The four presidencies of Joe Biden
It’s become clear that America needs a party that supports multiculturalism and economic populism
There are at least four Biden presidencies happening within one administration. And so far, at the start of his reelection campaign, the president is leaning into the two more progressive presidencies and playing down one of the more centrist ones. That’s definitely good policy and probably good electoral politics.
There is the Elizabeth Warren version of the presidency, referring to the Massachusetts senator known for liberal economic ideas. When Democrats controlled Congress, they joined with President Joe Biden to push through trillions of dollars in new spending. Biden appointees at federal agencies have been aggressive in limiting mergers of big companies and supporting labor unions. The administration’s strident tone against China reflects concerns that China’s growing economic strength could hurt American workers, if more people across the world are buying products made by Chinese companies instead of American ones.
Continuing with this approach, Biden’s State of the Union address and proposed federal budget included numerous ideas to raise taxes on the wealthy and big businesses and use that money for more government programs to help the middle and lower classes.
There is the DLC presidency, a centrist strategy harking back to the Democratic Leadership Council, a group that in the 1980s and 1990s pushed the party to move right. Many prominent pundits and strategists are calling for a DLC-style intervention today, arguing that progressives are driving Democrats too far left, particularly on issues that are not primarily about economics, such as policing.
According to these Democrats, the party is too tied to college graduates and struggling with “working class” voters who will vote for Republicans if Democrats are speaking about gender, sexual identity or race in overly left-wing ways. (I have written that these class and education analyses of American politics are overly simplistic, that Americans don’t vote by carefully weighing the positions of each party, and that there is not an easy way to move right on gender or race without enacting bad policy.)
Some of Biden’s moves seem influenced by this DLC-esque analysis, including: his critiques of progressive rhetoric such as “defund the police”; calls for hiring more police officers; emphasis on bipartisanship; initial hesitation to cancel student loans and a current reluctance to tout the administration’s successful forgiveness initiatives; references to his personal, religious-inspired aversion to women having abortions.
Biden’s refusal to change his Israeli policy also reflects this approach. Many centrist Democrats say that the progressive wing of the party is loud but doesn’t represent many voters. So they don’t think Biden should change policy (in his case by calling for a cease-fire in Gaza) just to satisfy the left.
Third, there is the Indivisible presidency, referring to the liberal group that helped organize much of the “resistance” during the Donald Trump years. Indivisible has been pushing Biden and Democrats to prioritize fighting the radicalism of the Republican Party, casting Trump and his allies as enemies of abortion, democracy and freedom.
Biden doesn’t have many legislative accomplishments on this front, because Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., wouldn’t waive filibuster rules to make it easier for a major voting rights bill to pass. But since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, Democrats have prioritized these issues on the campaign trail.
There is also a fourth, internationalist presidency. Biden is deeply invested in the United States playing a big and constructive role abroad, such as leading the international coalition supporting Ukraine after Russia’s fullscale invasion.
Most presidential administrations have several priorities, so this is not unusual. For example, George W. Bush had a moderate agenda on immigration and education reform that is largely forgotten because of his more conservative foreign policies, most notably the war in Iraq.
These four presidencies can easily fit together in one administration. Biden’s infrastructure and microchip initiatives increased government spending (Warren) but weren’t super-expensive and kept the focus on economics instead of more racially charged issues (DLC). Being supportive of Ukraine is not in conflict with the other three presidencies.
But there are obvious tensions, too. Student loan cancellation is a priority of Warren and her allies but opposed by many in the current iteration of the DLC bloc. Biden alternates between highlighting his ability to work with congressional Republicans (DLC) and arguing his political opponents are a threat to democracy (indivisible).
Biden’s dismal poll numbers have created fissures inside the party over which version of the presidency is to blame. Some centrist Democrats argue that Biden is too far to the left on economics. Other centrists say the party is still too progressive on identity and race and Biden hasn’t gone far enough in rebranding Democrats on those issues. In the view of leftists, voters are frustrated because even with all of the new spending, Democrats haven’t really changed underlying U.S. economic conditions, which include millions of people struggling to pay rent.
It’s really hard to say whether Biden is unpopular because of his policies, the broader Democratic brand, his age, inflation or a general sense of dissatisfaction that has made recent U.S. presidents and their counterparts largely disliked.
But two things are clear. Warren-style economic policies have worked substantively. Helped by massive government spending, the United States is having a great recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, with low unemployment and high job growth.
Second, the election results from 2022 and 2023 (and 2018 and 2020 as well) suggest that the Indivisible approach is electorally useful. When voters perceive Republicans as antiabortion
It’s really hard to say whether Biden is unpopular because of his policies, the broader Democratic brand, his age, inflation or a general sense of dissatisfatction that has made recent U.S. presidents and their counterparts largely disliked.
and anti-democracy, they are more likely to back Democratic candidates.
I suspect if Biden’s “fund the police” comments in 2022 or his recent conservative rhetoric on immigration had caused a jump in his poll numbers, that he would shift to the right on other issues as well. But it’s hard to say those moves have helped him much politically.
So, Biden’s State of Union and the early stages of his presidential campaign are full of liberal rhetoric about abortion, democracy and populist economics and not much DLC-ism. Biden quickly backtracked from his use of the word “illegal” in the State of the Union to describe undocumented immigrants. A Democrat trying to poke progressives and woo cultural conservatives might have stood behind that term.
This approach might not be the winning formula. It’s possible that American voters don’t want a president who will be in his mid-80s in his second term — or simply prefer Trump to Biden this time around.
But if Biden runs and wins this way, he would not only keep Trump out of the White House but also might also send DLC-ism to the death it has long deserved. The Democratic Party still has a lot of influential people who think a great political tactic is anything that annoys progressives — and that many voters are dying to vote Democratic as long as they don’t have to hear anything about Black, gay or transgender rights. That analysis pushes the party to policy and rhetoric that is both bad on the merits and usually doesn’t deliver many votes either.
It’s not that Democrats should campaign on free graduate school, reparations and open borders. Most progressives have already internalized the DLC critique that Democrats can’t be too left and therefore aren’t demanding the party campaign on the most liberal policies possible.
But America needs a party that is unabashedly for multiculturalism and economic populism. And if 2024 goes well for Democrats, we might finally have one.