Middle America: A Bridge to a New Era

We were in the backyard with our teenage girls, enjoying one last warm, socially distanced evening with friends who also have teenage daughters, when Joe Biden delivered his victory speech. All the major news networks had already declared Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, the winners. We tuned in just as Harris strode onto the stage in suffragette white, to the strains of Mary J. Blige singing about being a beautiful queen. Suddenly, unexpectedly, I had tears in my eyes.

Unless the Democrats can figure out a robust response to the rightwing populism of Trump, the Biden transition won’t take us very far.

It’s been a long four years of the misogynist, white supremacist Trump Administration—which began with chants of “lock her up” and moved on to embracing violent white nationalists, supporting police officers who kill Black people with impunity, and torturing immigrant children torn from their parents at the border.

Finally, we’ve made it to the other side—to a vision of America that includes powerful women and people of color, that looks to the future instead of wallowing in the wounded sense of entitlement of those who long for the imaginary “greatness” of the past, when racist and misogynistic hierarchies were strictly enforced.

Acknowledging “the generations of women—Black women, Asian, white, Latina, Native American women—who throughout our nation’s history have paved the way for this moment tonight,” Harris delivered her acceptance speech as the first woman and first person of color elected Vice President of the United States.

During the campaign, the Biden ticket did not go long on inspiration. Partly it was the fault of the pandemic, which prevented rock-concert-style stadium rallies (except for Trump, who reveled in these superspreader events). Partly, it was the candidate at the top of the ticket, the oldest man ever elected President of the United States, who, with his halting style, sprinkled with “by-the-ways” and “here’s-the-deals,” was no Barack Obama. Biden’s denunciation of progressive policies toward the end of the campaign was downright discouraging—a bewildering effort to depress his own base.

Harris is no progressive icon either—despite Trump’s efforts to portray her as a dangerous socialist. She’s a career prosecutor and a center-left Democrat. But as the race was finally called, Harris brought back the goosebumps and the sense that this election is truly historic.

The symbolism is important, especially after the rightwing backlash of the Trump era. And so is the sensibility of a Vice President who talks about the lessons in social justice she learned from her immigrant parents, who embraces her Black and Indian American identities, and who made the United States’ scandalously high rate of Black maternal mortality a central issue in her presidential primary campaign.

As they watched Harris’s historic acceptance speech, my kids were already talking about an AOC presidency.

Joe Biden bills himself as a “transitional figure”—a bridge to a new era, as America puts Trumpism behind us.

How this will unfold is still unclear. Days after every major news outlet declared Biden the winner, Trump was still clinging to the bedpost. “Wisconsin is looking very good,” he tweeted, alluding to his plans to demand a recount in the state, even though prominent Republicans, including his Wisconsin campaign chair, former Governor Scott Walker, had admitted Trump will never overcome Biden’s 20,000-vote lead. “Needs a little time statutorily,” Trump tweeted. “Will happen soon!”

Then he promised to hold another superspreader rally in Wisconsin.

Shamefully, Republican leaders at both the state and national level allowed Trump to continue spinning out his fantasy, supporting him as he ignored reality, refused to concede, and cast doubt on the entire U.S. elections process, pursuing frivolous lawsuits and trying to erode the legitimacy of his successor.

Attacking democracy and increasing the spread of COVID-19 and its mounting death toll are now the two key elements of the Republican brand.

What about the Democrats? Biden addressed the nation on the Monday morning after being declared the winner. He announced his coronavirus task force of doctors and scientists, and urged Americans to put aside their differences and put on their masks.

“It doesn’t matter who you voted for,” he said. “We are Americans and our country is under threat.”

It’s a reasonable position. And just clawing back a country that honors democratic processes and observes basic public-health measures will be a major step forward.

But Biden has not addressed the problems that led America to elect Donald Trump in the first place. The Trump vote in 2016 was a backlash by white people who feel themselves losing their grip on security and power. Besides an indicator of straight-up racism, and a reaction against the nation’s first African American president, it was a massive vote of no-confidence in the system that has, over the last forty years, given us growing economic inequality, spiraling college debt, a shrinking middle class, and a tenuous gig economy that leaves more and more workers desperately insecure.

In his re-election, Trump specifically campaigned against Democrats whom he blamed for NAFTA-related job losses and for the suffering of blue-collar workers and farmers. That message resonated, but the Biden campaign did not take on that suffering directly. Instead, Biden acted as though all of the nation’s problems started with Trump. The Democrats ran a back-to-the-future candidate who represented the old establishment, and who argued for a return to the pre-Trump era.

Biden seemed to think he could peel off Republican votes by making gratuitous swipes at Bernie Sanders and his passionate, youthful supporters and by promising wealthy donors that he wouldn’t get too crazy in tackling income inequality. He declared that “no one’s standard of living will change, nothing will fundamentally change,” in a Biden presidency. He repeatedly reminded voters that he did not favor Medicare for All.

In my Facebook feed, I got a targeted ad from the Biden campaign promising that the candidate would not ban fracking. Wrong number.

Disaffected rural voters did not appear to be very moved, either. In a prescient column on his new site, The Daily Poster, David Sirota, the investigative reporter who left his job to work for the Bernie Sanders presidential primary campaign, wrote about his, and our, collective panic attack as Election Day dawned.

No matter what happens, Sirota wrote, progressives will be blamed. If Biden loses, Sirota predicted, Democrats will say he went too far to the left, alienating swing voters. If he wins, “we will be told that he won because he refused to fully embrace a progressive economic agenda.”

That was, in fact, exactly the analysis that emerged after the election, as centrist Democrats blamed progressives, Black Lives Matter protesters, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Democratic losses in the House of Representatives.

It’s a silly analysis, since centrist Democrats lost and Republicans painted all Democrats, from Biden on down, as socialists, regardless of what positions they actually took.

Meanwhile, nationwide, the public is generally more progressive than Biden on fracking, health care, and taxing the rich. And, unless the Democrats can figure out a robust response to the rightwing populism of Trump, the Biden transition won’t take us very far.

 As Ocasio-Cortez pointed out after the election in The New York Times, progressive House members hung onto their seats in 2020, and “every single candidate that co-sponsored Medicare for All in a swing district kept their seat.”

She added: “I need my colleagues to understand that we are not the enemy. And that their base is not the enemy. That the Movement for Black Lives is not the enemy, that Medicare for All is not the enemy.”

We need a Biden Administration that stands up for the broad majority of Americans who believe in democracy and fairness, in science and public health, in diversity and equal opportunity, and in a shared sense of reality instead of a cult of personality based on denial and hate.

Biden shows signs that he could help us get there. But it is going to take tremendous pressure from the pro-democracy, civil rights, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and environmental justice groups that have fought so hard to overcome the dark era of Donald Trump to carve out a better future.

“It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again, listen to each other again,” Biden said in his victory speech, as he promised to bring the country together.

Those remarks are futile if they are aimed at Mitch McConnell, who will doubtless do everything in his power to thwart a Biden presidency, just as he did when Barack Obama was President.

But listening to each other could be fruitful if it means truly examining the shared struggles of the economically disadvantaged and the increasingly insecure middle class, confronting our challenges, and rebuilding our civil society. It could mean realizing Americans’ dreams of economic and racial justice, climate sanity, and a rejuvenated democracy.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have opened the door for this opportunity. Let’s take it.