After a good dose of positive momentum in mid-late April, I have recently felt, along with various others around here I’m sure, a weight on our spirits and diminished hopes for a not-Trump-autocracy in six to eight months’ time. SCOTUS is a cerberustic tyrant, the Gaza conflict remains messy and not instantly solvable, protests on campuses have divided opinion and fed apparent opposition to progressive ideas and tactics, and people seem to be blaming Biden for anything and everything that’s predominantly rooted in long-extant issues, while ignoring the good things his administration has actually done in the face of tremendous opposition. It’s all pretty scary when the pendulum would swing to an authoritarian blowhard who can’t even govern himself, nevermind a country, and would resort to extreme tactics to not let it swing back.
My normal sources of news are DKos, TheGuardian, my local newspaper (the SJ Mercury News, a rather moderate outlet), what I overhear from MSNBC being on the TV, and whatever piques my interest on the Google News feed on my phone. But I decided to take a look over at CNN and see what the supposedly centrist, John Malone-owned outlet is putting out there.
Two opinion articles caught my eye. One is, “Trump will jack up your food prices” and another is “Biden has a serious problem with young voters”. The first makes a pretty clear case that Trump’s policies with tariffs and inciting trade wars will cost Americans ever more at the grocery store, while also highlighting the overarching inequality that underlies food cost insecurities and how Trump’s tax cuts for the super rich have exacerbated that, and how much further he will go.
The second makes a much more muddied argument that Biden needs to avoid upsetting student activists, and that the Israeli actions in Gaza along with their support by the US are unpopular, but also that “students are not aligned on the protests” and “are more concerned with bread and butter issues like affordable housing and health care”, and notes that the administration’s stance on abortion would be a plus with younger voters. The op-ed continues saying “this is a challenge Biden must undertake in a sustained fashion” (who says he isn’t?). Then there’s the fact that Biden is not exactly siccing the national guard on students like Nixon did, and he’s overseeing the biggest unwinding of US-Israeli relations in decades in response to the horrors in Gaza. Plenty of younger people saw Bill Barr’s stormtroopers going after BLM protestors in Seattle, Portland, Austin, and elsewhere in 2020, whereas the response to campus protestors in 2024, while potentially disappointing to supporters, has been comparatively mild and almost entirely at the hand of local police departments, not the department of justice being weaponized by madmen.
Comparing and contrasting these as a snapshot of where we are in May 2024 gives me more cause for optimism than concern, though there is reason for both. Optimism in that I think Biden has capacity to continue doing the right thing, and the engaged voter and young person is smarter than this media framing, and that the case against Trump is much clearer than the case against Biden. Concern because the media framing confuses the lesser-engaged voter or young person, and some memories seem quite short.
I think the difference between Biden and Trump on Israel is clear as day and criticisms of the Biden administration are repeatedly ignoring how bad Trumpism was to hopes of peace in the middle east. If people are not in love with Biden’s lack of instantly resettingUS-Israel relations, there are multiple ways in which he has moved the needle significantly in the correct direction and continues to do so “in a sustained fashion”, while Trump repeatedlymadethingssignificantlyworse while he was in office. The difference between Biden and Trump or Nixon on student protests is also quite clear, and let it be said again that Biden and Garland are not siccing the feds on protesting students or pouring shame on their heads, merely asking for protests to remain peaceful, which they broadly are as long as white supremacists from outside don’t show up. And the difference between Biden and Trump on inequality is night and day, it’s just too entrenched of an issue to turn around in a single term, especially with a hostile house majority against you and an entrenched judiciary that needs more Democratic appointees to have any chance of improving in the next several years. And this diary lacks the scope to say anything about the gap between the two on Ukraine and standing up to Russia, abortion access, women’s rights, gay and trans rights, opposing racism, climate change response, acceptance of science, public health issues, antitrust, and more, but I will note here briefly that those are important issues that Biden is the better choice for as well.
Will these arguments inspire voters in November? I’m not sure they will, but I’m confident they should. America has two choices and one is much better than the other. We can stand our ground, state our case in as many and diverse audiences as we can manage, and support the much better side. I don’t have a lot resources to donate but what I have has been mainly focused on David Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve group, as well as Robert Reich’s Inequality Media group. I encourage others to support the causes they think will help, and maybe support those I just mentioned if you agree with them and think them a net positive. Thanks for reading.