If polls are accurate and President Joe Biden continues to reject calls from within his own party to withdraw from the race, he will very likely lose to former President Donald Trump this November. But that loss might not just mean another four years in the White House for Trump – it could also shatter an already fracturing Democrat Party coalition.
Following Biden’s debate-night debacle, the dominant storyline in American politics, aside from whether Biden will remain in the race, has been full-on panic and infighting from Democrat strategists and elected officials. A growing number of House Democrats have already called on Biden to step down, while some have resigned themselves to the strong likelihood of a Trump victory.
Other Democrats, meanwhile, have dug their heels in, refusing to budge on their support for the president. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have both unequivocally backed Biden, helping stem further defections – at least for the moment.
The rift over Biden’s continued candidacy among elected Democrats reflects a rift within the Democrat voting base as well. While Biden’s debate fiasco has exacerbated these divisions, they have been stewing for more than a decade, and could result in a dramatic implosion of the Democrat Party coalition come November.
Former President Barack Obama’s solid victories in both the Electoral College and popular vote in 2008 and 2012 seemed to confirm a popular narrative on the left that America’s changing demographics would soon hand Democrats a virtually unbeatable and permanent electoral majority.
As the theory went, a growing coalition of minorities, young people, women, and college-educated professionals – all of whom were at the time reliable Democrat voting blocs – along with the old Democrat constituency of working-class whites would leave Republicans with a smaller and smaller base of support. In 2002, political “experts” John Judis and Ruy Teixeira articulated this Democrat dream in their now notoriously wrong book, The Emerging Democratic Majority. Obama’s election as a U.S. Senator in 2004 and subsequent meteoric rise to the White House four years later made him the embodiment of this theory.
During the 2016 election, however, this narrative, already called into question by Democrats’ “shellacking” in the 2010 midterms and GOP gains in 2014, began to come crashing down.
During the Democrat primaries that year, many within Obama’s coalition, particularly young people, favored Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. But the Democrat establishment backed Hillary Clinton. After the election, the website WikiLeaks released internal Democratic National Committee emails appearing to show that the party was actively working against a Sanders nomination in favor of Clinton. The entire DNC leadership resigned following these revelations.
This behind-the-scenes conniving by DNC leadership to undermine the will of the voters left many Democrats from Obama’s coalition feeling betrayed, and some exit polling data suggests that Sanders supporters staying home may have cost Clinton dearly in key swing states.
At the same time, Trump in 2016 began chipping away at Democrats’ support with minority voters and peeling off large swaths of working-class whites. Clinton failed to reach the level of support with black voters that Obama did in 2012, again costing her big in states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that decided the election. Trump’s strong numbers with blue-collar workers in the Rust Belt likewise proved instrumental in his upset victory.
In 2020, the Democrat establishment once again mobilized to take down an insurgent campaign from Bernie Sanders. Biden, whose campaign was all but finished after a poor showing in Iowa and New Hampshire, suddenly emerged as the frontrunner after a strong showing in South Carolina and the Super Tuesday races.
Despite the Democrat establishment again suppressing the will of its own base, Biden, leaning heavily on his association with Barack Obama, managed to cobble together enough of the old coalition to eke out a victory. But still, signs of a crumbling base of support persisted, with Trump improving slightly with black voters and substantially with Hispanic voters over his 2016 numbers.
Four years later, however, the Obama coalition is in shambles. Some polls have shown that Trump’s support with black voters has more than doubled from 2020 numbers to 22 percent. Other surveys have found that Trump has cut Biden’s lead with young people from 23 points to just 8 points.
If those numbers are even close to accurate, it would amount to nothing less than the complete collapse of Democrats’ coalition and a fundamental shift in American electoral politics.
Nonetheless, the Democrat establishment appears to still be attempting to force a candidate on voters that few have any interest in. Even before Biden’s horrific debate, most Democrats wanted someone other than the 81-year-old career politician at the top of their ticket. But the Democrat Party machine ensured that no one could challenge the president in an open primary.
If it is indeed the case that Obama’s coalition has been damaged beyond repair and will finally come crashing down on November 5, Democrat elites and the corporate media will have no one but themselves to blame.
Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.
