Despite polling well in ways which should give them a chance at winning both houses of Congress, the Democrats have two significant challenges heading into this year’s midterm elections. The first one is a problem of nostalgia narrative. When they ran against Trump in the midterm elections of 2018, the Democrats could pander to nostalgia for Barack Obama.
Rightly or wrongly, the first Black president stirred up yearning during Trump’s first term. He had his many economic and imperial problems, but his story was ripe for liberal reminiscence—especially in the desire to reign in the venal Trump. Can’t we just go back to the respectable Negro with the nice wife and their perfect children? was a strong selling point in repudiating the first Trump administration.
No such narrative exists this time around. The other major problem for the Democrats is the same one that’s dogged them for three straight years: Palestine. According to one poll, her refusal to stake out a position against the genocide in Gaza in line with a majority of Democratic voters cost Kamala Harris the presidency.
Despite the strong support for staunchly pro-Palestine congressional candidates like Abdul El Syed in Michigan, Melat Kiros in Colorado, and Darializa Avila Chevalier, Claire Valdez, and Brand Lander in New York, too many Democratic party congressional candidates—not to mention the national party operation—are missing both the moral and electability arguments regarding Gaza. This—along with the callous abandonment of trans rights by Democratic politicians from Gavin Newsom in California to James Talarico in Texas—will hurt the Democrats’ ability to turn out would-be voters on the left, especially among the young. Both of these problems run through the heart of the Biden presidency.
Where there was palpable (if misguided) nostalgia for Obama in 2018, there is not an ounce of it for Joe Biden, whose presidency began with the death of a million Americans by Covid, ended with his unconditional support for the annihilation of Gaza, and was marred throughout by stories concerning his cognitive ability (which caused him to abandon his re-election and, ultimately, hand the White House back to Trump). Even if Biden could physically go out and stump for candidates—and there’s good reason to believe he could not—his appearance would harm almost anyone who took him up on the offer. Three new books are helpful for thinking about former President Biden, his relationship with the press, and the ways his administration and the mainstream media colluded to fuel the genocide in Palestine: Adam H.
Johnson’s How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza (Pluto), Assal Rad’s Don’t Say Palestine: How the Media Manufactured Consent for Genocide (Vintage), and Akbar Shahid Ahmed’s Crossing the Red Line: Biden, His Advisors, and Israel’s War in Gaza (W.W. If the Democratic party is interested in winning congress and governing as representatives of the actual will of the American people on one of the most important issues of our time, they cannot just run against Donald Trump. No matter how much they assail “Trump’s ICE” or “Trump’s DOJ,” they must own the failures of Biden and his cabinet and assess why millions of their potential voters rejected Harris.
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