Tag: 2020

Biden vs. Trump Would Be 2016 All Over Again

Photo illustration by Keystone Chronicle/Politico

Just a few hours ago, Vice President Joe Biden officially announced his 2020 candidacy. Yet already he’s leading the Democratic primary polls, and has been for a long time now. He has effectively established himself as the front runner simply by virtue of being vice president. As such, much ado has been made of Biden’s place as the party’s leading moderate in the face of a now dominant progressive insurgency. Much has also been said of his supposed connection with blue-collar workers, and his potential to reach out to lost Rust Belt voters while preserving and restoring the legacy of the Obama presidency. Meanwhile, it’s said, his political experience stretching back decades will appeal to Democratic voters looking for the opposite of a Trump-like figure.

This should be sounding familiar. All of these things were once considered to be Hillary Clinton’s greatest advantages as well, right up until they became her fatal flaws.
In 2016, she rallied the party’s centrist establishment against Bernie Sanders, and she presented herself as the successor to Obama and advocated a continuation of his policies. Eight years earlier, when she was running against Obama in 2008, her main demographic was white working class voters in states like West Virginia and Kentucky, which she carried easily in the primary, and she was billed as the candidate of experience and qualification, compared to the young and charismatic one-term Senator. This was her same strategy against Donald Trump, a logical point of attack for a former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State against a man who had never held office.

Of course, these approaches ultimately failed to defeat a historically unpopular nominee. Her centrist views alienated the left, galvanized by the Occupy movement five years earlier and already frustrated against the neoliberal consensus cemented by Bill Clinton, and these positions failed to differentiate Hillary from four more years of Obama. This successfully dried up her blue-collar support, as many of these voters have never reaped the fruits of Obama’s economic recovery, while they felt left behind by cultural changes like same-sex marriage and immigration. Her long history in politics only allowed her opponents to attack her policy shifts on key issues, while leaving her the object of anti-establishment frustration as foreign wars dragged on and jobs continued to leave for foreign shores.

All of these attacks will be levied with equal vigor at Biden. Even his announcement video, which centered on the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally and the violence that took place there, was reminiscent of Clinton’s focus on far-right and bigoted rhetoric rather than policy differences. Biden’s past stances on crime and same-sex marriage will be used against him, just like Hillary’s comments on “super predators” and her past stances on immigration and the invasion of Iraq (which Biden, like Clinton, also voted to authorize in 2003). If he succeeds in capturing the nomination, he will be painted as part of the same “liberal establishment” as Hillary Clinton, will fail to rally Democrats of all stripes, and he will likely ultimately lose, just as Hillary did.

Could New England be the Next Blue Wall to Fall?

In 2016 Trump’s victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin shocked pollsters. These states were part of the “blue wall,” the left-leaning states integral to a Democratic victory. And sure enough, the loss of these three states was enough to deny Clinton the presidency. The decline in white working-class voters’ support for Democrats could, however, have effects beyond the Rust Belt. Just like the Midwest, New England was once, from the birth of the GOP to around the mid-20th century, solidly Republican. But, beginning with the New Deal and ultimately solidifying with the Republicans’ swing to the right in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, both of these regions became increasingly Democratic. This trend remained consistent through the 1990s and 2000s, but experienced an upheaval in 2016. In 2016, not only did Clinton lose the Industrial Midwest, but Maine and Rhode Island also voted 12% more Republican than they did in 2012, a swing similar to Ohio, Iowa, West Virginia, and the Dakotas. In fact, every state in New England swung further to Trump than the nation as a whole, with the exception of Massachusetts.

However, the possible future shift indicated by these trends is not just based on electoral data. New England, despite its politically liberal and tolerant reputation, is just as overwhelmingly white as the Midwest and Appalachia, and just as rural. As the Democratic Party becomes increasingly diverse, it will only have more difficulty courting voters in these white, rural areas. In addition, while it is a very secular region compared to the rest of the United States, New England is also heavily Catholic, a demographic that is increasingly out of step with Democrats on issues like abortion, and these voters could combine with rural conservatives to sway the region towards Trump or some future Republican.

Also like the Midwest, New England is an area with slowing population growth compared to the nation at large, and to the growing Sun Belt in the nation’s southeast and west, as well as slowing economic growth, as the manufacturing industries that once dominated the northern United States continue to decline. With the decline of factories comes hand in hand the decline of unions, who were once able to herd blue-collar whites into the Democratic column.

This should not be taken as a prediction that Democrats are certain to lose New England in 2020. It is still Democrats’ strongest region, and it seems likely that the party may nominate a Vermonter well-liked in his home state in 2020. But it is for that exact reason that Democrats may be in danger of ignoring a possible wavering member in the Democratic coalition. If Democrats ignore New England as a solid blue region as they did the Midwest in 2016, they may repeat a fatal mistake.