Bernie, Donald, and Joe, and the Faces of American Populism

By Paul Lenchner

Polls taken during the 2016 presidential campaign revealed a finding that surprised many observers. According to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, 12% of Bernie Sanders supporters voted for Donald Trump in the fall. One reason is that Sanders and Trump are, in their own way, both populists.

Populists appeal to voters by railing against “malevolent elites,” to borrow a phrase from historian Charles Postel, while decrying the forces that threaten the well-being of everyday citizens. Bernie Sanders is an economic populist. His aim is to distribute societal wealth more equitably by curbing the advantages of corporations and the wealthy. The privileged need to pay more taxes and be more tightly regulated. Middle- and working-class people will reap the benefits through improved education, healthcare, housing, and so on. Sanders is a harsh critic of globalization, arguing that “The global economy is not working for the majority of people in our country and the world.” His protectionist streak gives him something in common with Trump.

Donald Trump is a cultural populist. Leading villains of his narrative include Hollywood elites, media moguls, and ivory-tower academics, all of whom are comfortable with changing cultural norms. They are highly supportive of LBGTQ people, they tend not be religious, they generally welcome immigrants, they are sympathetic to protestors, and they are not shy about highlighting the darker chapters of American history and backing programs to remedy the injustices of our past. In short, they are woke, a word that has come to embody everything disturbing about cultural change.

Throughout his career, Joe Biden has been a mainstream liberal, not a populist. Arguably, he has moved to the left in the White House (for example, in endorsing the $15 per hour minimum wage), but so has the Democratic party. There remain wide differences between him and Sanders on issues like healthcare, and there is no chance that he would ever call himself a “democratic socialist.”

The practical question for November 2024 is how Biden can blunt the appeal of Trump’s cultural populism and take the best of Sanders’ economic platform, while stressing his achievements and Trump’s liabilities. The first step is not to cede cultural concerns to Trump. It will do no good to dismiss Trump’s supporters as retrograde racists and xenophobes. Condescension will only reinforce the elitist narrative. Instead, the campaign needs to offer a serious response to voter concerns.

Immigration is a good place to start, and the Biden administration is well aware of the issue’s potency. As Leigh Ann Caldwell and Theodoric Meyer wrote in The Washington Post, “Democrats are under no illusion that voters will start to think they are the party of border security. They are, however, trying to convince voters that they care about the issue and are taking steps to address it.” These steps include executive orders sanctioning people who profit from moving migrants and faster processing of asylum seekers, as well as allowing border officials to turn away asylum-seekers once border crossings exceed certain thresholds. The Senate did its part by reviving the failed bipartisan reform bill whose prospects died when Trump announced his opposition. (The bill failed.) The aim is to paint the Republicans as the party of obstruction. The strategy is having some success as shown by an editorial in the conservative Dallas Morning News, headlined, “What’s the Excuse Today, GOP?” Either vote today to help resolve the border crisis or admit you aren’t interesting in doing so.”

A second area where Biden is responding to cultural concerns is student protests over American support for Israel’s actions in Gaza. The administration has attempted to balance humanitarian concerns and sensitivity to First Amendment rights with support for Israel and condemnation of disruptive behavior. A third example, and one where the president has been perhaps overly cautious, is talking about his sincere, lifelong faith in contrast to Trump’s personal religious behavior, which is primarily confined to hawking Bibles.

On the economic front, Biden can talk about his own progressive credentials. The president has touted the 800,000 manufacturing jobs created during his administration, the $35 per month cap on insulin for people with Medicare, and the billions of dollars in cancelled student debt, along with positive numbers in unemployment, GDP, inflation (compared to its peak earlier in his term), and the stock market, with its implications for retirement accounts.

Equally important is defining Trump as an economic elitist. A New York Times article by Jess Bidgood titled, “Can Biden Make Trump Seem Like Mitt Romney?” shows the challenges and potential of this strategy. On one hand, Trump has an ability to connect with working people that eluded the patrician Romney. Moreover, voters have supported many candidates with great wealth. FDR and JFK are Democratic illustrations. The key in this context is to slide over Trump’s tough-guy/fighter persona and talk about his actual record of tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and his near-miss in trying to take healthcare away from millions. The record of his administration can be used as a springboard to depict what a second Trump term would look like. In a speech pointedly delivered in his hometown of Scranton, Biden said Trump “wakes up in the morning at Mar-a-Lago thinking about himself. How he can help his billionaire friends gain power and control, and force their extreme agenda on the rest of us.” Trump’s widely-reported pitch to oil and gas executives to donate $1 billion to his campaign in the expectation of saving far more than that in taxes and avoided legal fees after his repeal of environmental regulations reinforces Biden’s narrative.

In short, Biden can vigorously challenge the fears of cultural populists. He can promote his credentials as an economic progressive (if not quite a populist), while painting Trump as an elitist anti-populist. He can, and will, remind voters of Trump’s unpopular positions on reproductive freedom, gun safety and other issues, and the never-ending drama of his legal battles.

Perhaps a third of the electorate consists of hard-core MAGA voters like the friend of a friend who wrote on social media, “I can’t imagine how anyone could support Biden or any Democrat with their ‘woke’ mentality. It is a cancer destroying our country.” These folks are beyond reach. But there are millions of soft Trump supporters and undecideds who are persuadable with a message that includes well-framed populist themes.