When, in February, Jon Stewart returned to the Daily Show, he offered a monologue
in which he ruminated on the advanced ages of Joe Biden and Donald Trump and was,
for this, thrashed for a week by social media Clintonites for allegedly
asserting there was no difference between Trump and Biden--a conclusion no reasonably intelligent viewer of Stewart's show could have sincerely reached.
This sort of thing has become common in this political season, in which Democrats find themselves stuck with a bad president in Biden who, having insisted on running for reelection, stands an excellent chance of losing in November and turning the White House over to Trump again. The fear of another Trump regime and the recognition, whether forthrightly conceded or disingenuously denied, of Biden's weakness makes many of them overly sensitive to any critique they feel could dampen support for their candidate. These accuse progressives of drawing a "false equivalence" between Biden and Trump, of arguing there's no difference between the two. It's asserted that progressives say such things far more than progressives ever actually say any thing of the sort. Probably tens-of-thousands of times more. Some progressives do say such things, of course. Not many. Those who do are frequently engaged in transparent trolling. The character-limit of a platform like Twitter, which mandates concision and discourages overly detailed discourse, knocks lots of points off lots of pitches as well. The caricature isn't based on nothing, but it isn't based on any good-faith assessment of progressives' thinking on these things either. It is, rather, a political attack, one that, as was the case with Stewart, is almost invariably offered in bad faith. Preemptively dismissing as some gross misrepresentation any equivalence between Biden and Trump is a way of avoiding addressing very real and uncomfortable similarities between the two--a way of deflecting an honest but arguably unflattering assessment of the candidate they prefer to win.
Even knowing what I'm about to do will be misrepresented by some (used to feed that caricature), it's still a matter worth dragging into the light and examining.[1] Among other things, it gets at some pretty fundamental problems with the pale horse that passes for contemporary American liberal democracy. Some of those uncomfortable similarities are straightforward; Biden and Trump hold the same opposition to the same progressive policy. Some are de facto; one of them claims to support a given policy but, in practice or outcome, doesn't. The similarities are, however, real and substantial, and this infantile impulse of so many to not only deny or downplay them but become quite angry at anyone who makes note of them--to refuse to take part in an adult conversation on the subject, which is, after all, about electing a President of the United States--merits some pushback.
For anyone who supports the adoption of a single-payer Medicare For All healthcare system, for example, there's no
difference between Biden and Trump. Both very loudly and obnoxiously oppose it, and both have used the same false and grotesquely misleading industry-authored attacks on it, something I covered during the 2020 campaign.
"A few weeks ago, Biden launched a crusade of lies intended to discredit and defeat M4A, employing many of the same 'arguments' against it being advanced by Donald Trump. At an AARP forum in Iowa, Biden said that under M4A, 'Medicare goes away as you know it. All the Medicare you have is gone.' This is, of course, entirely false--M4A, as the name implies, just significantly expands the existing Medicare program--but it also mirrors what Trump wrote in an op-ed back in October devoted, in part, to attacking the policy. According to Trump, 'so-called Medicare for All would really be Medicare for None. Under the Democrats' plan, today's Medicare would be forced to die.' Biden has repeatedly employed Trump's Orwellian characterization of M4A as taking away health coverage, rather than expanding it. '[T]he Democrats would eliminate every American's private and employer-based health plan,' wrote Trump. Biden:
"'How many of you like your employer based healthcare? Do you think it was adequate? Now if I come along and say you’re finished, you can’t have it anymore, well that’s what Medicare for All does. You cannot have it. Period.'"Trump appeals to the absolute worst, most selfish 'got-mine' entitlement psychology. '[Medicare For All] means that after a life of hard work and sacrifice,' he wrote, 'seniors would no longer be able to depend on the benefits they were promised.' Biden incorporates all of this--without attribution, of course--into his own recent anti-Medicare For All ad."
When, during that campaign, Biden was asked if, as president, he would sign Medicare For All into law if the progressives managed to get it through congress, Biden essentially said he would veto it--a policy supported by 67% of Americans and 87% of Biden's own party.[2] To beat back calls for M4A, Biden's handlers had him propose a "public option," a public, no-profit health insurance program people could join and that would compete with private insurance companies--an idea which also drew sky-high support from both Democrats and Americans in general. When he said he'd veto M4A, Biden had said he would "veto anything that delays providing the security and the certainty of health care being available now," and Biden spokesman Andrew Bates said Biden's "urgent priority is getting to universal coverage as
quickly as possible" by "build[ing] on the profound benefits of the Affordable Care Act
with a Medicare-like public option." So it's a matter of urgency, see? Then, once Biden was elected and the advocates of M4A defeated, Biden never even mentioned the public option again. At all.
So if one believes M4A or something like it is the policy the U.S. should adopt--or, more to the point, if one is among the millions of Americans drowning in the current healthcare system and desperately in need of this reform--both Biden and Trump have the same position on it. Both are not only vehemently opposed to it but are actively harmful to one's cause, because they use their stature and the platform given them to poison their supporters against the idea. Even for those who are willing to settle for a weak-sauce public option (that wouldn't work), there is functionally no difference between the candidates.
Ending money-in-politics corruption isn't just a top issue for progressives, it's the issue, the one above all others, because it's the one that impacts everything else. A voter looking for a full-bore reform effort to roll back this corruption won't find a great deal of functional differences in these candidates. Trump is someone who used "Drain the Swamp" as a 2016 campaign slogan, then, while in office, became the Swamp. Biden is someone who has regularly talked about reform--in Democratic politics at that level, this sort of talk is mandatory--but does so while wallowing in the same corruption.
In his 2020 campaign, Biden's handlers had him call to "increase transparency of election spending," including a ban on dark money--money filtered into campaigns through "social welfare" groups that don't publicly disclose the source of that money. That season's Democratic platform also calls for eliminating it, but over $1 billion in dark money went into that 2020 campaign, and most of it went toward Democrats. The top beneficiary? Joe Biden. Any enthusiasm Biden pretended to have for forcing disclosure and ending dark money dissipated as soon as he was elected, though once safe in the knowledge that Senate Republicans would filibuster any effort to pass such a measure, Biden engaged in the ritual--and very minimal--theater of urging congress to pass it (while doing nothing to try to pass it). Right after that, dark money flooded the midterm elections; Democrats were again the major beneficiaries. No reform was ever passed and going into the 2024 election, Biden had, as of February, more than 7 times as much dark-money support as Trump. Dems have also been unwilling to voluntarily give up dark money. Under the corporate lobbyist handpicked by Biden to run the Democratic National Committee, the DNC has twice blocked even allowing consideration of a measure advanced by progressive Democrats to ban the use of dark money in Democratic primaries.
2020 Biden prescribed "restrict[ing] super PACs" and for "a constitutional amendment to entirely eliminate private dollars from our federal elections." Except, well...
"Data from the Center for Responsive Politics indicates that Biden received more than $580 million from individual contributors giving more than $200 [in the 2020 campaign], compared to President Trump’s $325 million."Biden topped Trump in prostituting his potential presidency to oligarchic mega-donors looking to buy a piece of it:
"[T]he elite world of billionaires and multimillionaires has remained a critical cog in the Biden money machine. From Hollywood to Silicon Valley to Wall Street, Mr. Biden’s campaign has aggressively courted the megadonor class. It has raised almost $200 million from donors who gave at least $100,000 to his joint operations with the Democratic Party in the last six months--about twice as much as President Trump raised from six-figure donors in that time, according to an analysis of new federal records. As the size of checks has grown, the Biden campaign has become less transparent, declining so far to disclose the names of its most influential fund-raisers..."As for those super PACs...
Under Biden, the Democratic Establishment was, among other things, openly directing super PAC spending against progressive Democrats in the 2022 midterm primaries. And, of course, all talk of that constitutional amendment Biden pretended to support disappeared as soon as he was elected.
Biden handlers promised he would "work with congress" to enact legislation to prevent congressmembers "from being influenced by personal financial holdings"--gently worded, with no talk of "corruption." But after a series of scandals drew some attention to the issue--and drew calls to ban stock trades among members of congress--President Biden was missing in action, refusing "to take sides in a debate that could divide his fellow Democrats."
If you want to see the details of Biden's 2020 "Plan For A Government That Works For the People," which I've been quoting here, you have to go to the Wayback Machine to see an archived copy. Go to the page of Biden's official website that used to be its home, all you get now is a fundraising pitch.
So if you're a progressive who recognizes the need for rooting out this corruption, your "choice" is between Biden, who will engage in the ritual Dem theater of saying he supports some reforms while doing nothing to see pass them and aggressively prostituting his office to every entrenched interest, and Trump, who, these days, offers little pretense that he's about anything except serving America's overlords. Biden won't work to turn his supporters against reform, but you won't get any reform out of him either.
How about raising the minimum wage to $15/hour and indexing it? Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign took this idea mainstream and made it the official position of the Democratic party; two-thirds of Americans and 87% of Democrats support it, and it was one of the few major headline progressive policies Biden adopted during his 2020 campaign. Then, given the opportunity to pass it, he abandoned the proposal only a couple weeks into his presidency (though he did raise the minimum wage for federal employees--bully for them). A 2016 Washington Post article offers an hilarious look at Trump's many positions on the minimum wage in that campaign. In sequence, Trump opposed raising the federal minimum wage, said wages were already "too high," as if he supported reducing it, said he supports raising the min. wage to $15, said wages were "too low," supported raising the min. wage but not to $15, supported entirely abolishing the federal min. wage and supported raising the min. wage to $10/hour. In office, Trump made no effort to do any of these things. Take your pick.
Concerned about climate change? Trump's position on fossil fuel exploitation is simply "Drill, Baby, Drill"--pump it out, burn it up, can't waste it or the planet fast enough. Biden will mouth the platitudes about climate-change presently required of national Democratic pols while becoming the 3rd president in a row, from both parties, to oversee a major expansion in fossil fuel exploitation. The 2nd, of course, was Trump. Candidate Biden called for dialing back domestic oil production; President Biden's initial tepid efforts to this end faced opposition from the industry and Republican states and he folded with minimal opposition. On the campaign trail, Biden called for ending oil and gas drilling on public lands; in office, he's approved more oil and gas drilling permits on public lands than did Trump for 3 of the 4 years Trump was in office. Candidate Biden called for an end to offshore oil and gas drilling; it took President Biden only 9 months to hold "the largest-ever auction of oil and gas drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico's history" (the administration claimed it was forced to do so by a court ruling; this turned out to be a lie). A few months later, Biden was announcing new lease sales for drilling on public lands. Biden's Inflation Reduction Act--one of the only significant pieces of legislation passed by his administration--retards the development of alternative energy by mandating, by law, massive giveaways of public lands and waters to Bil Oil for fossil fuel exploitation as a precondition of approving alternative energy leases:
"Under the new law, the Department of the Interior cannot lease any offshore areas for wind energy development until it holds oil and gas auctions for at least 60 million offshore acres the preceding year. A similar deal was struck on land: The Department of Interior must lease at least 2 million acres of public land, or 50 percent of the acres nominated by industry groups, before expanding renewables like wind and solar."Under Biden, oil production has not only hit yet another record high for the U.S., it has hit a world record high: "The United States is producing more oil than any country ever has." Enjoy that sea-level rise.
Biden is presently seeing support dry up as a consequence of his absolutely unwavering backing of the corrupt, far-right Netanyahu regime in Israel--something even few Israelis support--and his backing of its campaign of mass murder in Gaza (a murder-spree opposed by 55% of Americans and 75% of Democrats). Netanyahu has openly tried to ignite a wider regional war and drag the U.S. into it; the Biden administration makes the occasional show of opposition to Netanyahu regime atrocities while keeping the American weapons and money required to carry them out flowing. Trump, meanwhile, has denounced even Biden's empty, performative antics on this matter as nothing less than having "abandoned Israel."
The Supreme Court is becoming the slaughterhouse of the United States, the place where, in no good ways, America as we've always known it is being reduced to a bloody revenant. Stacked with incompetent, corrupt rightist goons and half-wits put in place by presidents who lost the popular vote, the Supremes have set to work very enthusiastically chainsawing civil liberties, civil society and what little is left of liberal democracy in the U.S. and have a plethora of Republican officials in the states eager to feed them their next victims. In an effort to escape prosecution for his crimes, Donald Trump just brought a case before them arguing that he had "absolute immunity" for criminal actions he carried out while president--a claim directly contrary to U.S. law and with no basis whatsoever in that law, practice or history--and instead of simply laughing him out of court, the rightist justices seemed to be considering inventing this immunity. Any popular progressive reform efforts for the foreseeable future will face this contingents' lockstep opposition. The constitutional remedy is to expand the court but--stop me if this is beginning to sound familiar--both Biden and Trump (the latter of whom played the largest single role in creating this mess in the first place) are on the record in opposition to any such effort.
There are, of course, real differences between Trump and Biden on a wide range of issues--it isn't true, as segregationist George Wallace used to claim of Democrats and Republicans, that there isn't "a dime's worth of difference" between them--but my concern here is that supporters of these sorts of big, crucially needed reforms, a more progressive foreign policy, a wiser use of resources and so many other issues won't find an ally in either Biden or Trump. They find, instead, just two opportunistic politicians, late-stage-capitalist dinosaurs squatting in the same old decaying status quo, unconcerned with the wants and needs of their people and not only defiantly astride history and acting as a bulwark against human progress but, by their actions and inactions, turning back the clock on humanity itself. Biden will sometimes offer lip-service to a more progressive approach, do nothing toward adopting any such approach and everything to thwart it and his supporters will then insist his empty words establish a world of difference between he and Trump. Trump engages in progressive posturing, appealing to progressive values shared by most Americans but that are given no meaningful place in the allegedly progressive party, while, in reality, leading his followers down a very dark route. At the end of their path is the end of liberal democracy, their indispensable ally in that journey the Clintonite right, which dominates Democratic party officialdom and persistently--and cynically and self-servingly--screeches about the imminent threat to democracy while vigorously paving the way to that end by aggressively closing off all paths to sane, progressive reform.
The Clintonites who take to social media to smear what passes for the left by ranting about "horseshoe theory," the idea that the far-right and "far-left"--by which they mean progressives who hold views shared by large majorities of Americans--eventually meet and become very similar, are the same ones who, bereft of any sense of nuance (or, apparently, self-awareness) fume in indignant rage that anyone would dare suggest Biden and Trump are the same (usually accompanied by accusations that whoever makes the suggestion is an agent of Russia). The sad truth, though, is that, from a progressive perspective, they often are. Acknowledging this shouldn't cause an internet riot. Anyone with any genuine concern with American liberal democracy is going to have to acknowledge that if any trace of it is to survive, it's going to have to do a lot better than this.
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[1] The problematic parallels between Trump and Biden is something this writer has covered before. That piece, from before the worst of the covid pandemic that put Biden in office, was written from the perspective of how having, in Biden, such a Trump-like candidate effectively nullified a lot of what Democrats could--and should--use against Trump.
[2] The polls I've referenced in this piece are all ones I've used in recent social media exchanges. Here, I haven't done a deep dive into a broad cross-section of polling on the issues upon which they touch, which would yield better results but is a lot more work than what is needed to write this, a quick editorial.
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