Opinion: Biden is gonna be reelected no matter what
I don’t like Joe Biden. From screwing over the railroad union, failures of foreign policy, my concerns about his age, who he picked as VP, and more, I am not and have never considered myself a fan of the president despite my political affiliation with his party. All of this is to say that when I give this man praise and confidently predict his reelection it comes from a genuine place rooted in at least some factual evidence.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer and returned the issue of abortion back to the states, Democrats, the pro-choice party, have achieved an incredible level of electoral success up and down the ballot. Democratically-aligned groups have saved abortion rights in a number of key battleground states, and even some deeply conservative states like Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana. With a historically unpopular president and an inflation rate upwards of 8%, the 2022 midterms were full of races that were heavily favored to go to the GOP but instead stayed within the Democratic column because voters did not want to reward the GOP for their support of anti-abortion policies. These victories in the face of polling that shows Democrats — and Joe Biden especially — are unpopular across the board raises an important question: why does this keep happening? How do Democrats keep snatching victory from the jaws of defeat?
I feel that the answer is two-fold. First, voters — who by and large are overwhelmingly pro-choice — are voicing their concerns at the ballot box by voting for pro-choice candidates who also just so happen to be Democrats. However, this trend in support of the Democratic party traces its origins back to 2018 when voters overwhelmingly came out in opposition toward Donald Trump and those who supported his agenda. While in 2020 many Trump supporters came out of the woodwork and it helped keep the election close, he still lost, along with many of his down-ballot supporters in Congress and state governments across the country.
This leads me to my second point. Republicans are losing because Trump inspired a new era of federalist governance. This, more so than anything else is his defining long-term legacy. Since the 1960s the two major parties have practiced two separate kinds of federalism rooted in their overarching ideologies. Democrats have followed in the path of LBJ’s creative federalism, a style of government intrinsically linked with bringing together federal, state, and local governments with the creation of programs like Medicare and Medicaid while Nixion’s new federalism used the power of the federal government’s to redistribute resources on a case by case basis, emphasizing local support and control in administering of public services like education. Every executive from county government up to the White House for the last half-century has been in one of those two camps.
Trump was unique however, while president he rewarded loyalty and punished any and all opposition to what he wanted. He replaced the conservative model of decentralized administration with a “what I say goes” hierarchy that is only seen in the corporate world and dictatorships. This can be seen in countless examples, from the firing of cabinet officials like General Mattis to his response to the COVID pandemic where he actively hindered a generalized response at the cost of thousands of human lives. This model was imitated by a multitude of politicians like Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS), Gov. Matt Bevin (R-KY), Gov. Scott Walker, (R-WI), and Gov. Rick Snyder (R-MI), all of whom swiftly lost their popularity, and were either defeated for reelection or succeeded by Democrats who remain popular.
In very conservative states, Governors who should otherwise be safe like Kevin Stitt (R-OK) and Tate Reeves (R-MS) won incredibly close reelections in states where Trump dominated both times. I believe this is because they also govern in this hierarchical model that simply does not work in the modern world. We are more interconnected than ever and government can only work if everyone communicates clearly. Biden for all of his many faults is a master of cooperative governance. After all, he’s been doing this for over 4 decades.
The Inflation Reduction Act, Semiconductor export controls to China, Build Back Better, etc. have all worked and been masterful examples of his skills in intersectoral/intergovernmental management despite certain setbacks. GDP growth is higher than it has ever been in my lifetime, inflation is shrinking, and we have more jobs than we can fill. Talks of recession are just as unfounded as talks of 2020 being stolen. All of this is despite Republicans in Congress repeatedly imploding, failing to cooperate with themselves let alone the president and Democratic-controlled Senate.
It’ll be close, don’t get me wrong. Gen Z are rightfully concerned with Biden’s leadership as they don’t feel the effects as well as other demographics and every day they make up a larger share of the voter base. If they don’t come out to vote in 2024 like they did in 2020 it could become dicey but ultimately I still think Biden will win because the average voter is not that ideologically driven. The average voter just wants the economy to be decent (which it is) and for the government to be functioning (which it would be if Democrats controlled the House). It has been made clear that despite not being very ideological voters are pretty uniformly supportive of abortion rights; abortion rights that were taken away in part by Republicans on the Supreme Court and Republicans in state governments across the country. This leads me to believe that barring some catastrophe, Biden is going to win next November.
