After Biden, what?
Joe Biden is the present, not the future. Biden is 78 years old. He is an old 78.
Someone new will emerge to be the face of the Democratic Party.
Biden is a dead-end for Democrats. I have seen him on TV. I have seen him in real life about eight times. I have shaken his hand, visited briefly, stood next to him, gotten selfies with him in two states. He is six feet tall but slender and oddly frail. The criticisms of him on Fox are grossly unfair and exaggerated--the hosts and guests call him senile and confused and an empty shell--but my sad observation and opinion is that there is some truth to it.
His public schedule is light. That isn't what is dispositive. A president who makes one big announcement a day and that is more than enough, if a president uses it to rouse public support with soaring words of inspiration and a show of energetic purpose. Ronald Reagan did that with a light schedule. Joe Biden is no Ronald Reagan. Biden has no gift for inspiration. He cannot shape the future by building a new Democratic message and constituency.
My Democratic readers may think I am too harsh, that I underestimate what Joe Biden brings to the table. He brings a kind of low drama serenity, and after--and still within--the Trump Era, that is what a majority of Americans wanted. Biden represents an alternative to Trump, a reaction, not a future. It is still the Trump Era, not the Biden Era. Trump leads a base. There is a residual Democratic base, but not a Biden base.
Kamala Harris was presumably put into place to show Biden’s respect for the votes of women and Blacks, but she serves as the understudy in the event Joe Biden is hit by the proverbial bus. If a bus accident happens, she will step out from the shadows, but currently she is hidden deep within them. Her dilemma is that if she were present as a vital hard-charging energetic Vice President, she would feed the meme of Biden-as-doddering-puppet, so he cannot let her do that.. Her future requires intervention of that proverbial bus. Meanwhile, Biden and Harris plug the lanes for others,
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are legislators. Their messages are about votes and process--not motivating themes that create or maintain political coalitions. Legislators manage coalitions, they don't create them. Trump needed his McConnell, but Trump created the base.
What is the Democratic narrative? I present two of them in the form of short video clips. One is Cory Bush, the U.S. Representative from Missouri, who presents a vivid path, one so vivid that it is already famous on Fox News and it will be shown and re-shown a billion times in GOP attack ads. I consider it a dangerous narrative. She mixes politician-privilege, hypocrisy, and a devastating brand message of "defund the police.". A great many Americans want police reform: Better police, not less police. "Defund the police" is a phrase designed to elect overwhelming majorities of Trump-style Republicans. Here she is, for 30 seconds:
There is another version of the Democratic future, shown in this clip of Pete Buttigieg on Fox News. Buttigieg did it again. Fox needs to stop booking Buttigieg. He un-masks them. With calm competence he made a Fox News host look biased and stupid, while simultaneously making his point about the Biden administration effort to reduce pollution. The sub-text of Buttigieg's comment is "You Fox News partisan idiot. Electric cars don't have tailpipes, duh." said without saying the idiot and duh part. An image emerges of cool competence. It is reassuring. It looks like Democrats are serious about governing well while giving no ground to Republicans who attempt to make a political jab. Buttigieg looks like he is ready to lead a nation.
There is a potential downside. There is a strong element of meritocratic, emotionless, coolness in Buttigieg. Humans are motivated by feelings of emotional connection. Americans may be put off by Buttigieg's preternatural verbal fluency . Mike Dukakis presented himself as nonpolitical and competent. Buttigieg might be another Dukakis.
Plus, there is the proudly acknowledged elephant in Buttigieg's biography: he is gay. Could Pete Buttigieg be the future for the Democratic leadership? Americans voted for a heterosexual playboy flagrant adulterer who grabs pussies and is proud he could get away with it. A majority of White women voted for him twice, and greater majorities of White men did so. A majority of church-goers supported Trump and still do. Would a majority of Americans support a scandal-free gay married man? Maybe not. Maybe it is too soon.
But he is an alternative to Kamala Harris, and he is visible, selling the roads and bridges Americans like. Here he is, for one minute: