Better Safe Than Sorry
- Darren Phillips
- Mar 7, 2020
- 9 min read
Updated: Nov 6
Here’s the deal. Biden is a flawed candidate. I get it. We all get it. He’s flawed for all the obvious reasons. If you’re progressive, he’s too conservative. If you’re a libertarian, for example, he’s too liberal.
Biden takes money from PACs and corporations. He’s too old. He’s too white. He’s a little smarmy, frankly, and he puts his foot in his mouth ... a lot. He’s not crisp or polished and he occasionally slurs his words. As someone who remembers what he used to look and sound like, I’m repeatedly struck by the notion that Joe Biden is over the hill.
Moreover, liberals can clearly see he’s been on the “wrong" side of some key policy issues over the years. He’s a politician, after all, and an opportunist. Eww. I get it. We all get it. He represents everything we don’t like about the status quo.
Here’s what else Biden is: electable. It’s true. I know all you Bernie fans are now officially triggered. Your instinct is to stop reading and bang out a rebuttal. Please indulge me for a moment.
Americans like candidates who are safe. They like candidates who are moderate. They like candidates like Joe Biden, a lunch-pail Democrat from Scranton who’s pragmatic and basically “decent" and won’t rock the boat. If you’re liberal, well, he’s center-left … maybe. Good enough. If you’re conservative, well, at least he’s not scary. Biden's also got a slight lead in the polls, and he's leading by a lot among people of color.
"Americans like candidates who are safe. They like candidates who are moderate. They like candidates like Joe Biden, a lunch-pail Democrat from Scranton who’s pragmatic and basically 'decent' and won’t rock the boat."
In 2016, neither nominee was perceived as “safe” or even likable, so Americans stayed home or knowingly threw their votes away in protest by voting for third-party candidates like Johnson and Stein. Others wrote in Bernie Sanders, and one elderly Republican admitted to my mother that she wrote in George Washington. This was her “solution" to the problem of having to choose between two lousy candidates.
In fact, fewer than three out of ten members of the U.S. voting-age population voted for Trump. A more precise figure is 25.2%. Hillary won the popular vote by a healthy margin, but with a vote count equal to just over 26% of the voting-age population, her raw numbers were low, too. Roughly 3% of the voting-age population — or about eight million people — voted for someone other than the two major party nominees, and 112 million eligible American voters (or about 45%) stayed home.
In 2008, over 30% of eligible voters threw in for Obama. In 2012, it was around 28%. While these percentages may not turn a lot of heads, they are typically high enough to secure a solid victory in today's sharply bifurcated political landscape. More to the point, the Obama-Biden ticket was significantly more popular than Trump will ever be because both candidates were widely perceived as safe. Moreover, Obama's numbers would have been even higher if he were white, or at least had a name like Barry Dunham. (Yes, some white folks were frightened and even angered by his name and extra melanin, including Trump. Prejudice, racism, xenophobia, etc., etc., are all alive and well in America today. Who knew?)
So, you may ask, how is Joe Biden any different than Hillary? After all, both are “establishment Democrats” with a perceived history of soft corruption. I’ll tell you.
1) Joe Biden is not a woman. Stay with me for a minute. We live in a highly sexist, misogynistic society. Look at what happened to Elizabeth Warren. Clearly she was the brightest, most energetic and probably among the most capable candidates in the field this cycle. Same applies to Amy Klobuchar. Politics aside, Amy is smart, articulate, strong, knowledgable, well-qualified, and she’s a woman.
2) Joe Biden is not a woman. The biggest reason Hillary was brutally and unfairly attacked relentlessly by the partisan media machine for the better part of 30 years is primarily tied to the fact she has a vagina. If she were a man, she’d be “tough” instead of a “bitch.” If she were a man, she’d be a “brawler" (like Trump) instead of a “bitch." If she were a man, she’d be “passionate," not emotional or shrill … or a “bitch." If she were a man, she’d be street-smart or “shrewd” instead of conniving. You get the picture.
3) One more time: Joe Biden is not a woman, and therefore not as polarizing or basically suspect as Hillary for all the reasons touched upon above. He’s safe. Hillary was not safe. The right-wing media machine — with unlimited help from a willing populace — destroyed her. She was preyed upon in ways that men are not. Warren feels it right now. So does Klobuchar. Palin certainly felt it. Joe is a dude and therefore electable, flawed as he may be. Please don’t shoot the messenger. I didn’t make the rules.
"Joe is a dude and therefore electable, flawed as he may be."
So what about Sanders? He’s a man, is he not? Yes! He’s also a “socialist,” and therefore not safe. Again, I didn’t make the rules. Nothing strikes more fear in the hearts of American voters than the word “socialism." Never mind the fact Sanders is a democratic socialist. The American mind errs on the side of reductionism. In other words, we should not underestimate Americans’ general unwillingness to vote for a perceived “far left” nominee like Sanders. Step outside your filter bubbles for five minutes and take a good, hard, honest look around. Skip Whole Foods and hit the local Walmart. Take a drive through the heartland and really talk (and listen) to folks. Trust me.
A Trump v. Sanders runoff leads to the same 2016 hyper-divisive rhetoric, the same opt-out mentality that leads ordinary people to write in George Washington, and the same depressed voter turnout that always seems to benefit Republicans. It could also lead some moderates — including a significant percentage of blue-collar Dems, moderate Indies and Never-Trump Republicans — to throw in with Trump, especially if unemployment is still low and the stock market is still strong in November. If fear of creeping socialism is palpable now, I can only imagine where we’ll be in six months when FOX, Russia, and social media are done with Bernie Sanders.
Set aside the promising poll numbers about Medicare for a moment, step outside your bubbles, and look honestly at where we are as a country. America is not Denmark or Sweden. Not even close. Americans can’t even get meaningful gun safety legislation passed in the wake of an elementary school massacre.
Look, I get why Bernie is a better human than Joe, but that’s not what this is about. This election is about removing a cruel and profoundly dangerous authoritarian from the White House in November. Period. This is the only thing we should be interested in right now. Medicare for all will have to wait. Sorry, but that’s where we are. We need to be laser focused on removing Trump as if the survival of our nation depends on it … because it does.
And please spare me the false equivalency nonsense. Far too many Bernie supporters try to equate the perceived risks of electing an “establishment Dem” like Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton with the widely understood and obvious dangers associated with four more years under an objectively reckless, authoritarian nutcase. Stop it. Just stop. If you honestly think we’d be worse off under four years of Biden than we would be under four more years of Trump, you aren’t paying attention.
I have read multiple posts since Super Tuesday in which Bernie supporters are threatening to opt out or even vote for Trump if Sanders doesn’t get the nomination. Really? How breathtakingly myopic and basically self-destructive is that? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face! Again, quit it with the false equivalency nonsense. A Biden administration would be nowhere near as dangerous as the current one. Full stop. End of story.
Even if Bernie Sanders gets the nomination and even if he manages to eke out a win in November (he won't), can you imagine the political backlash in the 2022 midterms? Can you imagine the polarization? It will be Gridlock City. Ideologues aren’t particularly effective in Washington. Pragmatists and skilled politicians are.
"Ideologues aren’t particularly effective in Washington. Pragmatists and skilled politicians are."
This is a strategic long game, a chess match, if you will … a marathon. It’s not a sprint. Right now, we need a nominee who not only has a better than 50% chance of unseating Trump, but someone who can potentially unify the country and just make the course corrections necessary to steer us clear of the looming iceberg.
Sanders is not that guy. I wish Sanders supporters would just concede the obvious fact that Trump is a far greater and more immediate threat than income inequality, student loan debt, Citizens United, or even poor access to affordable health care. There will be no country left to fight for if we allow a fascist to remain in the White House.
Nominating Sanders epitomizes reactive political overreach. Again, step outside your filter bubbles and take a hard look around! Americans aren’t ready for Sanders. Did you catch the numbers in New Hampshire last month? Sanders and Warren only captured about 35% of the vote. That was their combined share. Even most Democrats are not all that interested in truly progressive fiscal policy.
Why do you think Trump tried to strong-arm a foreign head of state into destroying Biden? Why do you think Trump has encouraged Republicans to vote for Sanders in open primaries? I'll tell you why: Safe wins elections, and Donald knows it.
In economics there is something called marginal change. Marginal, incremental changes over time can lead to significant benefits to the aggregate, but it takes patience and vision. With that in mind, do you suppose America is generally better off in 2020 than it was in 1920? How about 1820? Was all this progress achieved in a day? How about a year? How about four years? Again, we’re running a marathon. Pace yourselves, folks.
You know, I can’t help but wonder how things would’ve turned out if all the progressive ideologues who voted for Nader in 2000 had voted for the "establishment Democrat." Imagine a world without G.W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the White House. Perhaps we could’ve avoided 9/11, or at least avoided the protracted, unfunded wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed it. Perhaps we could have avoided things like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Perhaps we could have avoided the Great Recession. And who knows how much further along we’d be with regard to environmental protection and resource sustainability?
As for the current administration, it’s impossible to underestimate how far backward we’ve moved just in the last 36 months. Look at the criminals and racists and just the cadre of know-nothing lightweights Trump has appointed to his staff. Look at all the critical unfilled diplomatic posts. Look at all the indictments, convictions and scandals. Look at all of this admin’s jaw-dropping judicial appointments including the newest Supreme Court justices. Look at the brazen and corrupt politicization of the DOJ. Look at what this admin is doing to the environment, to public lands, to education, the social safety net, to immigrants, and on and on.
Look at the Republicans’ total inaction on infrastructure, renewable energy, health care and gun safety! Look at this admin’s authoritarian posturing, and its frightening attacks on the free press and the First Amendment. Look at the naked cruelty and just the chronic lying and disinformation this admin churns out. Look at the reckless deficit spending and unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy. This admin doubled the deficit and added $3 trillion to the national debt in under three years during an economic boom!
Look at the costly, unnecessary trade war with China. Look at the pardons and commutations for convicted murderers and fraudsters, the attacks on our military leaders and our vets, the outright dangerous foreign policy, and the costly government shutdowns that occurred under a GOP trifecta. Look at Ukraine, the impeachment, Giuliani. It doesn’t get any worse!
If Sanders wins the nomination, of course I will vote for him, and I would never try to sabotage his campaign or vote for Trump out of spite because I think my guy’s better. Not smart. Actually, my guy was Cory Booker and he’s out, although a Biden/Booker ticket would be very difficult to beat. In any case, we should not cannibalize each other or otherwise do anything to give Trump even the slightest advantage. Sometimes playing the long game means holding your nose and voting strategically because, you know, adulting and “Rome was not built ... “
America is a young country — we’ll get there — but we have to keep our heads. In short, vote strategically and live to fight another day. Be patient, think generations ahead, check your emotions, and keep pushing for those marginal changes that can ultimately add up to something big.
My two pennies ...
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