Waiting for a Democratic leader
Most of the Democratic agenda is popular.
Social Security is popular. Medicare is popular. Medicaid expansion to the working poor is popular. The prescription drug benefit is popular. Keeping the government open is popular.
There is more.
A higher minimum wage is popular.
Access to abortions is popular.
Access to contraception is popular.
The right to same-sex marriage is popular.
The right to inter-racial marriage is popular.
America's assistance to Ukraine is popular, at least for now.
The $1,400 COVID stimulus checks were popular.
Extending unemployment benefits during the COVID shutdown was popular.
Spending money to improve the infrastructure is popular.
Expanding domestic manufacture of computer chips is popular.
Fixing the Electoral Count Act is popular.
Meanwhile, Trump is personally unpopular. Election denial is unpopular. The January 6 riot is unpopular. The GOP is divided. Trump singled out the most powerful Republican officeholder in the country, Mitch McConnell, and called him an obedient husband to a Chinese communist. Trump tweeted that RINOs are "working so hard to DESTROY our once great country."
So why aren't Democrats mopping the floor with Republicans in the 2020 and 2022 elections?
COVID. No good deed goes unpunished. Protecting seniors and other vulnerable people may well have had the wisest and most compassionate COVID policy possible, but this is a democracy. Americans quickly tired of the inconvenience of masks, school shutdowns, vaccination requirements. By the fall of 2021 a great many Americans were ready to return to "normal" even if it meant that old, sick, overweight people died in higher numbers. People who wanted vaccinations could get them. Public health became self-protection in the minds of many. Democrats were conscientious about public health longer than the American public wanted.
Inflation. Inflation is worldwide, but popular actions to reduce COVID economic misery gave people money--creating demand--while the shutdowns reduced productivity--reducing supply. The result was inflation. Another popular good deed gets punished.
Trans. Democrats are trying to figure out how to deal with trans, non-binary, intersex people. Democratic go-to strategy is compassion and inclusion of marginalized people. Democrats criticize and shame open racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism as wrong-headed and prejudiced, and they bring that strategy to gender. This is pushing Americans into new mental territory: Gender as a social construct as well as a biological fact. Cultural conservatives resist it, and so, too, do some gay and lesbian people and people of color. Trans-acceptance muddles Democratic ideology and constituencies. The result is that Republicans, who would lose votes if they talked about cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid wisely talk instead about pronouns and the strange thought of trans athlete swimmers and men in women's bathrooms. No attempt at compassion goes unpunished, either.
Southern border. This is a failure of mixed emotions and values. Families have mixed immigration status. Deportations divide families. It is cruel. Yet illegal is illegal and Democrats want to talk about the rule of law. People have lived here for decades, have served in the U.S. military, and yet they are at risk of deportation. Democrats are conflicted. There is no national consensus on what to do and no Democrat, including Biden and Vice President Harris, has stepped up with a plan and message to build that consensus.
Biden. And then there is the Biden himself. A majority of voters in 2020 wanted someone other than Trump, and Biden was the available choice. Biden has many strengths, but he lacks the ability to make an articulate persuasive case on the state of the union, including the issues of COVID, inflation, sexual politics, and immigration. Yesterday's blog post showing Ukraine president Zelenskyy speaking to his nation demonstrated the power of communication to shape opinion and events. Biden's opponents can articulate their message of Democratic treason, a botched Afghanistan pullout, COVID tyranny, microchips in vaccine, Fauci as Satan, a fraudulent 2020 election, Hunter Biden, runaway inflation, and woke gender oddities infiltrating schools. Trump and his allies make their case. President Biden cannot make an equally impactful case. Democrats have one case made well, that Trump is obviously dangerous and unfit for office, and Trump makes that case against himself.
Biden in office blocks another Democrat from stepping up. Possibly there is a Democratic Zelenskyy in the wings. We won't know until Biden says he won't run for re-election.