Biden and the left
Since he became the inevitable nominee for president in 2020, Biden has attempted a delicate balancing act. His support in the primary didn’t come from the left, but from most everyone else. Still, the left is a significant minority and very vocal and energetic. Because of that, his team felt it was better to have them inside the tent pissing out then vice-versa. Soon after clinching the nomination, the Biden and Sanders teams formed a unity task force to bring their sides together and work on policy ideas.
Forming such a group was unheard of and wasn’t something the Clinton campaign did in 2016. While it was never said explicitly, the reasoning behind creating the task force was the belief that some on the left had not voted or voted third party in 2016. Given how close the vote was in the tipping point states, it was believed that cost Clinton the election and Biden’s team didn’t want that to happen again. That analysis may have been wrong, but it was a deliberate calculation on their part.
Since becoming president, Biden has been much more accommodating of the left than Obama was or Clinton would have been. Left-wing groups have been reached out to and have been allowed to take part in White House meetings to an extent that was unfathomable not too long ago. Biden has given high priority to some of their causes, particularly climate change and student debt.
While I have problems with that approach, I understand the reasoning behind it. For his first two years, Biden had the narrowest majority in Congress. He had to keep everyone happy to some degree. At the same time, he needed to eventually throw down the gauntlet and tell not just the left, but everyone else in the party that they were going to prioritize X over Y. That was what happened with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Climate change and to a lesser extent health care were prioritized. Everything else had to wait for another day.
Biden has made climate change a top priority and has focused on it in other areas in addition to the IRA. The infrastructure bill included money for electric vehicle charging stations and climate resiliency programs, for example. The CHIPS Act could have some big climate implications, too. He also, wrongly I think, cancelled the Keystone pipeline.
On student debt, Biden has cancelled and is cancelling billions of dollars’ worth of it. It was the left making those demands and was probably not something Biden would’ve done otherwise. Even after the Supreme Court struck down some of the actions he took, he has still pursued other avenues for cancelling and reducing student debt.
Biden is not a creature of the left and is not taking orders from them. He’s a cautious person by nature and is not eager to fight with his own party. That is particularly the case on matters he has not focused on until recently. Student debt is the best example of that. On matters where he has lots of experience, such as foreign policy, he is not going to defer to the left and will stick to his guns.
Unlike Clinton and Obama, Biden has been slower to reach out to Republicans and offer them something. Clinton signed welfare reform and Obama pursued a grand bargain on tax and entitlement reform. Biden has expressed a willingness to give Republicans a lot on the border, including new limits on asylum seekers, but that is only since last month.
Why Biden hasn’t done as much outreach to Republicans has nothing to do with the left. There are some big differences between now and the aftermath of the 1994 (Clinton) and 2010 (Obama) midterm elections. The majorities in Congress Republicans had after 1994 and 2010 were much bigger than they are now.[i] Even though there was some dysfunction, their majorities were big enough where they could pass legislation on their own. They also had enough credibility for the Clinton and Obama Administrations to believe them when they said they could pass something.
The Republican majority in the House today exists in name only and is completely dysfunctional. They ousted Kevin McCarthy as Speaker last year and spent three weeks flailing before finally settling on Mike Johnson, who nobody had heard of until five seconds earlier. Now, the same crowd that ousted McCarthy is mad at him. The Republican majority has been unable to pass anything significant on their own and nobody thinks they can.
Nobody trusted McCarthy when he said he could pass something because everyone knew how weak of a position he was in. The same is true for Johnson. That lack of trust means their leverage in pushing for legislation is basically zero and so even if their leadership wanted to negotiate on an issue in good faith they’re too weak to follow through with it.
The Republican majority being so small and ineffective is because of what happened in the 2022 midterm elections. Unlike 1994 and 2010, 2022 was a disaster for Republicans. They lost a seat in the Senate, along with governorships and state legislatures, and barely won the House. Democrats had arguably the best midterm for the party in the White House since 1934. All that happened while Biden’s approval rating was well below 50%.
Clinton and Obama were weakened and stuck playing defense after their first midterms while Biden is not. He is not going to rock the boat unless he absolutely must. After how well Democrats did in 2022, there was no obvious reason for him to start fights with the left. Maybe that decision will turn out to be wrong, but it’s not crazy.
While Biden hasn’t fought the left very much, he has hardly done their bidding at every turn. He has largely governed as a centrist and it has been the left that has gone along with what could get passed. None of the legislation he has signed is far left. Had I been a member of Congress, I would have voted for all of it.
He has, on occasion, done things that upset the left. His approval of the Willow oil pipeline in Alaska is one example. He also signed legislation overriding some criminal justice reforms the DC government enacted. Where he has upset the left the most is on Israel and that’s not something he is going to budge on.
With the campaign about to begin, I think it would be good for Biden to draw some distinctions with the left. We should wait to see what his ads talk about and what he emphasizes on the campaign trail before concluding anything, but there are two areas where I think differing from the left could bear the most fruit. I don’t think he should needlessly pick fights with the left and I don’t think he should pick fights with them on matters that nobody cares about such as culture war fights.
Where to differ from the left
The two areas where I think Biden should emphasize differences with the left the most are energy and immigration. With respect to energy, he already has plenty to talk about. Gas prices have come down substantially from their 2022 peak and he has been aggressive in using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to convince drillers to keep drilling. Oil production is now higher than it has ever been.
Those are things he has so far seldom talked about. The calculation behind it has been that he doesn’t want to upset “climate conscious” voters. I think that’s very wrongheaded and really hope that calculus changes soon.
While the environmental activist crowd is very vocal, like almost all professional activists, they are wildly unrepresentative of the general public. Climate change is an important issue and one that I care about a lot, but it has no real grassroots movement behind it. There is no widespread demand for taking action on it and it’s only a priority for a small number of people. “Climate conscious” voters barely exist and they're all reliable Democrats.
Biden has a solid record on climate change that he can talk about. It’s not mutually exclusive to do that and brag about increased oil production and lower gas prices. As counterintuitive as it may sound, while oil production is at a record high, carbon emissions have been falling dramatically for two decades.
Right now, Biden is deciding whether to give permits to build more liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals. Environmental groups and activists are demanding that he not do it. He should ignore them and give the terminals the green light. It’s not just a matter of carbon emissions, but geopolitics and national security.
I have many issues with much of the environmental movement. The tactics they have adopted, strategies they have pursued and policy positions they have taken have been almost all wrong. The goal of trying to cut off the supply of fossil fuels is foolhardy on so many levels. It doesn’t reduce demand for them, it just makes them more expensive and angers people. Stopping LNG terminals from being built won’t reduce demand for gas, it will just come from somewhere else and probably be dirtier.
Our allies in Europe have weaned themselves off of Russian gas, which is good. But they still use it and will need it from other sources. If they don’t get it from the US, at best, they will get it from the Middle East. Otherwise, they may wind up going back to Russia. For national security and geopolitical reasons alone, the LNG terminals should be approved ASAP.
It’s not just Europe where the LNG terminals will be important, but for many developing countries, too. Contrary to what many environmental groups claim, LNG can be a positive from a carbon emissions standpoint. Many developing countries are burning coal now. If gas replaces coal that will be a big improvement. We will eventually need to move away from gas, but that is likely decades away and won’t be accomplished by cutting off supply.
The IRA is a recognition that the environmental groups’ approach won’t work. It doesn’t cut off fossil fuels. What it does is make cleaner sources of energy cheaper. That’s the way to go.
The behavior of many environmental groups and activists has been obnoxious and counterproductive. Some have announced plans for a sit-in at the Department of Energy to protest the LNG terminals. That crowd has been treated so much nicer by Biden than they were treated under any previous Democratic president. He has prioritized their top concern and acted on it and that’s how they repay him. That behavior isn’t unique to environmental groups, but is typical of those in the left-wing advocacy world. They are some of the most ungrateful people on earth and are allergic to being happy about anything.
Those groups and activists really need to open their eyes and understand some things. Environmental issues matter, but so do other issues like jobs and prices. They should be thankful for the actions Biden has taken on their cause’s behalf. Biden is the best chance they have for achieving and sustaining anything. They should realize that he has to take into account many different considerations when making decisions. The most important priority those groups and activists should have is doing everything possible to reelect Biden. That includes cutting him some slack when he does something they disagree with. Unlike them, he has to face voters.
They should be happy about what has been accomplished and take the W. They should stop screaming at the top of their lungs demanding that Biden take hardline positions on every single issue. They should chill out and quit using tactics that alienate people such as blocking roads.
They also need to understand that they are in the minority. What they want is often not popular. Blocking pipelines and terminals is not a popular or viable strategy. Climate change is an issue that can be and is being addressed, but that’s not going to happen the way they want it to. It will be legislation like the IRA that helps with climate change, not the Green New Deal or any other pie-in-the-sky fantasy.
On rhetoric, environmental groups really need to calm down. They have to stop with doomerism. That is, unfortunately, something almost every left-wing advocacy group these days is guilty of. I don’t know how they all got it in their heads that the only way to get people to care about anything is to tell them everything sucks and is hopeless, but that is their MO. It needs to stop if they want to have any appeal outside of a few small circles. Ultimately, if environmental groups and activists won’t grow up and get some perspective, they should be ignored and lose their seat at the table.
Climate change is a long-term problem requiring long-term solutions. Carbon emissions are going down and that will continue even as growth and fossil fuel production increase. The approach Biden has taken is a good one: more fossil fuels today, fewer tomorrow and eventually clean energy entirely.
The other issue where I think Biden should distance himself from the left is immigration. Immigration is one major issue I think Democrats have bungled since the Obama years. Since Trump showed up, Democrats have moved steadily leftward on it. They are not for open borders, but they have become much less enthusiastic about immigration enforcement. Biden hasn’t embraced the worst ideas from the left on immigration like decriminalizing border crossings. He has, however, seldom spoken about immigration enforcement and has helped fuel perceptions in other countries that it’s okay to migrate here en masse.
Since Biden took office, migration at the border has surged. Immigration is a good thing and the US is a nation of immigrants, but that is different from allowing everyone to come in at will. It has to be done in an orderly fashion. Having tens of thousands of people show up at the border is not orderly and is a gift to demagogues like Trump.
Trump is terrible on immigration. His rhetoric is awful and ripping kids from their parents was unconscionable. The problem the left had was letting Trump eat their brains. Prior to Trump showing up, almost every Democrat, including those on the left like Bernie Sanders, favored immigration enforcement along with giving some of those here illegally a pathway to citizenship.
When Trump took office, virtually all talk about enforcement went away. Very quickly, almost everyone on the left starting calling for abolishing ICE and decriminalizing border crossings. Their reasoning was basically, “Trump is awful so all immigration enforcement is racist and evil.” The only thing less popular than Trump’s rhetoric and actions on immigration is the left’s post-2016 position.
Immigration is a weak point for Biden. That’s why he should be maximally flexible in negotiating with Republicans on it. I don’t think he should just take whatever is offered, but he should be willing to give Republicans much more than he otherwise would.
Any kind of enforcement measures will upset the left, but they should be ignored. They have no plan to deal with immigration, just moralistic preaching. I doubt any of them actually believe their own rhetoric. As we’re seeing now with migrants being sent to New York, Chicago and other blue cities, it’s easy to moralize about the virtues of unlimited immigration, but not easy to deal with anything remotely resembling it.
In angering the left over energy and immigration, is there a risk they won’t vote in November and Trump could win? Never say never, but call me skeptical. The left, particularly the far left, is not only a small number of people, but is also the most educated, whitest and highest income part of the Democratic Party. That crowd always votes. For those threatening to not vote, Biden should call their bluff.
Angering the left on those issues doesn’t guarantee a Biden win, but it will be important for him to assuage concerns about the left. There are many voters out there who don’t like Trump, but are wary of anyone calling for radical changes. Contrary to what those on the left wish, Trump is not so repulsive that everyone will have to vote for Democrats no matter what.
Beating Trump is the most important goal. Everything else is a very distant second. I will take any victory against him, but I don’t want to just beat him. I want to beat him handily and take as many Republicans down with him as possible. Biden should try to assemble the biggest coalition he can and if it requires upsetting some of his supporters it’s worth it. Swing voters are the ones who need to be reached out to, not the left.
[i] Republicans gained the House and the Senate in 1994, but Democrats still had the Senate after 2010.