Welcome back to Trad Lib News. Today, I want to talk about why Joe Biden’s campaign this year could be the ‘make or break’ of moderate politics in our current time. As somebody who has, on numerous occasions, expressed a strong preference for Biden over Trump, I actually want to point out that I’m much more moderate than partisan. While I have never actually supported President Trump, I have tried to be open-minded about what he brings to the table, why people support him, and if there can be overlooked merits to his various policies. However, right now, what I’m looking for are leaders who can bring people together, to end the apparent polarization and division out there. This is the most important part for me, it doesn’t matter too much whether they otherwise lean liberal or conservative. Ultimately, my biggest problem with Trump is that he thrives on polarization and is more interested in encouraging it than ending it, which would ultimately also feed the critical theory extremists on the far-left, who want the same thing but for opposite reasons.
In fact, this year’s US presidential election is perhaps one of the most asymmetrical ever. Trump is perhaps one of the least moderation and unity-orientated presidents ever, he has chosen to portray almost everything as a binary choice between his way and the way of his opponents, and he often uses extreme examples like AOC and the squad to talk about the Democratic party. In other words, Trump thrives in the polarization, and he seems to be actively creating more of it as part of his re-election strategy. On the other hand, Biden actually said he was open to nominating a Republican VP, which upset the Democratic base quite a lot. Biden’s career is filled with examples of bipartisan cooperation, and he has vowed to continue that if elected as president.
Moreover, Trump seems to be pursuing a base strategy to this election, focusing on feeding and exciting his base, while not caring too much about upsetting other people. Trump is attached to his base unlike any other president in living memory. Meanwhile, Biden is pursuing a broad tent strategy, even welcoming many Republicans into his tent, while blankly refusing to entertain the more extreme demands of the critical theory Left so that the big tent is sustainable. Biden is perhaps the most detached from the activist base of his party compared to any other presidential candidate in living memory. This contrast, by definition, means that one candidate, namely Biden, is much closer to the political center than the other one. Unlike in 2016, for many moderates, one candidate is clearly more attractive than the other one. In a world where the noisy minority of extremists from both sides take up way too much political oxygen, Biden reminds us how a reasonable moderate would do things: he listens to community concerns, he is for policing reforms, while clearly against defunding the police, and he definitely doesn’t entertain the ‘white fragility’ nonsense produced by the critical theory world.
This election is shaping up to be not about left vs right like 2016, not about young vs old like 2008, but about feeding the base vs building a big tent. Choose the base path and you may get a generation of polarized politics, choose the big tent path and you’re more likely to get a generation of dialogue, cooperation and peace. I sometimes even think that, for those of us who still have hope that politics won’t generally descend into a shouting match between the likes of Tom Cotton vs the likes of AOC, Biden is perhaps the last great hope. I think this is why many of us are enthusiastic about Biden, even though he doesn’t have a strong policy platform.
Originally published at http://taraellasunnya.blogspot.com.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter, independent journalist and author, who is passionate about free speech, liberty and equality. She is the author of the Moral Libertarian Horizon books, which focus on developing a moral case for freedom-based politics in the 21st century.
