Joe Biden and the Two Rivaling Trump Worldviews
By: Alexis Romero
Tags: 2020 Presidential Race, Obama, News, Politics, Racism

In Joe Biden’s announcement video, he said something that is widely controversial, for no apparent reason.

“I believe history will look back on four years of this president, and all he embraces, as an aberrant moment in time. But if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation — who we are–and I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”

I emphasized the controversy above: the view that Trump is an aberrant moment in time. In other words, Biden is saying that the president is a uniquely bad figure in our politics. More specifically, he is a person and problem that is in some ways seperate from other forces in our politics that many on the left see as problematic.

To best understand why Biden’s aberration stance is so contentious, it’s important to hear the opposite, more mainstream view among Democrats. This position is most embodied by the line that Trump is a “symptom, not a cause.” (I’m gonna call these two positions the aberration view vs. symptom view).

Here is former Obama advisor Jon Favreau explaining the symptom view in direct response to Biden: “We don’t believe Trump is an aberration; we believe he is the symptom, not the cause, and the Republican Party has become rotten to its core.” The symptom view, has been relayed by the former president himself. It says that Trump did not come out of nowhere, that there is a broader political system, run in large part by the Republican Party, that has fueled the rise of this presidency.

Political Privilege

As someone who would prefer that Biden not win the nomination, I feel quite comfortable saying that he is completely in the right on this issue, and anyone who is trying to take the opposite view misunderstoods what’s going on here.

For starters, Biden does not come out of nowhere to make his aberration view. It comes after several minutes of detailing the events of Charlottesville. And after reminding the viewer of the president’s ‘fine people on both sides’ statement, Biden goes, “in that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime.”

And on this specific point, Biden is right, Trump is different. Make whatever criticisms you want about the non-Trump GOP leaders from recent memory, but one thing is for certain, George W. Bush would never make those Charlottesvilles comments. Paul Ryan would never make those comments — neither would Mitt Romney or John McCain, the two former Republican nominees.

John McCain & Mitt Romney: Image from Wikipedia Commons

The symptom idea comes from a place of political and financial privilege, as it sidesteps the people the Trump administration has actually, personally hurt. Everyone who has lost their healthcare since 2017; the troops who have been flung into poorly managed overseas conflicts; the families who’ve suffered from the administration’s inhumane border policy; those who have been harassed, or beaten due to the resurgent wave of white supremacy. Trump is part of a larger set of problems, yes, but he is also a problem in and of himself. Do not diminish the damage he has done, and do not underestimate the damage he can continue to do.

Biden is not stupid. He understands that the world is not magically peaceful or prosperous if Trump is defeated. But at a certain point, every political movement needs a goal, and if Trump is merely as symptom of the Republican Party, and the Republican Party is merely a symptom of Racism or Gerrymandering, and Gerrymandering is just the symptom of some other problem — we eventually find ourselves going down a never ending depressing rabbit hole of problems for no productive reason. I applaud Biden for venturing outside of the norm, because regardless of whether it’s accurate or not, Trump being a potentially once-in-a-lifetime problem is atleast an idea that can inspire hope.