Just over three weeks ago, Joe Biden and Donald Trump debated. The most shocking moment was when Biden said, “I’m going to keep moving until we get a total ban on what we can do with extra Border Patrol and extra asylum agents.” Trump responded, “I have no idea what he meant by the end of that sentence, and I don’t think he does either.” Even many former Biden supporters were under the impression that if this man were a private citizen, his children would be having a difficult conversation about moving him to a care facility.
Today, he finally gave in. We have already heard plenty of sweet words about how this was a sign of extraordinary patriotism, that Biden sacrificed his personal ambition to save the country from Trump. But the reality is that he stubbornly clung to the nomination for weeks, even though it was clear to all but his most ardent supporters that he could not win. We have also heard plenty of tributes to his presidency, which ignored his shameful decision to provide diplomatic cover and logistical aid to Israel’s genocidal insurrection, which has evacuated most of Gaza’s population and killed more children than have been killed in all war zones around the world in recent years.
But we don’t need to praise Joe Biden. He doesn’t deserve to be acknowledged that it was a good thing he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race. A Trump victory would be a disaster. In the June 27 debate, Trump outdid Biden from the right on the Palestinian issue, bizarrely saying Biden had become a Palestinian, or a “bad Palestinian.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is rooting for a Trump victory because he knows the former president would enthusiastically give Israel a green light for far worse slaughter than we’ve seen in the past 10 months. And all signs point to a wave of domestic atrocities if Trump returns to the White House.
At the very least, we can expect Trump to do what he did last time: cut taxes on the wealthy, gut workplace safety regulations, and pack the National Labor Relations Board with strikebreakers. And the worst of it could get even worse.
At the Republican National Convention, he instructed delegates to wave signs calling for “Mass Deportations Now,” as speaker after speaker falsely blamed illegal immigrants for bringing fentanyl into the country and resulting in an epidemic of Americans dying from fentanyl overdoses.
There are a conservative estimate of 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. As Radley Balko points out, if Trump were to really go for a “mass deportation now” and get serious about rounding up and deporting all 11 million people at once, it would be an authoritarian nightmare scenario. In fact, it seems plausible that Trump would appoint Stephen Miller to head the operation. Miller is Trump’s only senior staff member outside of his family to serve out his first four-year term. And in an interview, Miller has explained exactly what he wants to do:
Balko writes:
Miller plans to call in the National Guard, state and local police, federal law enforcement agencies like the DEA and ATF, and even the military if necessary. Miller’s deportation forces would then infiltrate cities and neighborhoods, going door-to-door and to businesses looking for illegal immigrants. He plans to house millions of immigrants he wants to deport in tent camps along the border and use military planes to fly them back to their home countries.
Combine this with Trump’s constant fear-mongering about migrants being sent directly to the US border from prisons and psychiatric hospitals, some of whom are “not human,” and this could become a nightmare.
If you don’t want to know, you should be happy that Biden withdrew. It’s almost certain that Biden would have lost. But that doesn’t mean that Vice President Kamala Harris or whoever replaces him will win. The ability to complete sentences is a good first step, but the content of the sentences still matters quite a bit.
Even before the extent of Biden’s cognitive impairment became clear, he may have undermined his chances of reelection by endorsing Netanyahu’s grotesque attacks on Gazans. No matter how he performed in the debates, it would have been inconceivable, for example, that Biden would win in my home state of Michigan, a key battleground state and home to the largest concentration of Arab American voters in the country. A different candidate less tied to that fear might make a difference, especially if he made a clear break from Biden’s policies, but the damage may already be done at this point.
Domestically, Biden was desperate enough to begin making some positive moves in his final weeks as a candidate. He spoke, for example, about eliminating health debt and finally addressing urgently needed reforms to the Supreme Court, issues raised by his “squad” of left-leaning lawmakers. He announced a plan to effectively cap rent increases at 5% and make tax breaks for large landlords contingent on compliance with this limit. But at a critical moment, he miscommunicated this announcement, telling the NAACP convention that he intended to cap rent increases at $55.
These moves were not only the right thing to do, but also evidence that some Democratic Party heavyweights correctly understood that voters who desperately want these reforms could be crucial to winning the election. A candidate less likely than Biden to say “$55” when he means “5 percent” could blunt the appeal of Trump and Vance’s cynical, reactionary populism.
Kamala Harris is currently the front-runner for the nomination, and as painful as it is to remember, she once claimed to support Medicare for All. She distanced herself from the idea during the 2020 campaign in a clumsy effort at triangulation, but it’s possible she’ll bring it up again.
Trump and Vance have leaned into populist rhetoric this year. Vance’s Republican National Convention speech highlighted the suffering of communities ravaged by deindustrialization, the housing crisis and the opioid crisis. “Our jobs are shipped overseas. Our children are sent to war” – those words resonated. But when it comes to supporting policies that would do anything about these issues, it’s all empty talk. Trump is a virulently anti-worker president and Vance has a zero percent legislative scorecard from the AFL-CIO.
But false populism appeals to very real pain, and its appeal cannot be countered by insisting that basically all is well and that all we need are competent liberal technocrats to steer the ship of nationhood wisely.
Even if Harris or any other candidate offers a substantially populist platform, they could still lose. Many voters may dismiss it as empty election-season rhetoric. Harris in particular may not be a credible messenger. And with just over 100 days until the election, there may not be enough time to effectively reframe the election.
But by countering false populism with policies that actually help ordinary workers, America, and the world, may have a chance to avoid what lies on the other side of a Trump victory this November.
