Joe Biden’s coalition beat Bernie Sanders’ movement

by | Mar 11, 2020 | 2020 elections, Editor's Blog | 3 comments

Joe Biden essentially clinched the Democratic nomination last night. He won crushing victories in Michigan, Missouri and Mississippi. He also won Idaho and might win Washington state. Bernie Sanders didn’t address his supporters and instead flew home to Vermont. I suspect he will end his campaign sometime this week, though he may stay through the debate Sunday night so he can lose Florida by 50 points next Tuesday. 

Joe Biden won the race for the same reason he entered it as a frontrunner: Democrats want somebody that they believe can beat Trump. Biden is a fully vetted candidate and he’s well liked. He offers a sharp contrast to Trump on a personal level. Biden’s inherent empathy exposes Trump’s overbearing narcissism. Voters want a president they can like. 

As a candidate, he showed remarkable resilience. After losing Iowa and New Hampshire, most pundits and observers counted him out. Instead, he made a remarkable comeback that highlighted his deep relationship with African American voters. As one African American woman explained, “He took his cues from this black man who had more power than him and was virtually unknown when he took the presidency and Joe Biden had been around forever…Not once did he try to undermine him, this black man. Instead Joe walked in lockstep with him, he respected, he loved and trusted him…You tell me one 40+ year ‘establishment’ white politician has ever done that. Joe Biden is cut from a different cloth. And black folks understand that.”

Biden’s success is based on his relationships and connections. People will overlook a lot of flaws in someone they like and trust. Biden doesn’t need to be a perfect candidate. He just needs to be Joe Biden.

For the people who made up Sanders’ base, the campaign offers a lot of lessons. 

First, in electoral politics, coalitions beat movements. Movements ask people to come to them and exclude people who don’t. Coalitions grow by building relationships, inviting people to move forward, often for different reasons. Joe Biden may be everybody’s second choice but they all agree that he’s better than Trump.

People don’t vote for slogans. Sanders campaign was based on a bunch of slogans that meant little to the people who determine election. The Green New Deal is just words that sound good. Nobody knows what it means, and if you do, you’re the exception not the rule. Same for Medicare-for-All. Sure they poll well. So would Ice Cream for Everyone. That doesn’t mean people will vote for them. And it doesn’t mean they won’t change their minds when they get details presented by people who oppose them. 

Which gets to a central point of campaigns. Voters are self-interested. The people who determine elections aren’t generally that well-read or intellectual. They’re people asking, “What, specifically, can you do for me?” The answer they want is, “I’ll save you money on your health insurance while offering better coverage.” Or “I’ll increase your wages by raising the minimum wage.” Or, “I’ll make schools better for your children by attracting better teachers.”  

If you’re going to try to win running against someone or something, define who or what it is. Sanders ran in a Democratic primary promising to beat the “establishment,” implying Joe Biden was a tool of this amorphous group. Sanders claimed he was talking about monied interests and big corporations, but black voters thought he was talking about them. And Biden won on Super Tuesday with little money and less organization and he won among minorities, older people, college-educated women and white working class voters. That looks more like the movement Bernie claimed to lead than the one he actually led. 

The Democratic Party’s problem is that it’s a coalition of disparate groups who often have conflicting interests. Hence, Will Roger’s statement, “I’m not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.” The Democratic establishment is a whole lot of people and interests groups. If Joe Biden can unite them against Donald Trump, God bless him. And Godspeed. 

3 Comments

  1. Ken R Leary

    Biden was given to us by the corrupt DNC. Harris and Booker both called out Biden for his racism and then backed him which is SOP for the spineless democrats. Yang called out Biden’s senility and then backed him. Ridiculous. Even Warren, a purported “progressive” is in reality a corporate democrat. Biden had no “coalition.” He had the neocon, neoliberal wing of the so called democratic party. I was for Bernie. Now I think I will vote for Trump. At least he is an honest liar.

  2. j bengel

    I question whether voters are self interested. Voters— at least Republican voters— routinely vote counter to their own interests. And if coronavirus has ay effect on that, it will likely take the form of killing the very people most likely to vote Republican. In that way, it will certainly have the effect of moving the electorate to the left. Not because it will cause red and blue to ban together, but because it will carve a swath through a rural America left to fend for itself by self dealing politicians who refuse the Medicaid expansion that would not only save their base, but employ them as well. And as yet another provider has decided it can no longer sustain its rural clinics, the access to care that has never been more needed than it is today will become that much harder to find.

    This is not new, and not even unique to healthcare. The voters in these districts have continued to support a party that has been actively trying to kill them for two decades or more simply because they would burn down their own houses if it meant that their liberal neighbor would spend 15 minutes choking on the smoke. And they will excuse this administration, and it’s enablers for any transgression for the same reason. That may appear to be self interest, but the more common, and accurate, term for it is simply spite.

    Someone said once that it is easy to get half the people to vote against their own interest, if you can convince them that they are instead voting against the interests of the other half. And just because it’s cynical doesn’t make it untrue.

  3. Rick Gunter

    Thomas, thank you for an insightful column.

    As a people, we have not really seen anything like this coronavirus crisis. Perhaps sacrifices made during World War II, the rationing and working for the common good, provide the closest parallel.

    On the upside, this sitution could bring us closer together. At leastI hope it does. Maybe more of us will begin looking at others not as Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, but as fellow human beings.

    But I do fear that this situation will continue to spiral out of control at the presidential level because Mr. Trump is the worst person I can imagine to be president in a national emergency. This crisis could do what nothing else has done to this point — blow Mr. Trump at out office.

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