In 2021, President Joe Biden said his “whole soul” was dedicated to achieving unity. As someone who works on reducing toxic political polarization, I think Biden has taken no real steps to alleviate our divides. In fact, like many politically engaged people these days, his instincts on how to defeat his opponents have only amplified our divides.
Biden is of course much less belligerent and insulting than former President Donald Trump — but there are many ways one can amplify divides (sometimes without knowing it). Leaders who want to bridge divides must at least try to speak to the concerns and fears on the “other side” — even as they pursue their own political goals. Biden has shown no interest in doing such things.
Let’s take Biden’s use of “MAGA Republicans.” In 2022, he said: “MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. … They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies.”
But clearly some Trump supporters who identify with the MAGA slogan aren’t that extreme. Not all Trump voters “thrive on chaos” or live “in the shadow of lies.” Not all Trump supporters are Jan. 6thers or support such activity. Not all Trump supporters believe the 2020 election was rigged. Even among those who say such things on surveys, some don’t fully believe it (just as some election distrust on the left may be a way to vent animosity).
John Wood Jr. wrote that Biden’s language makes it “easy for Republicans in general and Trump voters in particular to feel they are the personal targets of the president’s moral outrage and to fear possible consequences from the Biden administration.”
When we talk about the “other side” as if they’re all the same — all as bad as their worst members — we make them angry. The “MAGA Republicans” strategy by Democrats bolsters the narrative that Trump and Republicans are being unfairly maligned (which can be a persuasive rallying cry).
Let’s take Biden’s well-known gaffe from 2020, when he said, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.” From a major political leader, this was amazingly oblivious (so much so that I see it as early evidence of his cognitive decline). It also shows how simplistic and faulty Biden’s views of our divides are. When we see our divides in simplistic, stereotyped ways, we’ll act in ways that make our divides worse.
To lessen our divides, Biden would have to do the work of understanding why Trump’s support among Black people (and other racial minorities) has increased since 2016 — and avoid reaching for the most pessimistic, team-based narratives about such motivations.
At the debate in June, Biden repeated the charge that Trump had called white supremacists “very fine people” after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. But to many people, this is a false accusation. For example, Snopes.com (often accused of having a liberal bias) concluded, “No, Trump did not call neo-Nazis and white supremacists ‘very fine people.’”
Biden’s framing of what Trump said is a result of confidently reaching for the least charitable interpretation possible. And this tendency, writ large, is a major driver of our divides: Many people, on the right and the left, interpret what the “other side” does and says in the worst possible way.
If we truly want to “unify America” — or at least, more realistically, achieve a healthier form of fracture — we need leaders who seek to understand what all Americans are thinking. We need leaders who don’t simply “preach to the choir,” but who are able to make a persuasive case to Americans who see things very differently. We need leaders willing to speak to the concerns their opponents have — even as they work toward their own political goals.
Such efforts admittedly take a curiosity and bravery few in political leadership exhibit. Without such efforts, buzzwords like “unity” will ring hollow to many, on the right and left. When leaders who use such words continue to act in the same old polarized and polarizing ways, most Americans will rightfully assume, “They don’t really care about lessening our divides.”
Zachary Elwood is the author of “Defusing American Anger” and “How Contempt Destroys Democracy” and hosts the psychology podcast “People Who Read People.”