A former adviser to Michael Bloomberg argues,
“For most people Joe Biden was not elected last November to get us out of Afghanistan. His election was not a blank check to oversee a dramatic expansion of the federal government. His victory wasn’t even wholly about halting the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, although surely that was top of mind for many voters at the time.
“For many, Biden was elected for one thing and one thing only: to walk our nation — our democracy — back from the cliff edge where former President Donald Trump and his cronies had led it, and where below waited fascism, demagoguery and totalitarianism. Simply put, Biden’s mandate was to ensure that Trump would never, ever, occupy the White House again — and ideally leave the political stage for good.”
(Read his entire commentary here.)
There’s some truth to this. The sloppy Afghanistan withdrawal trashed Biden’s approval ratings, at least temporarily; his sweeping vaccine edicts are hardening Republican resistance to his efforts to end the pandemic, although they probably would have resisted any efforts to do that; and even some centrist Democrats are leery of his expansive social spending plans.
But nobody, or anyway very few of us, elect a president just to get rid of his predecessor. Biden was not elected to be a placeholder; he was elected to be a president, and the vast majority of his votes came from Democratic voters who expected him to pursue their party’s agenda. And for whatever reason(s) voters choose one candidate over another, the presidency isn’t a limited-tasks job; the person elected has to preside over the full range of national responsibilities, from coping with natural disasters to foreign policy to setting budget priorities. In short, most of the voters who helped elect Biden want the very things this political adviser thinks are overreach.
Biden got out of Afghanistan so he could concentrate America’s resources on China. Smart move, albeit an obvious one. In any case, he didn’t have much choice; his predecessor had already negotiated a U.S. withdrawal, giving the country away to the Taliban in the process, and Biden was left to manage the process, mostly with personnel he inherited, but being the guy in charge he’ll be held responsible.
There’s nothing in the Constitution or laws that says Biden, for whatever reason(s) he was elected, can’t pursue his policy ambitions. That’s a prerogative all presidents have. But a president proposes and Congress disposes. Keep in mind the voters didn’t just elect Biden, they also put Democrats in charge of the House and Senate, which suggests the majority agreed with the Democrats’ agenda, or at least preferred it to what the Republicans offered. But their slim majorities in Congress mean a single Democratic senator and a handful of House Democrats can block parts of Biden’s agenda, and it looks like they’re going to. Is it “overreaching” to ask and not get?
What the writer is really worried about is Trump might stage a successful comeback. That’s obvious when he says,
“But somehow since that moment, the Biden administration seems to have forgotten its mandate. Through a series of self-inflicted wounds, miscalculations and gaffes, the Biden administration is ‘priming the pump’ for a Trump presidency, part deux.”
He then lists a number of missteps he thinks might get Trump elected again. But will they really? Will millions of people who voted for Biden and “breathed a huge sigh of relief” that he won defect to Trump if Biden proves to be imperfect? That’s not plausible. What people nervous about a possible “Trump part deux” should really worry about is the efforts of Republicans to suppress voters and empower legislatures to overturn the will of the people. If Trump becomes president again, it won’t be by the popular vote, but through those efforts to destroy democracy by burrowing under it and undermining its foundations.
He says, “Many in America, and the world, are counting on Biden to not give Trump a path back towards electability, a sequel most Americans are uninterested in seeing.” Every Democrat, and every independent and disaffected Republican who voted for Biden, would agree with that. But just about any political strategist would point out that turnout has more to do with it than electability. If you don’t want a Trump redux, then the Democrats need a well-organized, well-funded, and well-run GOTV (get out the vote) effort in 2024 — traditionally their weakness against the GOP’s usually better-oiled and better-funded political machine.
But then he adds, “Biden needs to do America an urgent favor and begin addressing Covid-19 like the existential threat that it is by using the awesome powers vested in his office. He needs to start governing in a bipartisan manner, embracing some of the GOP agenda as his own to widen the fissure between Trump and the rest of his party.”
There’s actually two things there. First, what isn’t Biden doing, that he should and can do, to address Covid-19? His critics think he’s going too far. If there are people who are disappointed because he doesn’t make Covid-19 go away by waving a magic wand, well, what can you say to them? As for “embracing some of the GOP agenda,” exactly what is he talking about? What part of the GOP agenda can he embrace, without alienating Democratic voters and fracturing the coalition that got him elected?
I think I know. The writer works for Bloomberg, an uber-billionaire. Biden wants to raise rich people’s taxes to pay for his social agenda. Rich people don’t want to pay more taxes. The writer doesn’t like Biden’s expensive social agenda.
But as for whether Biden is overplaying his hand, if anything he’s disappointing key elements of his coalition by not pushing to abolish the filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, address climate change more aggressively, crack down on fossil fuel companies, regulate banks more intensely, raise corporations’ and rich peoples’ taxes more, write off student loans, extend pandemic relief longer, keep eviction moratoriums in place, and a host of other things that millions of people who voted for him want but aren’t getting from him.
In the end, whether a politician overplays his hand depends on whether he alienates too many voters to get re-elected. If he’s re-elected, he didn’t, by definition. If he’s not, he may have lost for some other reason — maybe the other side out-organized him, or did a better job of turning out their voters — or prevented his voters from voting.
As for whether he’s overplaying his mandate, it makes no sense to even talk about mandates. In America’s fractured politics, does any politician have a mandate? It’s far more realistic to look at elections and coalitions as stitched-together patchworks that, if they produce ballot-box victories, happened to work in the currents of the moment.