The View from 34E on Biden's Election Problem

It’s Earth Day. Trump’s criminal trial has begun and the US Congress just approved $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and all manner of bank accounts outside the US. On a flight to DC from Chicago, that does not sit well with my seatmate in 34E - who is also my son. 

My son is a school counselor in Washington, DC. He has a Master’s degree in social work and lives in the kind of neighborhood that is popping up all over the country - rapidly gentrified with housing that is unaffordable for most. He spends his workdays counseling young kids. 

And by counseling, I don’t mean advising kids on college or how to fill out a student loan form. Jackson and his colleagues deal with kids in the midst of a massive mental health crisis, income inequality, and oftentimes despair.

This crisis is a part of Washington DC, a modern city in a market economy that rewards success and wealth creation, efficiency, and profit. Web firms, artificial intelligence, high-tech, lobbying, law firms, and defense contracting do very well there because the system is designed to ensure their success. 

But for the teachers, counselors, and so many others, success comes not because of the system but despite it. People are trying to make the system work for their schools and their families but just a few blocks from Congress and the White House, families are sleeping in their cars and going hungry at night. They are on the edge every day. And the teachers and counselors pay a steep price of their own emotional, mental, and physical health. 

There is a scene in my favorite TV show, The West Wing, where the White House communications director sits at a bar next to a salesman on the road. They fall into a conversation about why the system can’t make things just a little easier. The guy doesn’t want a handout. But he just wants it to be easier to send his daughter to college. 

That’s what we all want.

It is this system atop which Joe Biden presides. For generations, it was enough for Democrats to use this system to advance small incremental change - elect good Supreme Court justices, modestly advance health insurance, protect Head Start and NATO, provide a low-income tax credit to the poor, and foreign aid to those whom John F. Kennedy called “those yearning to break free.’’

Ever since World War II this has been enough. Personally, it was enough for me. My wife and I bought our first house in Nashville, TN in the mid-80s for $28,000. We got a federally-backed mortgage from the Farmers Home Administration. The city gave us a $15,000 grant for a new roof. That home gave us the start we needed on my $36,000-a-year salary. From there we traded up, always up.

In the booming economy, we sold our house in 1987 for $108,000. Today it would be listed at $1.1 million. That house cannot be bought and lived in by a teacher, firefighter, police officer, or social worker. That is a huge change that raises tough questions about the society and economy we have built. 

And I hear how the next generation feels about those changes from seat 34E.

And it is not good for Joe Biden. 

“Why are we giving part of $95 billion to Israel when they are killing and starving innocent Palestinians?”

“Why don’t we invest the Ukraine money in our public schools that are falling apart?’’

“Do you know how many young people in mental health crisis could be helped with that money?’’

And then, of course, there is the always-looming issue of Trump.

“Why are they prosecuting Trump for sex with a porn star?” 

I tell my son that the city of New York is prosecuting Trump - to use the prosecutors’ words - because he tried to influence an election by paying off the porn star to keep their tryst a secret.

“Really,’’ he asks, incredulous. “Isn’t that what politicians do all the time, keep the bad stuff from coming out?’’

I have a hard time disagreeing. I mumble something about signatures on business forms, that lying is wrong - blah blah, blah. 

The truth is, Trump is just a cancerous symptom of the system. He embodies the worst of a market economy that encourages his kind of  “Me at the expense of others” behavior. Cheat on your wife and pay off the porn star? Sure. Don’t pay your fair share of taxes for 30 years? That makes me smart. Make fun of war heroes like John McCain for being captured. I’m hilarious. Sexually assault a woman in Bloomingdales and spend your life treating women as property. Why not? It is all part of a system that we built to maximize wealth and profit. And we have done a really good job. 

My son and thousands like him live every day with the result. He works at the end of a capitalist funnel that sends all our country’s ugly stuff - the externalities - to him and his colleagues. And they are overwhelmed, underpaid, and gasping for air.  

I continue to mumble about how people do care. Lena Khan at the Federal Trade Commission is trying to police the big tech companies. Biden is pressuring Israel not to kill so many people. We need to stop Russia or else Ukraine is just a pit stop on the way to Europe.

“Isn’t that the Vietnam argument?’’ he asks. “It’s the same thing.’’ 

He is talking about the Domino Theory. The idea was that if the Communists took over Vietnam, they would move on to Los Angeles and we would all be studying Marx. It didn’t happen, of course. Thousands of American boys died for that misunderstanding by the supposed “Best and Brightest’’ minds in American history. And today Vietnam is a capitalist economy and friendly to the US. Who would have thought?

I try to defend again, but I sound like the parents of the kids in the 60s. Or worse. I sound like Joe Biden and the Democrats fiddling around the margins of a system that needs wholesale change. 

My son says we are hypocrites about Trump.

“Trump just airs our dirty laundry and we don’t like talking about that side of our system,’’ he says. “We can’t pretend that this isn’t the system we live in. A system where a guy like Donald Trump can be president and be seen as successful. We don’t like Trump because he is acting the way the system incentivizes him to act.’’

And that, right there, is Biden’s election problem. The sentiment coming from 34E is angry and it’s loud. The generation under 40 has lost the thread. They don’t connect personally to the creation of Israel. They don’t think Biden has done enough for them. And they don’t think it’s all that bad if Trump wins the election. Let the system hit rock bottom, they say. Then maybe people will wake up and really push for change. 

Sure, in the end, my son will probably vote for Biden. But he is not happy about it. Neither are thousands in his generation who have lost faith in the system and no longer care about defending the institutions of democracy. 

I am more of a “support Biden to stop Trump’’ guy. But I find it harder and harder to refute what my son is saying. The American system, built to maximize profit, has left so many behind. And the scars are there every day for the people left to pick up the pieces from the wealth we created. 

And a tax credit here and a student loan forgiveness there won’t be enough to bring this generation of Americans back to Joe Biden. And into that void walks a guy who has been married three times, assaults women, encourages an insurrection, and said his top general should be executed. 

In a cafe before our flight, a guy from Costa Rica told me: “You folks better fix things in the US. You are the envy of the world. The leader. Without you, it all goes to Hell.’’

That leader of the world stuff depends on the next generation having some faith in democracy, some hope that the system serves people instead of profiting off them. I grew up thinking all that good stuff. 

This next generation? Not so much.