On Not Saying Every Damn Thing You Think

With Democracy on the line, we don't need Democrats and Independents Undercutting Biden

Bob Costa and Bernie Sanders; Ari Melber and Cornel West, Jonathan Chait

In 2019, my next-to-last semester before I retired, I had the worst class I’d had in my many decades of teaching. I’d been on sabbatical the year before, and during the time I was off campus I’d apparently become a “neo-liberal” “terf” who “misgendered” students, “passive aggressively” assigned a critic of “progressive” jargon (it was a writing class, and the use of jargon was the topic that week), and deliberately mispelled a Middle-Eastern student’s name. (The “d” and the “f” were close together on a tiny keyboard, what can I say?) The student who’d been the victim of what she called my “micro-aggression” then posted private emails—between me and another student, as well as those intended only for our class—(a confidentiality they’d all agreed to at the beginning of the course) with an accusatory commentary that led to a mile-long thread so incendiary (and, at points, anti-semitic) that I eventually had to ask campus police to stand guard outside my classroom door.

It took me completely by surprise—until I realized that I had a small but determined cell of students who’d come armed with the knowledge of my Hillary Clinton book and the tweet-storms led by enraged Sanders-supporters. That was where the “neo-liberal” came from, with all the rest soon to follow from the certainty that I was of course on the wrong side of everything.

It was another fascinating chapter in my “post-Hillary-book” career, and I knew that I could easily get an account of it published (this was 2019, remember, long before “Tar” lampooned classroom PC) but I didn’t even consider it. These were my students, I felt protective of them nomatter how outrageously they were behaving toward me, and I also remembered a time in my own life when I was much younger and (almost) as insufferable. You discover new ideas, you become convinced you have possession of The One True Truth, and you lose perspective on everything and everyone else.

A few years passed and the students involved had graduated and dispersed. I no longer was worried about personal damage to anyone, and of course I’d change all the names. Should I write that piece now? Nope. Still couldn’t, still wouldn’t. Because by then, the Right was foaming at the mouth over “woke-ness” and there was no way I was going to feed their frenzy. In 2019, the piece might have been read as a bracing critique—written by someone who herself was a lefty feminist— of the excesses of purity-obsessed politics. In 2022, it would be read as confirmation that higher education was being taken over by “woke” socialists.

Just because one has a bright idea or a trenchant critique or some saleable account of something interesting—or a question that pokes and probes and shows how smart you are—doesn’t mean it’s ok to give voice to it. Particularly if you are a person with public prescence. My own influence is pretty limited—and even so, I worry in these times about what I put into the ether. For words are never just “expressions” of the writer or speaker; they fall from our mouths or our pens or computers into a world that picks them up, handles them tenderly or mangles them, shoves them into existing agendas, spreads them in threads, embeds them in headlines and chyrons. And right now, in 2023, our words are participating, whether we intend them to or not, in a struggle for what Biden has called “the soul of our nation” and others have called “the future of democracy.” My husband, being a professor of Russian literature, calls it a life-and-death contest with The Devil.

With such high stakes, I don’t think the journalists are “just doing their job” when they raise the issue of Biden’s age over and over, imagining that “all” they are doing is querying “opinion” on its “significance.” They are making it significant— just as they made Hillary’s emails significant. And why do they not feel obliged to mention Trump’s age when they raise the issue? He’s just three years younger than Biden. But “Biden’s age” are the words that are continually thrown out there—and circulating wildly and repeatedly, they are not innocent.

With such high stakes, what exactly is the value of Jonathan Chait, while conceding that Biden is doing a good job as President, calling for someone younger and more exciting to step up? His argument? Biden isn’t good at campaigning:

It seems clear enough that Joe Biden is up to the job of being president. The economy is booming, especially for the poor and working class; he has signed more bipartisan legislation (on infrastructure, guns, and domestic manufacturing) than anybody expected; and he has held together the western alliance while maintaining a dogged defense of Ukraine’s sovereignty after Russia expected to swallow up its smaller neighbor.

But whether Biden is up to the task of running for president is another matter….

….For now, Democrats are hanging by a thread to a presidential candidate whose every stumble is pored over in the press and who appears to be struggling to handle his public-facing duties…

…This doesn’t mean he can’t handle the job. Speaking fluently and quickly is an important skill for candidates, but presidents have the luxury of gathering their thoughts. It’s hardly disqualifying to lean heavily on staff and advisers if they have the competence to present their boss with good information and decisions….

[When Reagan was POTUS] Democrats mocked the president as senile and unfit, and Republicans brushed it off as irrelevant to his job performance. The parties’ messaging has largely switched sides, even if Democratic voters have not. They would prefer a slow, aging president to an authoritarian criminal one, but they genuinely worry that Biden cannot stand up against Trump’s incoherent yet oddly tireless rants…

….If the Democrats picked their nominee through the boss-driven, smoke-filled rooms of yore, they very well might tap somebody other than Biden. Likewise, if the party’s voters had a plausible choice, they might select someone else. It is only the strange status quo, in which voters will pick their nominee in a series of state primaries with only one sane choice, that guarantees Biden will prevail.

Biden likes to say, “Don’t compare me to the Almighty; compare me to the alternative.” Lucky for him, Democrats don’t really have one.

I have to ask Mr Chait: If you really think Trump is a dangerous authoritarian criminal, why waste your powers of persuasion undercutting someone that apparently feel is a far superior choice for POTUS?? Why not use your words to try to convince people that how one serves is more important than how one “runs”?? Why not use your words to try to argue against the superficial qualities that impress people and against the stupid talking points about “age” that the media reinforces every time they raise the issue? Maybe that would be too boring; maybe that wouldn’t make such a provocative column, huh?

The notion that if the Democrats win, it will be not because of Biden’s fabulosity as POTUS (and he has been damned fabulous; I really don’t care that—like any normal human being—he wanted to go to bed after hours doing diplomacy in Vietnam) but because of the danger posed by Trump is not a very effective way to create enthusiasm for Biden. And if you don’t want to see Trump in the White House again, surely you can do better than harping on Biden’s vulnerabilities. These aren’t ordinary times. Chait knows that. But he isn’t acting like he knows it. Some anachronistic notion of “balanced” journalism is getting in the way; or maybe simply Chait’s own ego. He has an idea for a column, he’s excited to write it up. I get it. But he shouldn’t fool himself about the juicy, bloody meat he’s offering the opposition (a word that overly dignifies what they are; maybe I’ll just go with my husband and call them “The Devil”)

Bernie Sanders has an ego problem, too. He just presents it in a more coded way, and he doesn’t focus on age, he focuses—as he did with Hillary—on the need for a more “progressive” agenda, one that is “doing enough for working people.” Those words, in people’s minds, belong to the Bernie universe of ideas. But Bernie, if he was so inclined, could embrace Biden as belonging to that universe. He could encourage his own supporters, of whom there are still many—and still adoring of him (we never hear about his age, do we?)—to applaud all that Biden has done for “working people.” He could actively work to win any skeptics pondering third-party candidates over to Biden. (Perhaps, though, that’s too dangerous ground for him, too evocative of the damage he did to Hillary’s chances.) Insted, he offered much the same answers to Bob Costa as he did when “campaigning” for Hillary (scare quotes deliberate): He isn’t what we really need (that would be a “real” progressive) but compared to losing our democracy, good enough.

Bob Costa surely encouraged all this when he asked Sanders, not just once but three times on “Meet the Press” if Biden was “doing enough."

“What do you- what do you say, Senator, though, to some of your longtime supporters, who are frustrated because they don't believe the Biden administration's done enough?”

“Do you worry about the progressive vote, staying home?”

“But is the administration doing enough?”

“But should it do more? I mean, you- you're out there saying they should be tougher--

Costa seemed clearly to be goading Sanders to criticize Biden—perhaps out of some notion about being a “hard-hitting reporter” and not throwing “soft balls.” And Sanders, being who he is, took the bait: “And the answer is yes. Bob, the answer is yes, it should.” (be tougher)

Sanders: “The Biden administration has made some progress, we have got a long way to go. And what the Democratic Party has got to do is have the guts to take on corporate greed, which is unprecedented, all over the economy.”

Translation: “Some” progress [but] a long way to go.” And gutless—a charge he often made against Hillary (As in “we don’t want just any woman; we want a woman with the guts to stand up to Wall Street,” etc.)

Sanders has backed Biden’s run. He’s said he isn’t going to run himself. But in explaining why, he offers the same tepid grounds he presented when he finally endorsed Hillary Clinton: namely, the alternative is so much worse. He first presented this argument in April, right after Biden announced his own bid:

“I don’t think one has many alternatives,” Sanders told MSNBC. “What’s at stake is the future of American democracy.” 

What’s at stake is whether we have some right-wing demagogue running this country or pathological liar or somebody who’s trying to divide us up,” he continued. “Or whether we reelect somebody who is a very decent human being who’s trying to do the opposite, trying to bring the American people together.”

“It is a surprise to nobody when I say that I disagree with Biden on many issues,” Sanders said in Thursday’s interview. “But on the other hand, I think he deserves credit for what he has accomplished.” 

Not many alternatives. “A very decent human being.” “Deserves credit.”

Wow, what a ringing endorsement!!

It was only marginally better than his “endorsement” for Hillary, which came after much delay, and grudgingly. Conceding that “as we head into November, Hillary Clinton is far and away the best candidate,” (against Trump, ya think?) Sanders mentioned just two of her accomplishments: “as a great first lady who broke precedent in terms of the role that a first lady was supposed to play as she helped lead the fight for universal health care” and “as a fierce advocate for the rights of children.” Stellar accomplishments, yes, but rather gender typed, and hardly doing justice to the myriad ways in which Clinton had served the country. Not exactly a rousing call (such, for example, as Clinton had sounded when Obama was nominated), designed to energize his supporters and redirect their passion toward Hillary.

Similarly, when Costa opened the door (over and over), Sanders couldn’t resist a whole lot of “ifs,” “ands,” and advertisements for his own, more “progressive” ideas (my own emphases in the following quotes are bolded):

COSTA: “… if President Biden decides not to seek the Democratic nomination, is a run by Senator Sanders for the nomination on the table next year?”

SANDERS: Bob, I think we spend too much time speculating.

[SB: I guess he wants to keep that option open, after all.]

I think President Biden is going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party and I think if he runs on a strong, progressive agenda, he's not only going to win, he's going to win by a strong vote and I'll tell you why. Because when you look at a Republican Party, it's not only that you have a president, a former president, who has been impeached twice, indicted four times. These are people who deny women in this country have the right to control their own bodies, really? Is that where we are in 2023? Not recognizing the reality of climate change, wanting more tax breaks for billionaires, that's what their agenda is. So I think that in any kind of serious campaign, President Biden and the Democrats will do quite well against that reactionary agenda.

[SB: What’s with all this “I think”? Can’t he muster a simple declarative sentence? And “if he runs on a strong, progressive agenda”? If? But I forget that Sanders has claimed ownership, countless times, of that word “progressive.” It’s kind of a code, isn’t it? “Do quite well”: pretty limp, and the success will be only because the alternative is so ghastly.]

ROBERT COSTA: What do you- what do you say, Senator, though, to some of your longtime supporters, who are frustrated because they don't believe the Biden administration's done enough? They may not share your view of how things have gone. And they're thinking about Cornel West, or they're thinking about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. What's your message to them as they drift toward those others?

….Do you worry about the progressive vote, staying home?

SEN. SANDERS: I think if the Democrats come up with a strong agenda that speaks to the needs of senior citizens in this country, and that means raising Social Security benefits, expanding Medicare, if we speak to the needs of young people that is having a lot to do with student debt, if we demand that the wealthiest people in this country stop paying their fair share of taxes, if we come up with a progressive agenda, I think we're going to win and win big. And when we win big, we have to make it clear that we stand with the working class of this country against the kind of corporate greed that we now see.

[I probably don’t need to comment on this one. All the classic Sanders bells and whistles speak for themselves. He’s “approving” of Biden, but provisionally—that little much-repeated “if” subtly counterposed to what Biden is already doing in furthering a “progressive agenda.”]

I’m sure Sanders believes that saying what he thinks is a matter of integrity. His beliefs are his beliefs; here he stands and can do no other.

Do we expect him to be a cheerleader for Biden just because democracy is at stake?

For me, the answer is: yes. And bravo to Barack Obama! No “ifs” or “buts” in his endorsement: