Washington Examiner, May 2024
While President Joe Biden has been making overtures to more liberal Democrats, he may have undercut himself with his party’s centrists and independents before November. But Biden acting as consoler in chief in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Thursday after the shootout deaths of three U.S. Marshal fugitive task force members and a local police officer could mark the start of him making amends.
Biden won the 2020 Democratic nomination as a self-described centrist, but has since adopted more liberal policies, in part as a peace offering to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and his supporters after the primary. Four years later, the more vocal Left remains influential within the party, creating challenges for Biden as he tries to keep “the disparate factions” of his coalition together, according to Northeastern University political science professor Costas Panagopoulos.
