Should Biden Disengage?

There’s a silver lining behind all those clouds for Joe Biden. Unless it’s clouds threatening his silver lining.

The clouds in question come in the form of disengaged voters. Because these voters heavily favor Trump, the good news for Biden is that they may not show up to vote in November. Trump leads in polls of all voters while Biden does much better with voters who say they’re sure to show up at election time. Propensity to show up is, in turn, related to how closely a person is following events. An NBC News survey found that, among those who consume little news, Trump has a 26-point lead. Among heavy news consumers, Biden leads by 11 points. For Trump, ignorance is bliss.

The bad news for Biden is that these disengaged pro-Trump voters are mostly Democrats. If they do show up to vote they say they’ll vote for other Democrats, like Sen. Tammy Baldwin here in Wisconsin, but they won’t vote for Biden.

Then again, if these are Democrats inclined to vote for other Democrats on the same ballot, that should present an opportunity for Biden to win them back. So who are these people? To quote the New York Times’ Nate Cohn in his analysis:

“In the battleground states, Democratic-leaning irregular voters are far less likely to identify as liberal. They’re much less likely to say abortion and democracy are the most important issues, and instead they’re far likelier to cite the economy. They overwhelmingly say the economy is “poor” or “only fair,” even if they’re still loyal to Mr. Biden, while a majority of high-turnout Democratic-leaning voters say the economy is “good” or “excellent.””

This is the problem that bedevils the Democrats in broad terms. The party’s elites are liberal, they do think abortion and democracy are the big issues and their household budgets are doing just fine, thank you very much.

What does surprise me is that these blue collar voters see Biden as not in tune with them while they feel less so about other Democrats. Biden has spent his career cultivating a blue collar image and yet it just doesn’t seem to sell among actual working class voters.

Biden’s personal history is complicated. His father was wealthy, but suffered a series of business setbacks around the time Joe was seven-years old. Joe was raised in part by relatives in Scranton, a working class town. So his claim to blue collar roots is fair enough, which puts me at somewhat of a loss to explain why he doesn’t seem to connect with those voters.

On the other hand, Donald Trump was born rich and yet he has endless appeal to blue collar voters.

My only explanation is that Biden has been too eager to please his party’s hard-left. Paying off college debt, favoring Black Americans and women for COVID relief programs, weighing in on transgender issues, and seemingly not knowing which way to turn on immigration all add up to a general feeling that Biden doesn’t share their priorities. That may not transfer to other Democrats because they’re simply not as high-profile or perhaps because voters know those candidates on a more personal level — the local office helped with their Social Security issue, that kind of thing. Or maybe they just think he’s too old.

If that’s the case I don’t know what you do about it, short of hoping that these voters just stay home — though that could wind up being bad news down ticket. It may be too late to change Biden’s image and I’m not confident that getting voters to focus on Trump’s bad traits — does he have any good ones? — is such a hot strategy. By now voters know Trump and if they aren’t put off by him at this point, what else can you say about the guy that will change their minds?

As I suggested yesterday, I’d like to see Biden follow the lead of Sen. John Fetterman and loudly break with the hard-left, but I just don’t see him doing that. It appears to be a lost opportunity. But what if Biden had, for example. rejected paying off student debt on the grounds that it was unfair to those who didn’t go to college or who did, but assiduously paid back what they owed? He could have instead dramatically increased means-tested Pell Grants and withheld federal payments to universities that didn’t meet efficiency standards for, just for example, the ratio of administrators to instructional staff. That would have angered some voters, but they would have shown up to vote against Trump anyway. In the meantime, it would have reinforced the idea that Biden was both independently minded and a friend to working class Americans. And, as a bonus, this would have actually done something about the cause of the problem.

In any event, that ship has sailed. At this point, I’m afraid Biden will have to play the hand he has dealt himself. And, to use a sheepshead analogy, his partners (us) will have to rise or fall with him.

Democrats are always doing everything they can to increase turnout while it’s the Republicans who are trying to suppress it. Maybe both parties have it wrong.

And on another matter.. How about disengagement from reality? A group, led in part by that distinguished jurist Michael Gableman, has once again filed recall petitions against Speaker Robin Vos. If they’re successful this time the recall will take place on August 6th, a week before the primary on August 13th. So, why didn’t they just run a primary candidate against Vos?