Biden or Bernie? The Democratic Party Would Have Lost the Election if Sanders Had Been the Nominee

Progressives (and I often lean their way) will surely disagree, but it seems increasingly clear to me that Biden’s centrism is what will end up winning him the presidency.    

The counterfactual corollary is equally clear to me: a more left-leaning candidate – say Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren -- would have gotten thrashed. 

If Biden (as should be made clear once the final numbers are crunched) won thanks in part to the support of suburban voters (and Never-Trumper-Lincoln-Project types) in tightly divided counties in pivotal swing states (you known which ones we’re talking about: MI, WI, AZ, PA, GA), there’s little doubt in my mind that many of these same voters would have hesitated before voting for more “progressive,” leftwing candidates.  

Look at the repudiation of Democratic House candidates who lost seats to GOP challengers (the count is currently six flipped seats).  It seems like many center-right voters hedged in supporting Biden by supporting GOP House candidates and splitting their tickets.    

According to one Democratic critic, VA-Rep Abigail Spanberger, this shift to Republican representatives in certain districts was because of the Democrats’ leftwing rhetoric. Whether it’s “defunding the police,” pursuing the “Green New Deal,” or other issues that concern center-right voters, it is worth mulling over how these concerns should inform future policy decisions. (For the record, I support an ambitious reform agenda, but am wary of the political cost of doing so at the moment).   

To be sure, African American turnout in Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, etc. was crucial for Biden, as was the support of other core Democratic constituencies.  But given the realities of the Electoral College and the swing state insanity we are plagued with, the suburbs were probably pivotal.  

So let’s keep this in mind as we perform the inherently counterfactual work of (what should have been) “Wednesday-morning” (but today is Friday-morning) quarterbacking.  

I will be skeptical of any critics who bemoan Biden’s victory as a missed opportunity for the Democrats to have gone further left.  

For better or worse, we are currently living in a Center-Right country during an era that is already trending towards the Right throughout the western world.  

I'm not sure, given the power of the GOP propaganda/truth-distortion apparatus, whether the Democrats could have avoided being tarred as "socialists."  For this reason, I hesitate to counterfactually speculate that if the AOC crowd had hung further back, we might have made bigger gains in the House and the Senate.  But we ought to take the election results as a clear sign of where a majority of the electorate stands today: in the center.  (And who can blame them?)

Machiavelli often used counterfactuals to show how skilled politicians were able to gauge the times they were living in and adjust accordingly.  (That was one of his ways of defining virtu).  

We ought to listen.