One of the things that concerned me about Biden in 2020 was the idea that in response to Trump, the national Democratic Party was turning rightward and whiteward trying to avoid the racial animus Republicans unleashed against Obama, which wouldn't work but which would reinforce the leadership's existing conservative tendencies, particularly as these people, Biden included, are relics of 1990s if not 80s or 70s politics.
Biden made progressive noises to fend off challengers in that primary and at least initially with COVID and Build Back Better appeared to demonstrate that he had learned from Obama's experience and was willing to push left.
But the national Democratic Party was and still is a conservative operation swimming in AIPAC money that gives preferential treatment to candidates like Cuellar, Latimer, and yes, Manchin, while shitting on its left wing virtually every chance it gets.
Biden himself is a creature of that conservative Democratic establishment. He was one of the farthest right Democrats in the Senate for a long time: proudly anti-abortion, more extreme on Israel than most Republicans, tough on crime, and friends with segregationists.
So it was inevitable he reverted to type, particularly after getting drug through the mud on Build Back Better and the Afghanistan withdrawal, with a strong internal push to move right and embrace a kind of soft white populism.
Once upon a time, Biden claimed to have learned that you can't peel off voters from Republicans by trying to outflank them from the right. GOP voters will simply never give Democrats credit, as we've seen on immigration where Obama and Biden both are still accused of throwing the border open to let "drug dealers and murderers" into the country despite having some of the most draconian anti-immigration controls in history.
But it's what comes naturally to Biden and Democrats in general.
We've been getting a good look at the results lately, as establishment Democrats not only aren't bothered by the influence of a right-wing money operation like AIPAC on their internal politics but have actually embraced it to attack and expel progressive members like Bowman.
And it's not just about Israel. Biden has also tacked hard to the right on immigration, has generally ignored abortion and LGBT+ rights, and has been indifferent to people struggling in this two-tiered economy.
None of this is likely to help Biden and Democrats in the 2024 election, as his poll numbers show he has been slowly bleeding support from young and Black voters specifically, but the response has been that it doesn't matter: people have to vote for him or else.
Indeed, they have doubled down on a politics favoring older, white, conservative, and middle class to more affluent suburbanites and professionals. The focus has been on cops, cops, cops, Israel, and a booming stock market.
New York politics seem foreboding about where national Democrats are headed.
Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams want a mask ban to punish protesters and shot down a congestion pricing plan on behalf of cops and more affluent commuters despite blowing a hole in the budget. Rep Bowman's district was redrawn to exclude most of his base in the Bronx while leaving the heavily white and affluent areas, allowing conservative George Latimer to unseat him with the help of a shit load of AIPAC money.
There have been more positive developments elsewhere. Ironically, states with slim Democratic majorities have been far more aggressive and progressive than reliable blue states like New York, where money and whiteness dominate their attention.
But New York seems like a barometer for the national party, which is more concerned with banning TikTok and passing anti-LGBT+ legislation like KOSA than with helping Americans struggling to afford rent and groceries.
There has long been a latent desire among the older, white, affluent Democratic leadership to run it as a center-right party, using the radicalized GOP as a lighting rod for negative partisanship. "No matter how bad you think we are, they're worse."
While out of power, Trump must seem like a godsend as someone who rightfully attracts so much fear and hatred, theoretically giving them a backstop with Democratic voters while they govern as the conservatives they want to be.
White solidarity is extremely important with this group. To wit, high level Democrats including Biden can't stop sucking up to Republicans while exclusively blaming Trump and "MAGA Republicans" for everything that goes wrong, notwithstanding that the entire GOP are "MAGA Republicans" who support Trump at this point.
Biden also appears comfortable taking hard right turns on policy even as it hurts him with core Democratic constituencies as long as he has Trump to scare voters into submission.
The idea is they can use Trump to sink the far right, capture the middle for themselves, kick the left to the curb, and run the country as the "reasonable conservatives" they imagine the GOP (and themselves) to be.
But like Macron in France, trying to outflank fascists from the right merely empowers them. There's no evidence of a meaningful split in the GOP and Trump's continued political power, surpassing Biden in the polls, is a warning of where that "strategy" will get us.