Post-mortem, day 1.
The disorderly and dishonorable withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 was the beginning of the end not the least after President Biden defended "the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped and ... more competent in terms of conducting war.” This was clearly out of touch with reality. Biden never recovered credibility or the initiative on the international stage.
More important, Biden’s popularity Stateside also never recovered. Yes, I know inflation (and immigration) cost Harris the election, but after the retreat from Kabul voters saw weak, bombastic leadership. It was an inflexion point for the administration (one that was masked by the decent congressional election results of 2022).
Sensing weakness in American leadership, Putin tried to take over the whole of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. After purportedly committing to its defense, the Biden administration never figured out a way to supply Ukraine with sufficient ammunition to avoid a slow-motion loss in attrition warfare. In the Middle East, it didn’t just lose control of events and fail to prevent (or mitigate) a humanitarian catastrophe; but it allowed a protectorate (Qatar) to funnel billions of dollars to Hamas, who could, thereby, destroy what would have been its signature foreign policy achievement, the culmination of the “Abraham Accords.” Going back to the Obama administration, Democrats in power have systematically failed to prevent or neutralize Netanyahu from dividing the Democratic coalition.
To applause of many, the Biden administration rejoined the Paris accords on the first day of his administration. Yet, nobody believes that the world will meet its target to limit global warming to 1.5C. And while there seems some hope that staying within 2 degrees is not wholly out of reach, the world is not on a reliable path toward it. Even the IMF thinks much more radical actions are needed.*
A common thread through these debacles is an unwillingness to recognize the agency of enemies and an inability to exercise dynamic leadership so that reality and rhetoric match. Whatever his personal merits, Biden never figured out how to strike fear and caution in the enemies of liberal democracy. Perhaps this is due to defects of character, or, more likely, due to physical decline in the president and lack of vision in its administration. For, while the administration was willing to draw on lots of policy experts, it never found a way to seed revitalization of intellectual leadership; the overall effect was unimaginative and a dreary four years of missed opportunities or thwarted policy.
This unwillingness to recognize the agency of enemies is, perhaps, most noticeable (domestically) in the effects of anti-trust policy. The Biden administration moved sharply toward a more populist antitrust stance. (I welcomed that, by the way.) But the reality is that “the data may indicate a less radical change in antitrust enforcement under Biden as compared to Trump than the conventional wisdom suggests.” The rhetoric seems to have triggered the titans of Silicon Valley to mobilize and organize against it and go all-in on Trump.
As I wrote a few days ago, until Selzer’s Iowa poll I thought this election would be a referendum on inflation that the Administration would lose resoundingly. The poll made me think that, perhaps, abortion would shift the election. It turns out that the original instinct was more right than Selzer’s false dawn.
For, on inflation, the Biden administration never could generate a compelling narrative and so it fudged (see here CNN’s fact-checking). And that’s because it was a self-induced policy blunder that it never found a way to ameliorate. Yes, there were pandemic related supply-chain issues, but its own splash in spending clearly contributed to the surge in inflation (see here for a neat paper on the topic that estimates it explains more than 40% of the variance). Unfortunately, the perceived benefits of full employment tend to be relatively concentrated, while the high costs (inflation) widely dispersed.
More generally, the Biden administration never seemed to grasp the urgency of the cultural moment. It didn’t spend capital to ensure accountability for January 6; and it didn’t develop an actionable program to defend constitutional democracy globally and at home.
After the first debate, the former speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, finally mobilized against sleepwalking into electoral disaster. All credit to Vice President Kamala Harris who re-energized her party, and far exceeded my expectations on the campaign trail. But it was too late to develop a coherent and compelling message on the economy. Some of the blame for this muddle is due, I suspect, to the absence of a competitive primary which allows candidates and candidate teams to integrate message and perceptions of a candidate.**
Perhaps centrist Democrats have run out of steam altogether. Kamala Harris (who is 60) came of political age in the coalition and electoral map that Dukakis shaped. To simplify: this has turned into a coalition of the educated and professionals that value competent and corruption free government alongside acceptance of individual autonomy (a word I rarely use, but it seems apt here). That’s not nothing (and means a reservoir of talent to draw on), but when it fails to supply competence in the art of governing the bottom gives way.
Whatever happens next, at the moment contemporary liberalism (of the left, centrist, and right variants) does not speak convincingly to rural populations, the less educated, and the entrepreneurial classes. (The selection of Walz over Shapiro signals acknowledgment of some that.) Classical liberals have been marginalized among Republicans; and if Democrats cannot become competitive again in Florida, Texas, and Ohio — all states with complex economies and diverse populations — they will remain on the backfoot. And that assumes, somewhat optimistically, that free, fearless, and fair elections remain a thing Stateside (and in Europe).
It is my conviction that the emancipatory and growth potential of liberalism has not exhausted itself yet. In particular, liberalism offers modern society the ideal way to combine moral and self-interested aims at once. But to get there again, that will require, after a period of grief, organization and intellectual renewal. I hope to contribute to the latter in my days left.
* I am not competent to evaluate the merits of the administration’s signature achievement, the Inflation Reduction Act, but politically it must be judged a bust.
**But perhaps my own views on these matters are shaped too much by the long Obama vs Clinton primary context. Qua party, the Democrats got in this electoral pickle, first, by nudging Biden aside for Hilary Clinton back in the final years of the Obama administration, and, then, prematurely closing ranks in 2022/23 to protect Biden when insiders clearly knew about his declining abilities.