Be careful, Biden. You might be inviting a challenge from the left.
President Biden’s recent tack toward the center might be good politics for the general election. But the dissatisfaction he is sowing among progressives might make his path to the renomination rockier than expected.
Biden’s attempts to position himself as a centrist are Politics 101. Last week, he decided not to veto a bill that would overturn D.C.’s controversial crime bill. And this week, he approved an oil drilling project in Alaska. Both issues could have been political liabilities; Republicans had successfully painted the D.C. proposal as soft on crime, and they are making increased energy development in the United States a major focus. Biden clearly wanted to avoid attacks on both fronts.
But neither of Biden’s decisions is popular with the Democratic left. Progressives want a less punitive approach to crime, and environmentalists are furious over the potentially negative effects of drilling in Alaska’s Arctic region. This anger reopens the long-standing — and often suppressed — conflict between the party’s left and centrist wings.
Republicans often argue that there’s no essential difference between Biden and progressive stalwarts such as those in the “Squad.” Progressives see things differently: They want less bipartisanship and more confrontation. Less movement to the center and more rapid swings leftward. Biden’s twin decisions remind them that the 80-year-old who came of political age during the 1960s simply doesn’t share their priorities or urgency.
A skilled political tactician knows how to assuage their party’s base into grudging compliance using the animus it possesses for the other side. They also know how far to swerve to keep their voters motivated in the run-up to the general election. There’s some risk that Biden’s shift to the center might be so great as to depress progressive turnout, but there’s also plenty of time to address that concern if polling shows it’s a significant problem.
The Democratic primaries are a different story. Upset partisans often turn to primary challenges to make a point even if they think the chances of victory are slim. Conservatives did not think Pat Buchanan could defeat George H.W. Bush in 1992, but many backed him anyway to send a signal. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s campaign against Hillary Clinton started out more as a progressive protest at the restoration of Clintonism than a serious effort to win the Democratic nomination. Neither Buchanan nor Sanders won, but the surprising strength of their challenges helped shape those campaign cycles, which ended with their targets’ defeats.
Polls regularly show that Democrats might back Biden’s renomination, but they would prefer another choice. A February Reuters-Ipsos poll found that 52 percent of Democrats said Biden should not run again. Biden only gets 35 percent of the vote in the RealClearPolitics polling average against a hypothetical set of challengers. And in a recent Emerson College poll of New Hampshire Democrats featuring a hypothetical rematch with his 2020 opponents, he received only 29 percent. These are incredibly weak showings for an incumbent president with high job approval ratings from his party.
An ambitious progressive might see these numbers and think this is their chance to become a national figure. Sanders’s advanced age means he will not be the progressive standard-bearer in future campaigns. The same is likely true of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (DMass.), who would be 79 years old in 2028. But a younger progressive could easily decide to play the long game and present themselves as the party’s conscience.
Such a challenge would likely fail to beat Biden. Progressives tend to do best in Democratic presidential primaries in states with more White and highly educated voters such as Iowa and New Hampshire. The new Democratic primary calendar puts minority-heavy states such as South Carolina and Georgia in the early contests. Progressive candidates without substantial support from Black or Hispanic voters would have to endure many losses before the calendar turns in their favor.
That might not matter to a progressive aiming for 2028. Their goal would be to become the progressive favorite and to build the donor and volunteer bases necessary for a serious national run. The goal would be to influence the party’s future rather than unseat the incumbent.
This, in turn, might hinder Biden’s shift to the center. He would have to tack left if a progressive starts to gain traction. Bush’s attempt to woo Buchanan voters led to his disastrous decision to let his foe address the national convention in prime time. Biden wouldn’t make a mistake of that scale, but he could make concessions that a Republican nominee would exploit — especially if that person is not former president Donald Trump.
The smart money is still on Biden gliding to renomination. But each movement to the center could make it more difficult.