When former President Joe Biden assumed office in 2021, he did so under the promise that he would “restore the soul of America.” The phrase comes from historian Jon Meacham and is adapted from his book, “The Soul of America.” Biden glommed onto the tagline, although his tenure leads one to wonder whether he ever read the book.
History will not remember Biden for infrastructure or economic policy — and certainly not for a restoration of America’s nebulous “soul.” Instead, he will be remembered for providing aid and cover for the leveling of Gaza, watching the right to abortion collapse without a serious response prepared, and doddering around the world stage while insisting he was the best person to lead America for another four years, despite an approval rating somewhere in the Mariana Trench. Promising Americans struggling to pay for groceries that the economy is fine is not a political strategy.
Vice President Kamala Harris was given the unenviable assignment of cleaning up the Biden mess when America’s historically unpopular president caved to the significantly tougher former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and stepped aside. Cable news viewers watched sycophantic DNC delegates chant “Thank you, Joe!” in a bizarre display that mirrored the craven devotion of the proudest Trumpers.
As expected, the Democratic nominee who was forced upon voters and couldn’t think of anything she’d do differently than the much-loathed incumbent was clobbered by President Trump in the Electoral College. Trump even managed to win the popular vote for the first time.
Sure, Democrats can gloat about how Trump didn’t quite hit 50 percent and the popular vote was historically close. Who cares? Trump, who was convicted of felonies the year of the election, won the popular vote. More voters trusted an outright crook than Harris. That’s a damning problem no matter how small the margin.
After relentlessly attacking Trump as a fascist American Hitler without respect for norms and forbearance, Biden got right to cheesing with the wannabe despot in photos after the election. And Biden even pardoned his own very guilty son on the way out the door, just as Trump had pardoned some of his closest and most obviously guilty cronies. Promises made, promises broken.
Democrats insult the American intelligence when they insist Biden is a deeply empathetic man of high moral character.
Please.
We have evidence to the contrary going back more decades before our youngest voters were even born. Biden is a career politician who turned out to be precisely the disaster that former President Barack Obama expected. Biden’s failures made Trump seem palatable to enough people in the country that we’re stuck with his chaos for another four years — or more if his latest scheme succeeds.
The Democratic Party should be ashamed of the place we find ourselves. But it doesn’t have to stay this way. We can take inspiration from everyday Americans who already are better than the corrupt leaders foisted onto them by wealth and power.
If Democrats desire to win the future, really win, we need to take a sledgehammer to the neoliberal rot at the center of our party and become something so much more than “not Republicans.” Feelings and loyalties be damned. The American people deserve an eviction of every career politician who lives off the taxpayers while serving themselves and corporate oligarchs.
The average American should be able to look at the Democratic Party and see something that represents their own hopes and resilience — a way forward that isn’t a continuation of decades of gaslighting, polarized wealth, unwritten racial caste systems, horrific war crimes and condescending excuses. Our job isn’t to remind America of Republican leaders’ character flaws but become a party of such vision and strength that Americans vote for us on the merits.
The American people have told us what they want over and over — new leaders who show bravery and vision rather than loyalty to existing power. It’s not a mistake that, during the last Trump administration, the people elected leaders like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who won in Dearborn, Mich., which Harris lost to Trump.
That’s not at all to say every successful Democratic leader chosen by the American people is overtly left-wing in ideology. Some are just hard workers more concerned with responding to the needs of their constituents and taking their constitutional role more seriously than phoning their stock brokers.
While the Republican Party assumes the levers of power, we need to get our house in order. The GOP won the 2024 battle, and there are no two ways about it. But the Democratic Party can remake itself into Americans’ vehicle to reverse our dangerous course and win the war for our future.
Let’s tell the truth about Biden’s moral failures, evict every party leader who took part in covering for his administration and elevate the many voices throughout our party who have a vision for its future that isn’t stuck in the past.
Chris Sosa is a New York City-based Democratic political strategist who works with local, state and federal candidates.
