the situation is not going to improve unless we do the hard work required.
While Sanders does give some limited attaboys to Biden for his performance as president, this is very clearly not an effort to recommend the incumbent based on an upbeat assessment of America’s direction. Indeed, he admits to disappointment with Biden and says he “strongly disagree[s] with his policies regarding Israel and this disastrous war in Gaza.” But, he argues, a Trump victory would not just be unfortunate or unsettling: “Donald Trump [is] the most dangerous president in American history whose second term, if he is reelected, will be worse than his first.” And by way of an altar call, Bernie says: “… On his worst day, Biden is a thousand times better than Trump.”
Sanders’s rundown of what might happen in a second Trump administration tracks his list of urgent challenges for the country. The presumptive Republican nominee “wants to give huge tax breaks to billionaires,” “brags about how he appointed three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade,” “thinks climate change is a ‘hoax,’” and is “‘all in’ for the massive destruction of the Palestinian people.” All that, and Trump wants to kill the rule of law and democracy itself.
Sanders ends this highly unusual pitch for Biden by urging progressives to fight for their position within the Democratic coalition and demanding that Biden’s own campaign help move the party in the right direction. It may be the least positive yet most unambiguous candidate-endorsement statement in living memory.
Will this approach help Biden with reluctant elements of the Democratic base? Perhaps. We often hear that many alienated 2020 Biden voters are angry at him for not sharing their negative assessment of the economy in particular. Perhaps Sanders’s exceedingly downbeat case for reelecting Biden will be compelling, particularly if the voters he’s appealing to agree that there will be hell to pay if Trump returns to the White House.
