I have this question that keeps gnawing at the back of my brain like a starving rat: other than defeating Donald Trump, which is the position of ALL the candidates, what are Democratic voters expecting Biden to actually *do* if he wins? (And that’s “if”, not “when”.) The pat answer is “restore the soul of America”, which is a meaningless term that belongs on a burnt blonde wood sign next to a wine rack. I have a sneaking suspicion the answer is a deafening “jackshit”.
Biden has the same appeal as one of those grocery store sugar cookies. Pleasant to look at, cheap, but once you take a bite, the sour chemical tang reminds you never to bring them to a BBQ again. Biden brings little to the table save the removal of Trump, which is, I need to repeat, the goal of all of the candidates that are or were running. He’s a placeholder, some kind of corporate default switch; safe, nonaggressive, grandfatherly. There’s no idpol victory, no progressive expansion of the vision of what American could look like, no serious course correction on climate change, etc. Prepare to get locked into stasis for 4-8 years as President Biden wanders about the White House, vaguely remembering he used to live there, while a deadlocked Congress twiddles their thumbs and carbon billows into the atmosphere. But at least the bad man will be gone and we can all take a breath and go back to watching SNL.
Why the fuck is Biden automatically considered “electable”? I am mystified by this conceit. He didn’t win the Presidency in 2008 or 2012, Obama did (he actually ate shit twice before, in the 1988 and 2008 primaries). Biden’s entire political existence as Vice President and chumminess with black voters owes itself to white racist Democrats nervous about the scary black man with the strange name. Sorry to break it to Biden stans, but Biden was a cynical choice for Obama. The guy is from Delaware, as far from the South as you can get, a state I spent my childhood in. There’s nothing there except credit card companies and, when Biden was elected to the Senate, 80% white people. Here’s the thing: the numbers show Biden actually can win, because nearly every Democrat could win against such a historically weak and unpopular President. (Only Bloomberg really falls short, pun very much intended.) But not because he’s Biden, there is no Biden Magic, it’s because the American people are sick and tired of the Trump Show.
His unearned position as the default “safe choice” is utterly absurd considering his atrocious track record, just as damaging of Clinton’s with little of the same historic candidacy appeals. He wrote the fucking 1994 crime bill, voted for Iraq and every other war we get sucked into, bailed out Wall Street multiple times, piled on student loan debt, refused to apologize for any of this, and was only tapped to make Scooter McBurp 5% less racist. Every aspect of his personality and politics history scream unelectability except for the fact he offers to change nothing whatsoever. His words, not mine. Stasis is more appealing than something you need to fight for. Stasis doesn’t ask anything of you. Electing Biden is a goal, not a plan, and Democratic voters have decided, quite shortsightedly, that the safe confines of neoliberalism are acceptable. This will activate no undecided voters. No one will march for him. What is there to march for, other than the Trump defeat?
Biden doesn’t challenge anything except the existence of Trump’s worst grotesqueries, intentionally ignoring his own. For a disconnected population of all demographics with rose-colored glasses for Obama, this appears to be simply enough. What a pathetically low bar. What a stupendous lack of imagination. What a betrayal of all the climate and racial justice activists who are currently fighting for a better world. This is liberal brain soaking in pure MSNBC brine. The desire to return to this era of pleasant, unchallenging feel-feels must be powerful for a voting public weary of the anarchic news cycle and wanting a new channel. So what is Biden expected to do? Simply occupy space quietly in the White House until the oceans boil? Tell folksy stories about how he got shot out of a circus cannon to the moon and killed Hitler?
Nothing follows a Biden victory except a dusty fart smell. But then again, this is what liberals treasure more than anything else: superficial moral victories. The corporate state will remain perfectly intact, and they can all dream of the biting satire of the Daily Show. Oh, the burns! The japes and jokes! We’re all owned!
The idea of Biden to his supporters, similar to the idea of Trump (rather than the pathetic reality), is romanticizing for an era of political nostalgia. Biden might as well not exist, and they should elect a convincing Biden mannequin with less baggage and bad policy. It would be less gross to women and definitely do less harm. I keep wanting to find the humor in a Biden/Trump election cycle in a pitch black gallows humor way, but it’s not there. I laugh into the dark of the night at the Super Worm Moon, half-expecting an Elder God to hatch from it.
“If only he gets in, things will magically become better!” the liberals scream at their phones, their real home all along; a safe digital bubble away from the rising oceans and bleeding bodies. The TV show just needs a new showrunner, fixing our glitching democracy livestream by unplugging the modem and rebooting it. Meanwhile, after the ice caps have melted and we’re all living in Amazon Primeville™, President Biden has forgotten what state he’s in and tries to french kiss the Statue of Liberty.
Carl Wilhoyte is the co-editor and co-founder of Zero Balance. His work has appeared in Street Fight Radio, District Sentinel, Abomination Magazine, Bourbon Penn, and Farmhouse Magazine.