One of the most overused moral tropes, the eternal battle between the dark and the light, served as the overarching theme during Joe Biden’s speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) and continued through his victory speech. Biden employed religious iconography, often associated with the evangelical right, to paint America as “shaped by the constant battle between our better angels and our darkest impulses”. The talk of angels and the invocation of hymns arrive at a time when Americans are growing more secular by the day. Joe Biden may actually believe he is the savior of America’s soul or his political advisers may have believed that such an image would resonate with his target audiences. Regardless, Biden’s post-election actions will either reverse the trend of partisanship that has risen over the past 30 years or cement the partisan divides that threaten to divide the nation squarely in two.
In a time of binary political moralism, the increasing tendency for Americans to identify with one party’s moral foundations, repudiate the other party’s morals, and live in increasingly homogeneous ideological communities, America needs a president that unifies the people around common cause, shared humanity, and the ever-evolving American Dream. Even though Biden declares himself an “American president” who “will work as hard for those who didn’t support [him]” as for those who did, his message of unity stands in stark contrast to his depiction of Trump and his supporters as the harbingers of darkness. Democratic crusaders, emboldened by Joe Biden’s message of liberating America from the darkness, will only deepen the partisan chasm in America that the Trump administration has dredged deeper over the past four years. Given the current political climate, Biden’s binary moralistic rhetoric, which often compares the two major parties via the oversimplified analogy of darkness and light, may lock the nation on its course towards ever-increasing partisanship.
The Evolution of Moralism
Even though religion and moralism in contemporary political discourse are often associated with the evangelical right, Democrats throughout history have also embraced such moralism, notably Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter. In his speech to Congress in support of the Treaty of Versailles, President Wilson exclaimed, “[t]he stage [was] set…by the hand of God….We cannot turn back. We can only go forward….The light streams upon the path ahead, and nowhere else”. One core difference between 20th century liberal moralists and Joe Biden is the demographics of the American populace to which they are appealing.
According to the Pew Research Center, each subsequent generation of Americans show a distinct exodus away from Christian religious identity. Amid the backdrop of these secular trends, Joe Biden’s deployment of religious iconography seems anachronistic. It is therefore surprising that his campaign rhetoric represents an abrupt departure from the Democratic Party’s traditionally palatable, inclusive, and secular language. Consider the following five short quips, each serving as a Democratic presidential campaign slogan in the 21st century.
- “Leadership for the New Millennium”
- “A Stronger America”
- “Yes We Can”
- “Forward”
- “I’m With Her”
Compare these to the slogan that adorns every corner of Biden’s website and dotted his DNC speech, “Battle for the Soul of our Nation”. This religiously schismatic slogan is a far cry from his Democratic predecessors’. Why then, in an increasingly secular political environment, does Biden and his speech writing team return to these religious themes?
I posit that ideology is the new religion. In the younger generations that have lost touch with religion, they have supplanted the traditional church-centric moral authority with a new politically centered moral authority. Joe Biden and his team have realized that pseudo-religious language resonates well with the base of the Democratic Party, well-educated whites who are at least somewhat familiar with much of the pantheon of Judeo-Christian morality and rhetoric. Although Biden is a practicing Catholic, his choice to lean into the religious language instead of opting for secular alternatives was surely a decision discussed in detail by his inner circle of advisors.
In a time when the nation needs unity, these dualistic assessments of American politics exacerbate the hyper-partisanship that already exists in America. As Biden emphasizes the religious angle, declaring himself, “an ally of the light, not of the darkness,” I fear he may begin to embody the sentiment of Second Corinthians 6:14.
“Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.
For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common?
Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?”
Coinciding with the decline of Christianity in the United States, partisanship and polarization have shown unprecedented growth.
Partisanship in America:
America is more polarized now than at any time in recent history. Since the Pew Research Center began tracking approval by political party in 1953, the gap in approval between the incumbent party and the opposition party has grown ever wider. Clinton, Bush (43), Obama, and Trump each set all-time records for this approval disparity by party, with Trump generating an unprecedented 81-percentage-point gap. This polarization also manifests itself in congressional voting records. Since the 1960s, the median ideology of the Democratic and Republican Parties have drifted farther and farther from the center with the Republicans straying away from the center more quickly.
The ramifications of binary political moralism are also apparent on social media. The research paper, “Filter Bubbles, Echo Chambers, and Online News Consumption” by a group of researchers at Oxford University, underscore the complex relationship between the diverse online media ecosystem and partisanship. In their study of 50,000 US-based internet users, they found that “social networks and search engines are associated with an increase in the mean ideological distance between individuals”. However, somewhat counterintuitively, these same channels also are associated with an increase in an individual’s exposure to material from his or her less preferred side of the political spectrum. Finally, the vast majority of online news consumption is accounted for by individuals simply visiting the home pages of their favorite, typically mainstream, news outlets, tempering the consequences—both positive and negative—of recent technological changes”. As discussed above, Americans news readership is highly partisan.
One unexpected place to find the implications of binary political moralism is Tinder, the dating app often associated with casual sex. It is not uncommon to see a profile with the caption, “If you voted for Trump, swipe left!” In other words, “get lost!”. Tinder is not the only dating site that is becoming more political. According to Mic.com, “OkCupid saw a 64% uptick in political terms on user profiles following the 2016 presidential election”. When Americans’ news, social media, and dating already exists in two separate spheres, can President-elect Biden change America’s collision course?
Biden’s Approach to Post-Trump Partisanship:
Although Biden potentially has the power to reverse the tide of polarization in America, the issues of time and momentum are working against him. In an honest assessment of Biden’s first term potential, I believe his goal on the issue of partisanship should be inflection. He will not likely unify America, but he may be able to slow or even stop the widening of the political divide. Even if Biden were to wholeheartedly attempt to bring the American people back together, I believe the outcome would be limited. Many people’s views have been forged over decades and the inclusive rhetoric of one president is not going to drastically and immediately change the views of the people. How much can his words do when many partisans believe the other party is filled with fools and zealots?
Biden is not beyond the realm of being liked by Republicans, but right now, he is often feared by Republicans. Trump and right-leaning news sources have associated Biden with socialism in the minds of many Americans. Whether Biden is a socialist is irrelevant; in politics, perception is everything. Biden may win marginal support among moderate republicans if he were to stay in the middle lane (especially if Democrats take bicameral control of Congress via the Georgia runoff), avoid the pressure of the left-wing of his party, appear on conservative news outlets, appoint some conservatives to his cabinet, and oppose hyper-partisan actions such as stacking the court. He will demonstrate through his actions that he is not the feared socialist, but a Clintonesque Blue Dog Democrat.
There are three reasons why Joe Biden will not likely take the centrist conciliatory approach. Firstly, if his backhanded victory speech is any indication, Biden will not double down on bipartisanship. Although he paid plenty of lip service to reconciliation, he still clings to his binary moralistic rhetoric of “saving the soul of America” and likens himself to the “better angels”. If he truly wanted to welcome Trump supporters with open arms, he probably should not have emphasized restoring decency and avoiding our darkest impulses – implying that Trump, and in many people’s mind his voting base, is indecent and immoral.
Secondly, Biden will not risk fragmenting his party in two between the centrist cohort and the progressive wing. Given the power dynamics of the two-party system, the splintering of the Democratic party could spell disaster for their candidates in the 2022 election, and could cripple the party’s fundraising, influence, and power. As the Republican Party contended with the Tea Party over the last 10 years, strategy savvy Democrats understand the political risk of intraparty conflict. A divided Democratic Party would be politically impotent versus a united Republican party voting as a block. Biden would avoid this significant political risk.
Thirdly, the phenomenon of asymmetrical polarization has increased the ideological distance that Biden would need to traverse to woo Republicans, even centrist Republicans. As the average distance between the political centers of the two parties have drifted apart, with Republicans leading the charge away from the center, a centrist political strategy has become less and less viable.
There is one caveat. One surefire way to unite Americans across the political spectrum is fear of a foreign enemy. Enemies on the scale of the Axis Powers during WWII, Russia during the Cold War, or terrorism on U.S. soil during 9/11 would be destabilizing for the entire globe but would send a surge of bipartisan nationalism through the American populace. One of the only countries that could potentially pose a threat of that scale in the next four years is China; however, President Xi Jinping’s preoccupation with economic growth and domestic social stability makes it unlikely that he will be a belligerent instigator for military conflict. Although I would never hope for armed conflict, I do recognize its unifying powers across the partisan divide.
In these times of trials and tribulation, how does Biden reunite a nation that has slowly drifted apart? Biden cannot become the fifth consecutive president to set a record for partisanship in America. He must reverse course on his binary moralistic rhetoric and accept the complexities of governing in a society beleaguered by competing value systems. Greg Weiner in National Affairs succinctly captures the deficit of the moralist: “where the politician sees shades of gray and operates in a world of contradictions and tensions, the moralist, hostile to nuance, perceives only darkness and light”. To unify Americans across the ever-widening political divide, Biden needs to think beyond the simple moralistic binary of “dark and light” and confront the nuanced moral ambiguities that come with governing head on.