Many Democrats may not realize that their loss in 2024 was sealed by two Faustian bargains that they struck in 2020 to win that election.
A “Faustian bargain” is, in its broadest sense, the making of a deal that promises immediate rewards, but at a painful cost that must be paid later.
Going into the 2020 campaign, the Democrats had a rather light bench and no obvious candidate. Many aspirants were not well known. Others, like Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, were too far left to be electable. Some were “tainted,” like Elizabeth Warren and her Native American hoax, and Amy Klobuchar for her role in failing to prosecute Derek Chauvin, of George Floyd’s murder infamy, for an earlier police shooting. The theme of “police violence” had the party pretty worked up. Some had a thin résumé, like Pete Buttigieg, who was only attractive due to his gay identity. Both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden were too old. Tulsi Gabbard was too conservative. And some, like Marianne Williamson, were just plain nuts.
The party faced the deeply loathed Donald Trump, whose presidency had been weakened by the Covid pandemic and the incessant drama during his term. Hungry for a win, and impressed by his surprising showing among Black voters, the party settled on the longtime party fixture Joe Biden, reckoning that he was well known and moderate enough to keep from scaring off the centrists. Being blithely myopic, it ignored concerns about Joe’s age, figuring that it could worry about it later once they won. Oops.
But the Democrats still had a problem. In 2020, the progressive wing was in an uproar over race, the George Floyd murder, and a desire to beat up on the police, and were in no mood to settle on a relative moderate like Biden. The Democrats needed to keep the progressives on board.
Once nominated, Biden honored his famous promise to name a Black woman as his vice president and chose Kamala Harris, even though she had suggested in the debate that he was a racist. Although she had polled dismally as a presidential candidate herself, she was the right race and gender. Further, her stances in supporting the defunding of the police, decriminalizing illegal immigration, supporting the Green New Deal, etc., soothed the angst of the party’s restive progressive wing and helped it accept Biden’s moderation. Together they went on to win in 2020.
Fast forward to 2024, and the long-deferred concerns about Joe’s age reemerged. Following desperate efforts to conceal the increasing signs of his decrepitude, Biden won the nomination. But after Joe’s disastrous performance in the debate, when his brain apparently went into “buffering mode,” the protective lies were no longer effective, and the party powers showed Joe the door.
The party then found that it had a “Kamala Harris problem,” as it struggled to find a successor candidate. Traditionally, a vice president is the first place that a party looks, but Harris presented several problems. First, she was not well regarded by the party, having received the support of less than 5 percent of Democrats in 2020. Second, as incumbent vice president, she was saddled with blame for her administration’s failures, including her tenure as “immigration czar,” and being the tie breaker for the spending bills that contributed to inflation. Being seen as the DEI candidate following Biden’s promise didn’t help.
What to do? If the party gave Harris the boot in order to pick a more electable candidate, both Black and women voters would likely feel she had been treated shabbily and would revolt. In the minds of a party fixated on “identity,” the position had become a “Black woman’s” office, and possible substitutes like Michelle Obama and Oprah were explored. If there had been an open and competitive primary, it is unlikely that Harris would have been the nominee. Conveniently, Biden’s late exit offered the party powers the chance to directly install Harris, banking on media cheerleading and disdain for Trump for votes. Oops again.
The lesson? This outcome was pretty predictable in 2020, and the party foolishly ignored the painful reckoning that it would face in 2024, just like it had foolishly ignored the painful reckoning on Harry Reid’s “nuclear option,” which ended up giving Trump three uncontested Supreme Court appointments.
Naming Biden as the candidate in 2020 was the first Faustian bargain, and naming Harris as vice president was the second, giving them 2020 but costing them 2024. It was predictable that Biden would be unable to complete a second term, and that as vice president, Kamala Harris would expect to be the nominee and was in the position to insist upon it.
The chickens came home to roost. Not only did the party’s “identity group” obsession hurt Democrats, but the outcome betrayed the party’s inability to think beyond immediate political advantage and its lack of self-discipline.
John Donegan is a retired attorney in Pismo Beach who never actually read classic works like Marlowe’s Faustus but likes to cite them to sound erudite. Send a letter for publication to letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 21 – Dec 1, 2024.