Biden could win a landslide by accident
Let's not overstate the significance of a poll putting Biden
fourteen points ahead. It's one poll. But there is an average. And currently, the
polling average puts Biden about ten points ahead of Trump. He has recovered the ground lost since the start of this year. The combination of demoralising blunders, half-asleep statements, and the sexual assault allegation against him had shown him to be a poor candidate. But since last month, his lead over Trump has been expanding. There's a chance that this profoundly awful candidate could, not only win, but win with a landslide. And, much as Starmer seems to be determined only to gain from Tory failure by accident, Biden's victory could be the biggest fluke in history.
Why do I say 'landslide'? After all, Clinton also had occasionally huge leads over Trump. Indeed, she won a plurality. She had millions more votes than Trump, and still lost. And she was far more competent, verbally dextrous, and appealing to a certain online fandom, than Biden. The corrupt nature of her primary victory demoralised a section of the left-wing vote, and grassroots activists, and that probably contributed to the Democrats' ultimate inability to win key swing states. But is anyone happier with the way Biden won? The way the Democratic establishment finally rallied round the monumentally unqualified Biden, and the way the media turned absolutely hysterical in its fear of 'socialism', was capped by the Democrats cynically persisting in staging primary elections during the Covid-19 outbreak because they knew it would depress turnout and finish off Sanders for good. The bulk of the Left is not going to campaign for, or support, Joe Biden. On top of that, while Biden has been completely incapable of enthusing the base, Trump has shown his usual skill in polarising the electorate to his advantage. His support base is stable, and he knows how to exploit confusion and despair on the other side. And with the combination of Democrat-backed austerity programmes destroying the left-vote, and Republican voter-suppression programmes, it is easy to see how Trump could romp it again.
So, why 'landslide'? First, Trump's victory in 2016 obscured the underlying, long-term shift against the Right. That's why the Republicans have thrown everything behind Trump, because white nationalism and violent incitement against 'the Left', 'Antifa', and various black politicians is their only electoral defence against these trends. It is also why they're fighting so hard to encircle and suppress the democratic elements of the state, and build up the dominance of reactionaries in, eg, the Supreme Court. They know they're losing. Trump's core vote is stable, but it's a minority.
Second, the hard-centre has secured its institutional dominance over the Left for now, but not unilaterally. The Democratic establishment almost didn't pull it together. They rallied to Biden as their candidate at the last minute, after an intervention by Obama, but that almost didn't happen. And the party managers still aren't getting everything their own way: how could they when Sanders was so popular, and Biden is so ineffectual? Look at the victories for the New York left in recent primaries, in which Jamaal Bowman, AOC and Julia Salazar scored towering leads. Bowman's crushing victory over Elliot Engel, a sixteen-term incumbent, and
ideologically fanatical warmonger, is particularly sweet. Even in Kentucky, an operator like Amy McGrath with close links to Chuck Schumer, could potentially lose to Charles Booker, whose campaign has benefited from Black Lives Matter protests. Nor is the centre winning the battle for popular opinion and culture, which is skewing well to the left of Joe Biden, Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom. Indeed, the only way it could secure total dominance over the Left would be through the victory of reaction, or through a demoralisation so pervasive that it guaranteed the victory of reaction. The early phase of the pandemic, and the contagion of mutual aid and grassroots organising that followed from it, showed that this hadn't happened.
And since May, the trends have accelerated rapidly away from capitalist realism. The Black Lives Matter protests have exploded in hundreds of cities, have won
dozens of demands and reforms, big and small, and catalysed a major cultural shift that was already well under way.
Hundreds of strikes have broken out across the US since March, often in the least organised workplaces, over Covid safety and racism. With forty million unemployed across the US, and the rest of the workforce more precarious and vulnerable to wage depression as a result, and with the state embroiled in a
legitimacy crisis heightened by its dysfunctional handling of the plague, the pandemic has precipitated underlying sources of radicalisation. That is the context in which Biden's lead over Trump is rising. He hasn't done a thing to cause it himself. No one, as far as I can see, is arguing that he has made a game-changing speech, or is even running a particularly vigorous campaign. Biden would be the ancillary beneficiary of a social upheaval that he doesn't like, and doesn't support.
This situation is fragile, and volatile, and sharp reversals are the norm. Republicans are confident, even to the point of expecting a
Trump landslide. Trump is already vastly
outspending Biden. Sure, there's some performativity, bombast, bullshit and illusion in the confidence of local Republicans. Sure, spending money doesn't guarantee anything. Nonetheless, recall that Trump required only a few months of campaign season to melt Clinton's lead down to two points, and game the electoral college in his favour when he was himself being outspent. And his attack instincts remain sharp. The Antifa conspiracy theories will likely be followed by signal-boosting the popular theory that Soros is orchestrating Black Lives Matter. He will galvanise the vigilante hardcore, and derail media attention. He will use moments of state violence against protesters to burnish his credentials as a defender of middle-class property and suburban safety. And he can rely on the Democrats to do nothing to defend the movement as he tries to crush it. Moreover, if he sparks a lone wolf murder or two, his base doesn't seem to mind. Finally, debate season will arrive, and he will have the chance to bully and humiliate a confused and degenerating opponent. Everything now happening to build Biden's lead can be reversed. Thus far, incumbency has been kind to the nationalist right and, until recently, it has been kind to Trump.
However, we can't take for granted the coordinates of before-Covid-19. The tendency of ruptures to break in favour of the Right has been a contingent outcome, a trend rooted in circumstances that have now been upended. The deepest crisis of capitalism in its history is still in its early days. The political effects of mass unemployment and accelerating class inequality are going to work themselves out over a decade, not a couple of months. And at the moment, the way trends are going, it is now entirely plausible that Biden could stumble into a landslide.
