(Credit for the voiceover for this article goes to the great Samuel Lipson)
When historians write about resistance liberalism in the future, one fact that will likely be forgotten is that it was, at least by some standards, the most effective opposition movement America had seen in several generations. When Trump left the Oval Office in disgrace in January of 2021, he did so as a one-term president who had presided over his party’s loss of both the House and the Senate. Not since Harry Truman had a chief executive seen their party lose so much power so quickly, and not since Herbert Hoover had they done so while only serving a single term. Under the banner of opposition to the Trump White House and what it stood for, Democrats after 2016 won races everywhere from New York and California to Alabama and West Virginia. They flipped their most House seats in a single election since Watergate, clawed back power at the state and local levels, and set the still-standing all-time record for the most votes received in a single election in U.S. history.
Then they failed. When made to select a leader during the 2020 primaries, the political elites and hyper-engaged voters who led the opposition to Trump put their lot behind Joe Biden, an elderly egomaniac thoroughly dedicated to the failed old ways of the past. Unable to manage the unfavorable circumstances he was thrust into soon after taking power, Biden and his administration floundered. In spite of his party’s continued strength in the decisive swing states during his tenure, the president’s insistence in running for a second term sent Democrats into 2024 with a losing hand. Even a last-minute switch-up wasn’t sufficient to save their chances in what ultimately became a referendum on a deeply, uniquely unpopular White House. Trump, winning both the electoral college and the popular vote, finally established himself as the permanent force in American politics that liberals had tried desperately to prevent him from being.
In the months since then, it has been customary to speak about this outcome as more-or-less inevitable—the result of broad, longstanding trends relating to the supposed excesses of Trump’s opposition. There are some elements of truth to this. Many of the hills that the #Resistance chose to die on proved over the past eight years to be less than fruitful, and its pathological deference towards leadership played a large role in enabling Biden’s follies in the first place. But, and perhaps far more than this, the story of the #Resistance and its failure was also the story of Joe Biden, the man. Once he won the nomination in the spring of 2020, his priorities became their priorities, his mistakes became their mistakes, and his appeal (or lack thereof) became their appeal. This was the most important moment in the history of the eight-year-long opposition to Trump. It was what ultimately doomed the movement, it was entirely contingent on the decision of one man to seek the presidency at the age of 77.
So, what if he never made that decision? How would things have turned out if one of the other personalities from the primary got a chance to lead and embody America’s left-of-center from the spring of 2020 onward? For our final article of the Biden era, we will take a look at this exact question and things that never were.
What if Bloomberg won?
When one first considers how things may have turned out had Biden never sought the nomination in 2020, they are immediately forced to reckon with an unnerving possibility—one that stands as possibly the last remaining argument that the former VP’s decision to return to politics was a net positive. This is the likelihood that the 2020 Democratic nominee could have been Michael Bloomberg in his stead. Although the elderly former Republican billionaire was, and is, an awkward fit for the party on paper, his centrist, pro-establishment positioning could have fit him depressingly closely with the desires of the majority of Democratic primary voters in 2020. Although it went unrecognized by most of the candidates in the primary, the vast majority of whom spent their campaigns attempting low-rent Bernie impressions, a substantial number of Democratic voters were more interested in stability than change. Depending on how the question was phrased, some polls found up to 60% of primary voters in support of a nominee who would return politics to “normalcy” instead of one who would fundamentally change the way Washington worked. Bloomberg, with his money and moderate record, would have been set to appeal to this constituency in a way no other credible candidates in a Biden-less primary would have. He very nearly overtook this lane in our timeline, once even leading Biden for second place at a point in February. With his money and support from the establishment media, he could have very well gone all the way.
Whether or not he would have managed to beat Trump, however, is very much an open question. Due to his late entry to the race, head-to-head polls between Trump and Bloomberg are hard to come by, with less than a two dozen total being listed in the RCP database. The numbers that do exist aren’t altogether horrible for Bloomberg, however, usually showing him slightly behind Bernie and Biden (who always polled the best against Trump) but faring better than the likes of Buttigieg and Warren. This, combined with the fact that we know that the kind of competence-focused, back-to-normalcy campaign that Biden ran in real life was successful (even if just barely), is likely enough to get Bloomberg over the line with a more conservative-oriented map than we saw in real life.
This moment, and the trifecta it brings, is about the best that it gets for Mini Mike. With a reputation oriented entirely around his supposed competence, the mounting global crises of his term shatter his reputation even more thoroughly than they shattered Biden’s in our timeline. While there is no one turning point like the Afghanistan withdrawal was for Biden (Bloomberg almost certainly stalls that), rising inflation and the persistence of COVID chip away at his approval ratings until he is solidly underwater in advance of the 2022 midterms. With the Democrats even more establishment-coded under him than they were under Biden, 2022 winds up the semi-red wave it never was in our timeline—a thorough defeat that forces the now-80-year-old Bloomberg to forgo a re-election bid. The sum total of his legacy will be several failed attempts to pass gun control and election reform laws, a surprisingly ambitious corporate-friendly climate bill, and a measure of détente with China that actually turns out to be quite productive.
Standing in as Bloomberg’s heir and successor for 2024 is VP Stacey Abrams, the political incompetent and former Georgia state house minority leader he selected to throw a bone to the “left” after the contentious 2020 primary. Although received with mass acclaim by mainstream liberals at the start of her campaign in 2023 and essentially coronated during the primary, Abrams proves to be an inept campaigner unable to revive the fortunes of her flagging party. Against a Republican ticket helmed by Donald Trump, who Bloomberg’s Attorney General declines to prosecute, and Glenn Youngkin, a far-right star made famous for winning a trifecta in the solid Bloomberg state of Virginia, Abrams goes down in a devastating defeat.
What if Bernie won?
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