Why Are Bernie Sanders and the Squad Propping Up Joe Biden?
A wounded Biden is running on a platform that progressives have long dreamed about.
![President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) walk across the South Lawn after returning to the White House on board the Marine One presidential helicopter on April 22, 2024, in Washington, DC.](https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/bidensanders-2.jpg)
Joe Biden, fighting for his political life, has made a surprise move to the left wing of the party. Biden has always carefully calibrated his politics to be close to the median position of his party, which is why Axios described him as “long a centrist Democrat.” But now, under siege, Biden has become a born-again progressive—perhaps even a leftist.
Over the last two weeks, he’s announced support for a wide swath of policies tailored to please left-wing Democrats: new rules banning medical debt from being used in credit ratings and a push for total medical debt relief, term limits and an enforceable ethics code for the Supreme Court, and new legislation limiting rent increases from corporate landlords to 5 percent per year, among other newly elevated proposals.
Axios describes this batch of policies as part of Biden’s “rescue operation” involving a “left leap to survive.”
The leading instigators of this “left leap” are Senator Bernie Sanders, the Squad (led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and the Congressional Black Caucus. These individuals and groups have become the unexpected fortress of Bidenism, shielding the president from attack even as centrists like Representative Angie Craig (D-MN) and Representative Adam Smith (D-WA) turn on him.
As Axios reports:
Progressives also have cheered Biden’s recent moves.
After the Congressional Progressive Caucus had a call with Biden, Representative Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) told Axios the president teased many policies the caucus wants—which he said is “not a complete coincidence,” based on where Biden is now drawing support on Capitol Hill.
“This is his base,” Sherman said of the Progressive Caucus, “You see who has called upon him to move on, and who has called upon him to stay, and the Progressive Caucus lines up with those who have asked him to stay.”
Sanders penned an effusive op-ed in the New York Times for Biden’s reelection over the weekend, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) also has been publicly supportive.
This embrace by progressives and leftists is matched by the fact that the anti-Biden faction in the party is now headed by centrists such as Representative Adam Schiff (who is running to fill Diane Feinstein’s Senate seat in California). Schiff is a longtime close associate of former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, hence a good barometer of where the party elite stands.
It might seem topsy-turvy for centrists to go knives-out on Biden even as the left embraces him; it’s certainly not a turn of events that could be predicted by Biden’s lifelong commitment to middle-of-the-road liberalism.
But the current alliances make sense when you realize that the elected Democrats who are most at risk by Biden’s staying on as candidate are centrist Democrats in swing districts and purple or red states. These Democrats are facing a real existential threat, as Biden’s unpopularity could unleash a red wave that swallows up their political support. Conversely, progressive and left-wing Democrats tend to represent very safe blue seats. They’ll survive even a Biden wipeout.
From the point of view of Bernie Sanders and the Squad, they have much to lose if they oppose Biden. In the past, as in Representative Jamaal Bowman’s losing primary fight earlier this year, centrists made much hay out of bad-faith arguments that Bowman betrayed Biden’s agenda by occasionally voting against it (in fact, Bowman voted in opposition to centrists watering down Biden’s proposals). It’s in the Squad’s interest to avoid such accusations in the future.
Further, if the congressional left did come out strong against Biden, that could make centrist politicians and donors more pro-Biden in reaction. Cynically, one could say that the proper left view of the Biden mess is that the centrists created the monster of the aging Biden presidency, so it is their job to clean it up.
In essence, the Squad is following the strategy of Richard Nixon in 1964, when the Republicans had nominated the wildly unpopular Barry Goldwater. Although Nixon came from the more moderate Eisenhower wing of the Republican Party, he stuck by Goldwater and campaigned hard for him. This loyalty to the losing leader of an opposing faction paid off in 1968, when party members rewarded Nixon for being a good soldier.
If Biden loses, everyone will understand that it was because of his age and incompetence as a campaigner. But the legacy of his embrace of left-wing positions will remain, showing that if sufficiently motivated a president can overcome long held political taboos. As economist J.W. Mason of John Jay College notes, “I’m actually slightly more sympathetic to AOC/Bernie here. There is some value to concessions that aren’t delivered, if they are legitimate positions that were off-limits before. Having a president publicly support rent control does mean something, I think.”
There is also the real possibility that Biden could surprise everyone and win. Biden is down in the polls, but not by much (in his best polls, Biden is down 2 to 3 percent in most swing states). That means that a normal-size polling error could lead the underdog to victory, as it did with Trump in 2016. If that happens, the bet the congressional left made on Biden would pay off in a big way.
In an interview with The New Yorker, Bernie Sanders acknowledged all of Biden’s political liabilities, but suggested that if the president adopts economic populism, he could win:
As a nation, we do a very poor job, both in Congress and in the media, of focussing on issues that impact the working class. So I would much prefer to have somebody who can’t put three sentences together who is setting forth an agenda that speaks to the needs of working-class people: raising the minimum wage, making it easier for workers to join unions, dealing with the existential threat of climate change, protecting women’s reproductive rights, building millions of units of affordable housing….
I think he is the best candidate, and I think if he runs a strong, effective campaign focussed on the needs of the working class of this country, he will win. And I think there’s a chance he could win big.
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“swipe left below to view more authors”Swipe →What Sanders is recommending here is a gamble: The bet is that economic populism is so attractive it can allow even an unpopular candidate like Joe Biden to win. One could easily argue that the reverse is equally likely: that Biden’s unpopularity, which includes the public’s doubts about his ability to govern, will discredit even a popular economic message.
If Biden continues to stay on as the Democratic Party’s nominee, then we’ll find out if Bernie’s bet paid off. The congressional left is taking a big risk—but there is no safe option right now, and nothing dishonorable about their leap in the dark.
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![The complex Kennedy legacy has reactionary as well as liberal strands. Former Republican presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump shake hands during a campaign rally at Desert Diamond Arena on August 23, 2024, in Glendale, Arizona. When he endorsed Donald Trump last Friday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) ignited a family drama. His famous family name is one of RFK Jr.’s main political assets, so it was not surprising that in explaining why he was suspending his campaign and backing Trump, he claimed the posthumous support of the two most famous members of his clan, his father, Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), and his uncle John F. Kennedy (JFK), both assassinated in the 1960s. RFK Jr. claimed that the two deceased statesmen “are looking down right now and they are very, very proud.” This audacious and galling claim was too much for Kennedy’s family. Five of RFK Jr.’s siblings issued a statement saying the endorsement was a “a betrayal of the values our father and our family hold most dear.” This letter was signed by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Courtney Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Chris Kennedy, and Rory Kennedy. In an interview with MSNBC, Kerry Kennedy said she was “outraged and disgusted by my brother’s gaudy and obscene embrace of Donald Trump.” She added that her father “would have detested almost everything Donald Trump represents if he was alive today.” Another RFK descendant, brother Max, wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times that denounced RFK Jr.’s support of Trump as “sordid,” as well as “a hollow grab for power, a strategic attempt at relevance.” Max Kennedy noted that prior to backing Trump, his brother had unsuccessfully approached the Harris campaign with a quid pro quo, a possible endorsement in exchange for a position in her administration. It appears that Trump made the kind of deal RFK Jr. wanted, so if Trump returns to the White House there will be a position waiting for the black sheep of the Kennedy dynasty. RFK Jr. boasted to Tucker Carlson that he’ll be part of Trump’s transition team and “help pick the people who will be running the government.” Writing in The Washington Post, columnist Karen Tumulty lamented that “RFK Jr. has sullied the Kennedy name and the dimming aura of Camelot.” It’s undeniable that RFK Jr. has betrayed the liberalism that his family, in its best moments, embodied. Indeed, RFK Jr. also proved disloyal to his own stated values, since only a few years ago he condemned Trump as a “threat to democracy,” “a terrible president,” and “a sociopath” whose politics was based on “bigotry,” “hatred,” and “xenophobia.” Given this abrupt about-face, it’s not surprising that former close collaborators with RFK Jr., notably the investigative journalist Greg Palast, openly speak about the politician as someone who has “lost his mind” But as manifestly corrupt as RFK Jr.’s behavior is, we should be wary of the narrative of Camelot betrayed, which relies on the attractive fiction that there is a unified and unsullied Kennedy legacy. In truth, the Kennedys, who have been national figures for more than a century, have been all over the map politically—not always in admirable ways. The family have long been Democrats, but at times very reactionary ones, in a manner that does decidedly show an affinity for Trumpism. As the historian Garry Wills documented in his classic book The Kennedy Imprisonment (1982), the most searching of all books about the dynasty, the family’s patriarch, Joseph Kennedy (1888–1969), imprinted on his large brood a host of bad habits. The grandchild of Irish immigrants and son of a successful Boston politician, Kennedy rose to stratospheric wealth through the stock market and liquor (although not, contrary to popular myths, by bootlegging). But his plutocratic success didn’t win Kennedy many friends among Boston’s Brahmins—snooty WASPs who saw the Irish as inherently low-class. Stung by social rejection, Kennedy pursued alternative paths to status via Hollywood (taking, among many other starlets, Gloria Swanson as a mistress) and politics. Although a Democrat who was appointed as ambassador to England from 1938 to 1940, Kennedy fought bitterly with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. During his disastrous term as ambassador, Kennedy threw in his lot with the aristocratic Cliveden set in England who wanted to accept Hitler as overlord of Europe in order to build a bulwark against communism. When his own government rejected this embrace of Nazi domination of Europe, Kennedy concluded that FDR’s mind had been poisoned by a cabal of wicked Jews (such as Felix Frankfurter and Sidney Hillman) who were dragging America to war. A primordial patriarch, Kennedy saw the world in belligerent macho terms: All men were rivals; all women existed for sexual conquest. He passed along this attitude to many of his sons, sometimes, as Wills and other historians have documented, sharing his mistresses with his boys. As Wills conclusively shows, this macho attitude was a pervasive part of the life of JFK and RFK (although RFK, who had a streak of devout Catholicism, was not a compulsive womanizer). During the 1950s both Kennedy brothers were classic Cold War militant anti-communists. JFK was pals with Joseph McCarthy, even going on double dates with the Wisconsin demagogue. RFK served on the staff of McCarthy’s Senate Subcommittee on Investigations and wanted to be chief counsel, a job that was won by Roy Cohn (who would go on to be Donald Trump’s mentor in the art of dirty politics). In 1960, JFK ran to the right of Richard Nixon on foreign policy, decrying a fictional missile gap. As Wills notes, the failed invasion of Cuba in 1961 at the Bay of Pigs was a pure distillation of the Kennedy style of masculinist politics. The Bay of Pigs, Wills argues, was taken to heart because it was so clearly marked with the new traits of Kennedy’s own government. It had for its target the man who obsessed Kennedy. It had for its leader the ideal of Kennedy’s “best and brightest.” It was a chess game backed by daring—played mind to mind, macho to macho, charisma to charisma. It was a James Bond exploit blessed by Yale, a PT raid run by Ph.D.s. It was the very definition of the New Frontier. To the credit of the Kennedys, they also had a capacity to learn from their mistakes. During the Cuban missile crisis, JFK discovered how dangerous brinksmanship could be. A new openness to diplomacy can be heard in JFK’s address to American University, delivered on June 10, 1963, just five months before he was assassinated. JFK’s counterinsurgency program and meddling in South Vietnamese politics (including turning a blind eye to the assassination plot against President Ngo Dinh Diem) entangled the United States in a disastrous war. But by the late 1960s, both RFK Jr. and Edward Kennedy were outspoken critics of that war. Edward Kennedy went on to be an outstanding liberal senator, although his role in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a manslaughter case covered by Kennedy cronies, is a reminder of the family’s outrageous license. And Edward Kennedy remained unchecked in his sexual harassment of women, a lasting family trait. Last November, I appeared on the podcast Know Your Enemy to talk about Wills’s Kennedy Imprisonment. The show’s cohost Sam Adler-Bell noted that, on many points, the JFK in the book reminded him of Donald Trump: an aggressive and exploitive womanizer with vulgar taste who was saturated with media culture (Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack in the case of JFK, reality TV in the case of Trump). The Kennedy presidency was the first really media-dominated administration, obsessed with “charisma” (an idea taken from the sociologist Max Weber but popularized in that era) and image-making (a concept expounded in 1962 by the historian Daniel J. Boorstin). The traits of charismatic leadership, as detailed by the sociologist Reinhard Bendix and distilled by Wills, are eerily prescient of the Trump era: a loose, personal style of leadership that prioritizes the loyalty of cronies and transactional deal-making above consensus building, democratic accountability, or following norms. Further, the aristocratic ideals JFK inherited from his perversely Anglophilic father, the belief that strong societies require great leaders who can transcend the blindness of the masses, was the seedbed of antidemocratic impulses that still bedevil American society. The Kennedys, therefore, have a mixed legacy. If they have been leaders of American liberalism, they’ve also at times embodied anti-liberal impulses that are antithetical to democracy. One way to describe RFK Jr.’s politics is that in endorsing Trump he is abandoning the liberalism of Edward Kennedy and reverting to the America First authoritarianism of his grandfather. It’s easy to understand why RFK, his siblings, and his cousins all remain haunted by the legacy of their family. To be the children of great men who were killed young is a heavy burden. This is part of what Wills means by the Kennedy imprisonment. But both the family and America would benefit from finding a way to escape this prison. 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