28 United States The EconomistAugust 22nd 2020
I
n their prescientbook “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks” the po-
litical scientists Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann coined a
phrase that has come to encapsulate the relative standing of Amer-
ica’s two main parties: “asymmetric polarisation”. While acknowl-
edging that both were becoming more radical, the term describes
how much more jarring and pronounced this shift is on the right.
In a little over a decade Republicans have gravitated from John
McCain’s big-tent moderation, via Mitt Romney’s more stringent
conservatism, to become, in Mr Ornstein’s phrase, “a radical Trum-
pist cult”. On the left, hardliners such as Bernie Sanders and Alex-
andria Ocasio-Cortez have meanwhile challenged but not funda-
mentally altered their party’s centre-left pitch. Democrats have
gravitated from Barack Obama campaigning for a $10 an hour
minimum wage, to Hillary Clinton campaigning for $12, to Joe Bi-
den promising $15. Republicans who decry their opponents as rad-
ical socialists are, like disorientated train passengers leaving a sta-
tion, chiefly misattributing their own accelerating momentum to
a relatively stationary neighbour. Their febrile opposition to Mr
Obama’s health-care reform, though it was modelled on one pro-
mulgated by Mr Romney, is one of many illustrations of this.
Mr Biden’s primary win, which was confirmed at the Demo-
crats’ virtual national convention this week, suggested their train
had in fact moved even less than many thought. Even after the left
flexed its muscles and dominated coverage of the contest, the for-
mer vice-president won almost twice as many votes as Mr Sanders
with a platform not dramatically to the left of his two predecessors.
Emboldened by Mr Trump’s unpopularity, which makes Mr Biden
the favourite to win in November, he now appears to be attempting
an even more audacious ploy: to rebuild America’s eroded centre.
This week’s covid-disrupted Democratic convention, which
has been taking place in two-hour daily instalments, provided evi-
dence for this. At the halfway mark, centrists—including some-
time Republicans such as John Kasich and Colin Powell, both of
whom endorsed Mr Biden—were far more prominent than left-
wingers. To the extent that lefties such as Mr Sanders featured, it
was to stress their commitment to Democratic unity—more force-
fully than they did during the party’s ill-tempered 2016 confab.
The virtual convention also involved hardly any mention of di-visivepolicy.The main focus was on Mr Biden’s kindness, concil-
iatory manner and long record—which the left hates —of seeking
bipartisan compromise. The friendly Republicans helped under-
line that. A segment on Mr Biden’s deep friendship with Mr
McCain contributed a genuinely endearing moment.
This emphasis was consistent with the primaries. As they made
clear, most Democratic voters mainly want to remove Mr Trump
and, despite having little enthusiasm for the old, rather inarticu-
late Mr Biden, think his moderation and inoffensiveness, com-
bined with his stature, make him the likeliest to do so. That most
left-wingers are also putting victory (over “fascism”, as Ms Ocasio-
Cortez put it) ahead of ideological purity this time has further lib-
erated him to be his authentically moderate self.
No longer need he tie himself into knots over his various “evo-
lutions” on social issues. It is now enough for him to smile and
represent a united Democratic front against a detested presi-
dent—as Michelle Obama implied, by saying how much she hated
politics, while offering her fulsome endorsement.
The staging of the convention also helped the Biden campaign
bury the usual infighting. The traditional stadium-affair pits fac-
tions against one another like football fans. This year’s “roll-call”,
during which delegates rang in the votes from their respective
states, left a more expansive impression of national politics. As the
sequence of masked figures, wearing local dress in Hawaii or tout-
ing Rhode Island seafood, called in votes from across their conti-
nent-sized country, intra-part rivalries seemed small or irrelevant.
The convention was intended as an all-American repulse to Mr
Trump. It quite often came over that way.
This was politically spot-on. So long as Mr Trump continues to
stir up Democratic voters—as he will—Mr Biden’s task will be to
keep breathing unity, promising decency, avoiding blunders (and,
in his secret heart, praying for no miracle vaccine before Novem-
ber 4th). He has shown himself to be up to this and it may be
enough. He may also lack the campaign skills to do more.
A perhaps more intriguing question is whether the Democrats’
burst of pragmatism could outlast the election. The conventional
wisdom is, of course not. The activist left exists to make trouble. It
has already put Mr Biden on notice that its compliance is Trump-
specific. Yet there are two possible caveats to that.
The 2018 mid-terms and this year’s primaries tightened the
centre-left’s grip on the party. A sizeable Democratic victory, re-
plenishing its stock of moderates disproportionately, would do so
further. New Democratic senators from Georgia or North Carolina
would have little time for Mr Sanders.Moderation televised
In addition, the crises the next administration will inherit could
create propitious circumstances for trade-offs. A Biden one would
probably start by pushing a huge stimulus, with blanket Demo-
cratic and some Republican support (given that almost $3trn has
already been splurged on a bipartisan basis). The left might be
mollified with some portion of that: for example, lavish climate-
related spending, a promise of Mr Biden’s platform that represents
less a leftward shift than a new political consensus.
That is still a way off; Mr Biden could come unstuck in the com-
ing weeks. But, at the time of writing, he is on track. His campaign
is making the most of his talents. It is giving those Americans just-
ly concerned about the future of their democracy something to
hope for. It even did so this week, in a possible first for presidential
campaigning, while making some pretty watchabletv. 7Lexington Unconventional
The Democrats set factionalism aside for the big push against Donald Trump