Bridge to Nowhere: Democrats After the Debate Debacle

Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else.

Joe Biden, March 2020

Bridge is nowhere; over the bridge, you feel an emptiness inside you. Bridge is nowhere.

Mehmet Murat ildan

Disclaimers: First, I am not a registered Democrat. I used to be, but in 2020 I changed over to the Green Party, and I’ve been voting those candidates ever since. Living in Massachusetts, the bluest of all blue states, these third party votes are “safe,” a luxury not afforded in other places (i.e., swing states). Secondly, I only watched about five minutes of the Biden-Trump debate on June 27th. Those few minutes were more than enough to tell how the “post-game analysis” would go, analysis that unfolded as expected.

Last time, we looked at how the GOP has painted itself into a corner over the last 30 years or so. After the Democrats pivoted to the interests of the wealthy under Clinton, the Republicans squandered their opportunity to become the true party of working class people, opting instead for the dualistic road to perdition, where all political opponents are painted as enemies of the state and of God himself. This was likely unavoidable, considering the anti-integration, anti-feminist, nativist, and plutocratic history of the GOP. But still, sensible conservatives now find themselves in the midst of an uncomfortable coalition of White Supremacists, Bible-thumpers, incels, tradwives, Christian Nationalists, and old-guard Big Money (generally, the extractive industries and high-end FIRE sector players). This has brought the GOP to a strange place, where autocracy looks more attractive than democracy, where their proclaimed leader would gladly rule for life and pass the baton to one of his pseudo-royalist offspring, and where every institution of democratic government is viewed through Neo-McCarthyist lenses: evil liberals lurking and working in every nook and cranny of the system, stealing elections, rigging trials, replacing honest citizens with vermin and grooming our innocent children to be either delicious meals for cabalistic cannibals, or worse — gay. This is not a comforting place for Reagan Republicans to be, but they have made their bed…

In surveying this intractable dilemma of the current GOP, I really didn’t expect that things could be worse for the Democrats. But after the “debate” a couple weeks ago, and the ensuing fallout in the talk-o-sphere, I was unpleasantly surprised to discover that, yes, conditions are just as dire for the Dems. So, as we asked in the last post: “How did the Democratic Party get here?” The decline of the Democrats is not quite as exciting or mysterious as the collapse of conservatism and the rise of Trumpism. But that doesn’t make it any less important.

After the debate, many Democrats are rightfully panicked. Biden was feeble, confused, and utterly lacking in the energy and charisma necessary to occupy any office, let alone the presidency. And like it or not, many of the on-the-fence voters are more likely to judge things on a completely superficial level, favoring Trump simply because he looked “stronger.”

But let’s unpack the debate fallout a little more. First of all, nothing was revealed that we didn’t already know. This election has been dubbed The Crazy vs. The Decrepit for some time now. Even four years ago, people knew that Biden was too old for the job, but they voted for him anyway, as an antidote to the obvious psychopathy and sociopathy of Trump. So it’s really just a matter of, “are we okay with an even-feebler Biden this time around?” And while the visual of Biden as a doddering old dementia patient was certainly jarring, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Everyone has been complaining about the candidates being OLD for years, that the leadership of both parties is too fucking ancient to understand the struggles of all working and younger people, who have a lengthy and substantial list of problems.

As many commentators have said since the debate, leadership is about forcefulness, and even if you hate him, Trump was unquestionably more forceful in the debate, and thus by default more “presidential.” This brings us to one of the main problems in the current Democratic crisis. Why haven’t they been able to pivot away from Biden in the last four years? After all, as the quote at the beginning of this piece demonstrates, Biden was perfectly willing to step aside after one term and be a bridge to the next generation of leaders. Had the leadership of the Democratic party been planning for that transition from Day 1, making it clear to Biden that they were taking his pledge seriously, and planning in earnest to get that next generation into the spotlight, I have no doubt that Biden would have gracefully stepped aside, sealing his legacy as the person who brought the US back from the brink.

But unfortunately, just like the GOP, the Dems are a party in service to the Plutocrats, and that makes the party allergic to any substantive change that would disturb the status quo that keeps the cash flowing upwards. But an uncomfortable coalition of ground troops is starting to chafe under this continued top-down rule. While not as advanced as the Republican situation, where MAGA has taken full control, leading the party down a hyper-polarized path of institutional destruction and theocratic social engineering, the rising dissent in the Democratic party may take a different route, with mass withdrawal support in protest to the party’s overall direction. The Democratic base, despite all the Boomer scolding from the Bill Maher types, is not actually obsessed with pronouns, pure identity politics, public bathrooms, and cancel culture. When you talk with the younger generations, they are much more concerned with declining wages, skyrocketing housing costs, mounting student and credit card debt, the impossibility of ever being able to afford a family, the cruelty and wastefulness of the genocide in Gaza, and of the war-machine state in general. And many traditional Democratic stalwarts, like African Americans and Latinos, are leaving the party for largely economic reasons: uncontrolled immigration eroding legal migrant gains, lack of robust support for small business startups, flat wages, food inflation, etc.

The Democratic response to this erosion of support has been to push all-in on the fear-mongering, warning of the coming Handmaid’s Tale society. And on the surface, this makes sense. The overturning of Roe, along with the Red State rush to control all aspects of reproduction, combined with a Supreme Court majority itching to create a theocratic kingship, are legitimately terrifying developments.

But in over-stressing anti-GOP themes, the Dems are becoming the mirror image of their political rivals, adding fuel and heft to the Polarization Industrial Complex itself, and clouding the possibility of a different path forward. Let’s remember, the MAGA takeover of conservatism means that social destruction is preferred, the dismantling of institutions a prerequisite for the coming of the New Jerusalem. On his way to federal prison, Steve Bannon suggested that capitalism itself needs to be scrapped. So the GOP has removed the responsibility for positive social change from its agenda, by design. There is no need to try and improve everyone’s lives in the country, because what is needed is a racial and ideological purge, with the government doing the purifying work of God on earth.

But the Democrats still have total social progress in their scope of work, so the destruction of broad swaths of institutional stability is not an option. They are still nominally committed to making things work better for everyone, especially people who have been marginalized for centuries or even millennia.

Here we come to the heart of the current Democratic impasse: because it is a subsidiary of the Plutocracy, the party is unable to present an actual path forward that is economically, socially, and ecologically plausible, especially for younger people. The Dems are really caught halfway between policy plausibility and out-of-touch fantasy, because so much of their constituency is well-aware of ecological collapse, the total capture of government by Big Money, and the deteriorating conditions of economic justice and equality. So the party is selling things that they think should resonate with their voters: Green New Deal, sustainable infrastructure, diversity and inclusion in corporate boardroom, assistance with child care, etc. But increasingly, the regular people on the ground recognize that this is all a quickly-receding fantasy. Things are actually collapsing at a dizzying pace, across the spectrum of ecosystems, socioeconomic systems, and political systems. (And not just in the United States.)

In essence, the extreme, hyper-partisan, high intensity stance of MAGA better matches what people feel about how fast and deeply things are falling apart. But because the Dems don’t have any grand vision or project that is the equivalent of the new conservative theocratic dream of social engineering, the Dems are trying to match the emotional pitch of MAGA with a combination of partisan fear-mongering and fantastical hopes for a Green Lake Wobegon society, where everyone is above average, working as geothermal engineers, app designers, and high-tech green entrepreneurs. The masses aren’t buying it, and they’re heading for the exits.

So what is to be done? As of today (July 11th), it seems unlikely that Biden will step aside. And even if he does drop out (a Parkinson’s diagnosis would be an honorable way out — I’m not buying the “workshop” explanation of multiple visits by Biden’s neurologist to the White House), it is doubtful that the dysfunctional Dems could rally behind an obvious candidate in just a few months.

But the problem goes far beyond this election. Even if Trump wins, and he lets the Project 2025 ghouls enact just some of their medieval checklist, the Dems can’t just fall back on a strategy of: “Hey, let’s get a young person for 2028, and let’s just keep stoking fear of MAGA while pushing our same old plan for the future.” I think that is a losing strategy.

No, the Dems need a radical, substantive, and practical vision for the future, something that matches the negative energy of MAGA with the positive energy of a plausible, workable project for all Americans. And it has to work fast. We don’t have much time. I have tried to lay out what that vision should look like, in many earlier posts on this blog. We actually do need a massive dose of social engineering, but not the top-down theocratic machinations of the MAGA crowd, but a retooling and rethinking of the foundations of our system, from the bottom up.

Originally published at http://entropolitanblog.com on July 11, 2024.