An Inconvenient Blog

By Abigail

No heartily ringing endorsement of a presidential candidate has ever been accompanied by a near-endless list of caveats, qualifying statements, and preemptions to counterpoints, but at this stage in the 2024 election cycle, it is impossible to honestly write about Biden without doing all these things. Will he even be in the race in two weeks? 

It’s a strange feeling to miss the era of the ridiculously overcrowded 2020 Democratic primary, but the current very public schism within the party over the viability of Biden’s continued candidacy makes me nostalgic for the days when you could turn on the TV and watch luminaries like as Eric Swalwell and John Hickenlooper ostensibly go to head-to-head for the nomination. Whatever happened to Julián Castro? No need to worry about choice overload now. Biden is, for the moment, what Democrats have, whether we want him or not. 

Partisanship has always been a dirty word to me, but this election brings it out. I know I am actively not voting for Donald Trump, I know I am actively supportive (for the most part) of the platform of the Democratic Party–all this means is that I am voting for Biden, whether I like it or not. Biden has become the weak, unwanted figurehead for a movement I feel I am generally aligned with. Where Trump has undeniable charisma and an instantly recognizable brand, the Biden of the 2024 election feels like a bad caricature of a once-respected politician. Part of me feels that I do a disservice to the concept of democracy by choosing to vote for someone who seems so divorced from sort of key things like consciousness, mental clarity, and the entire art of politics. Is a vote for Biden just a vote into the void that says I trust the unelected advisers and bureaucrats swirling around him to do a good job of leading the country? 

I don’t like how hysterical the rhetoric of the Democratic Party has grown post-2020. In this narrative, Trump is, by turns, an all-purpose bogeyman, an oaf, a criminal, a sadist, and an evil mastermind. On my side of the aisle we don’t like to acknowledge that he might just actually be a skilled politician who, through a combination of circumstance and effort, has cultivated a loyal base of voters who genuinely believe in him. We disparage these people, particularly blue-collar Americans who once made up a large segment of the Democratic Party’s base, and disregard their disillusionment with the direction of our party as a symptom of some unshakeable madness rather than a legitimate critique. 

And yet I say all this, and think a lot more of it, and still, I find myself totally certain that I am voting for Biden. At 20, this will be my first time voting in a presidential election. It’s something I’ve looked forward to for years. But it’s not really living up to my expectations this year. I’m voting for Biden because my morals and principles are fundamentally much more aligned with the ones he stands for as a Democrat. I’m voting for Biden because the events of January 6th were too much of a raw violation of the sanctity of democracy for me to ever overlook. I’m voting for Biden because it doesn’t feel like I have a choice. I have some faith in him because I think despite his administration’s attempts to assuage the ever-multiplying concerns of the far left, he is fairly moderate, but I also don’t have faith in that because I have no idea how much he himself is propelling the direction of his campaign and administration. I am far from the first to say it, but put simply, he feels like the lesser of two evils. 

I’m unhappy with my party and my candidate. I’m a moderate, not a progressive, and I think the Democratic agenda has been increasingly bogged down by a desire to appeal to a vocal minority on the far left who prioritize unrealistic and unreasonable demands over the needs of the American people. A sort of bitter idealism about what can and should be achieved politically has prevented those in the leadership of the Democratic Party from making the pragmatic and necessary choices that could have led to a candidate like Pete Buttigieg leading this election cycle today. But at the end of the day, I do not support the Republican agenda which means that Biden will very reluctantly get my vote this November, if he’s still running and/or alive.