During his marathon monologue, Kevin McCarthy argued that nobody voted for Biden to be the new FDR. AOC’s interjection notwithstanding, was he right?
In a sense, yes; the 2020 election was a referendum on Trump, because both sides wanted it that way. The size of the state was not really an issue. On the other hand, nobody voted for Trump’s tax cuts in 2016, either, so McCarthy’s question missed the point. The real issue is, what are the voters really voting for?
I submit to you that an American election is mostly a contest between two teams with different visions of what this country should look like. The blue team sees America as a complex, multi-racial democracy; the red team thinks white men have a God-given right to rule, but are currently oppressed by women and minorities. Identity politics thus prevail among the vast majority of voters; abstract ideas about the size of the state only matter on the fringes. Since the two groups are fairly evenly matched, presidential elections are ultimately decided by the handful of swing voters who are motivated primarily by economic self-interest.
On this theory, Biden won the election because a majority of Americans decided that a red team led by Trump could not be trusted to run the country properly. They held no firm opinions as to whether the size of the welfare state should be increased, decreased, or held constant; they just wanted Trump and his divisiveness gone. That’s not a mandate to create new social programs, but it’s not a mandate not to, either. If Biden and the Democrats want to be bold and pursue an agenda of replacing the dollar store economy with a more worker-friendly version, the outcome of the 2024 election will depend on the fruits of their labor, as determined by the swing voters.