With Joe Biden lagging behind Donald Trump in virtually every national and swing state poll, crisis raging on the southern border, and a suffering national economy, logic would dictate that the president would be doing everything in his power to win over much-needed support from the on-the-fence and independent voters he needs to propel him to a second term. Instead, however, Biden and his campaign seem to be sprinting to the far left in a bid to reassure progressives and the left-wing activist class that he is up to the task of facing Trump this November and advancing their priorities in a hypothetical second term.
This apparently counterproductive approach to retaining the White House may be a matter of political necessity for Biden. While it’s true that appeasing the far left won’t help the president’s poll numbers, now in the low 40s, rise to the level that experts believe he likely needs to win re-election, it might help Biden stave off an all-out mutiny on his party’s left flank that would see his poll numbers drop into the 30s or even 20s.
If that were to happen, Democrat Party leaders would face immense pressure to boot Biden from the ticket at or before the DNC Convention this August. While Biden faces a tough race this November regardless, his chances of winning are essentially zero without near-unanimous backing from his party’s left-wing base – support that he cannot now take for granted.
Biden’s lurch to the left in recent weeks has been on full display in a series of politically puzzling decisions. From his relentless kowtowing to pro-Hamas protesters, to his full-fledged embrace of extremist gender ideology in K-12 schools, to his flagrant pandering to Black Lives Matter activists, Biden is bending over backward to appease a bloc of voters that—at this point—he should already have in his camp.
Biden’s struggles among the Democrat base are clearly seen in the lingering enthusiasm gap between Biden and Trump. As even the left-wing Washington Post has been forced to acknowledge, Democrat enthusiasm for Biden’s campaign stands “at a low point.” According to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll from earlier this year, the Post reports, that when voters were asked to rank their enthusiasm for each candidate, “44 percent of GOP primary voters gave Trump a 10 (‘very enthusiastic’),” whereas only 18 percent of Democrat primary voters gave Biden a 10. “Nearly half of Democratic primary voters were at a 6 or lower,” the report states.
A wide array of factors could be influencing Democrats’ lack of excitement for a second Biden term. From the growing left-wing mutiny over Biden’s attempt to pander to both sides of the Israel-Hamas war to recent polling with Biden down in nearly every swing state (and deadlocked in blue-leaning Virginia and struggling in historically safe blue states like Minnesota) and losing ground with young, black, and Hispanic voters, to an increasingly humiliating series of gaffes in his public appearances, progressives understandably view Biden as a major liability.
From the onset of Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020, he was primarily useful to Democrat leaders as a trojan horse who could appeal to Americans as a moderate, but advance radical leftist policies in office. With Biden’s poll numbers now in the tank and his electoral viability increasingly in question, the progressive base has little incentive to enthusiastically support his candidacy.
For this reason, Biden’s lurch to the left is wholly understandable. If Biden were to lose the support of the progressive left, his campaign would no longer be recoverable—and making gains with independents and undecided voters might ultimately be immaterial. Biden is likely seeking to avoid the political fate of President George H.W. Bush, whose approval rating fell to the high 20s in July of 1992 when Republicans were angry that he wasn’t doing enough to fight back against the left and resist attacks from the Bill Clinton campaign.
Of course, whether Biden will be able to succeed in reassuring the progressive base enough to retain their support in the weeks ahead remains to be seen. But in the meantime, Biden’s attempt to walk a razor-thin tightrope between appeasing progressives and moderates is welcome news for Donald Trump, who is already making significant gains with independents and now has an even wider opening to expand his lead in national and swing state polls.
For now, however, Joe Biden is desperately clinging to his political lifeboat—hoping that his own far-left base will save him from drowning.
Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.
