Donald Trump is the glue of the Democratic coalition.
At least, that’s the only logical conclusion to be drawn from Politico’s reporting that President Joe Biden’s plan for the 2022 midterms is to turn “the campaign into a contrast with Donald Trump and the Republicans.” This strategy was also telegraphed at the White House Correspondents Association dinner this past weekend, when Biden quipped: “We had a horrible plague followed by two years of COVID.”
Maybe the lesson is that Biden doesn’t learn lessons? The hypothesis that Democrats can run and win against Trump when he’s not on the ballot was already tested on a sizable and diverse control group: the commonwealth of Virginia.
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During the final stretch of the 2021 gubernatorial general election campaign, Biden stumped for Democratic ex-Gov. Terry McAuliffe, and mentioned Trump’s name 24 times during a 17-minute speech. Bold strategy, but it didn’t pay off. Glenn Youngkin became the first Republican to win statewide since 2009, outperforming Trump in every part of Virginia.
“The reason McAuliffe leaned so heavily into the Trump argument was that it was the only thing that could keep the progressives and the center-left together,” Josh Kraushaar, a political analyst who writes the “Against the Grain” column for National Journal, told me over the phone on Monday. “The dirty little secret about the Democratic Party,” Kraushaar continued, “is that it’s a lot more divided than the Republican Party—on policy.”
Managing these divisions, while also trying to save their razor-thin congressional majority, has proven difficult. To the degree that legislative accomplishments excite anyone these days, there is no huge landmark legislation to rally behind. Having his own Sister Souljah moment—where Biden scolds the left like Bill Clinton did during the 1992 Democratic primary—might impress swing voters, but it would also depress the base and further divide the party. But talking about progressive issues like “defunding the police” would depress everyone else.
For Joe Biden, who is desperate for an issue to rally his party behind, Donald Trump looks like (as Homer Simpson described alcohol) “the cause of and the solution to all of life’s problems.”
Running against Trump is the only way to unite everyone in the Democratic coalition. It may not be compelling enough to “win” the midterms, but when you can’t make your coalition bigger, uniting it is better than nothing.
And so Dems will make the election about Trump. Again.
And they’ll still lose control of Congress—but just not as badly as they otherwise might have. By feeding the progressive base ever-more hyperbolic anti-Trump rhetoric, the theory goes, Dems will be able to save those deep-blue congressional seats that Biden won by 15 points just two years ago.
In other words, this is a sort of triage. Democrats are pricing in the fact that the midterms are going to be a disaster, no matter what they do. They just want to mitigate the losses. “It’s not even a Hail Mary,” Kraushaar says, “It’s a ‘stop the bleeding’ strategy.”
It’s a sorry state of affairs, but for Democrats, there really is no better plan. Dems can’t make this election be a referendum on Biden’s presidency, because Biden’s popularity is so low right now that doing so would guarantee even more Democratic losses. With that “It’s Morning Again in America” option off the table, the only option is to try and make this a “choice” election.
Unfortunately for them, the “choice” is between the status quo and a man who isn’t even on the ballot. What is more, focusing on Trump signals to swing voters that Dems aren’t focused on the kitchen-table issues they actually care about (like inflation and gas prices).
To rationalize this Trump-centric strategy, Dems are telling themselves that it will be different this time. But they’re still betting on things they can’t control, like the possibility of Elon Musk reinstating Trump’s Twitter account (the 45th president was banned from the social media platform following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot).
But hanging their election strategy on the premise that an unhinged and vengeful Trump will sabotage Republicans by once again tweeting manically and making the election all about him is desperation and wishcasting.
This is what you do when you’re playing a bad hand.
If you’re a Democrat, “stop the bleeding” may sound like a depressing and defeatist slogan. Because it is.
It’s painful to concede that your season is already over, and it’s still early May. But as someone who spent decades as a long-suffering Baltimore Orioles fan, I can tell you this: You eventually get used to it.
