In the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden emerged as the Great Moderate Hope. By the time the first Democratic presidential primary debates were held in late June 2019, most of the other candidates—including Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Bernie Sanders—were seeking to outflank each other on the left. The thinking was that Democrats radicalized by the Trump presidency would respond favorably to maximally progressive positions—policies like “Medicare for All” and decriminalizing illegal migration.
Biden, by and large, did not participate in this race to the left. Instead, he struck a moderate note, promising to pursue liberal but sensible policies, restore the “soul of America,” lead the country out of the Covid-19 crisis, and above all, beat Donald Trump. This was a congenial message for most Democratic primary voters, and the progressive candidates’ failure to understand this allowed Biden to cruise to the nomination after Super Tuesday.
Usually, candidates attempt to move toward the center once the general election campaign is underway. But Biden did the reverse. He formed six “unity task forces,” covering climate change, criminal justice reform, the economy, education, healthcare, and immigration. The co-chairs included such lions of the left as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Pramila Jayapal, then also the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The task forces produced a blizzard of positions considerably to the left of the “moderate, normie” politics upon which Biden had built his successful primary campaign. In retrospect, this was a “tell” as to whether Biden intended to govern—as opposed to run—as a moderate.
As we all now know, he did not.
