The coming political whiplash

The better Biden and his party do in November — the more power they win in Washington — the more the activist-driven left wing of the party will expect big political payback from the incoming administration. And this won’t primarily be from the democratic-socialist faction of voters and activists who swooned for Bernie Sanders. (That economically focused form of leftism would have a modest shot of accomplishing a realignment of our politics if the faction’s proposals for significant economic reforms were combined with a somewhat more moderate stance on social issues.)

Instead of a big Biden victory empowering the socialists, it will be left-wing culture warriors who feel emboldened to practice a politics of grand symbolic gestures and bold sloganeering on a national stage — think of today’s toppled Christopher Columbus statues and calls to “defund the police” — and do their best to pull the new president in their direction. Assuming Biden’s recent leap in the polls gets consolidated, leading to a solid win or a landslide, this faction will make the case that it deserves the credit for Trump’s evisceration and won’t hesitate to play hardball to extract concessions, using its hard-earned moral authority and threats of political reprisals (withholding support in Congress for administration priorities) to get what it wants. Any sign of Biden adopting their full cultural agenda will run the risk of weakening the president’s hand, since that agenda is popular within the Democratic Party only among social-justice activists and white urban progressives, and it is broadly unpopular in the country at large.

The result of a big Biden victory is therefore likely to be more full-tilt politics — with the Democrats moving further left than nationwide public opinion would justify.