Changing currents are sometimes difficult to assess while waters are still swirling, yet there has been a sea change in American politics, an important realignment. Not illogically, the two recent presidential aspirants embody the trends and represent the new realities. I previously have characterized the “Trumpublican Party”; now the party in power, facing certain disaster, can be tagged the “Bidenocrat Party.” For good or ill — but for sure — these men permanently have branded their reconstituted parties.

On those swirling currents of change, Donald Trump has remained figuratively and literally buoyant. The victorious 2020 candidate has floundered and, by common consent, is sinking fast. Joe Biden cannot hope for changing tides, nor rely on a gullible public, nor endlessly cry wolf about Big Bad Trump. His future will be decided soon, as most filing deadlines for 2024 primaries are mere months away. He seems about to be submerged by political riptides, whether or not Trump or another Republican confidently gets swept ashore by the currents.

Doom Comes for the Bidenocrats

Many presidents sustain slumps in the middle of their terms and often are rescued by a few reliable support groups or optimistic polls that reveal pockets of those who agree on issues or causes. Approximately a year before the presidential election, however, Biden will likely see few life preservers tossed in his direction. And those to which he may cling are already water-logged. There are few lifelines or chances of such rescue; and, should he look for a miracle, there are no loaves and fishes on the horizon.

The litany of issues that portend doom for Biden and Bidenocrats seems endless: rising public debt; gas and fuel costs spiraling upward again — and higher than when he assumed office; cost of living increases felt by every household; an unchecked invasion of millions of illegal migrants from all parts of the globe; rampant drug addiction and murderous numbers of fentanyl poisonings; spikes in deadly crimes; thugs practically invited to commit smash-and-grabs and assaults on the elderly, assured of virtual immunity by big-city district attorneys and mayors; humiliation at the hands of international rivals, with military adventurism daring the U.S. to respond; and on and on.

Not one but a cornucopia of tabloid trash reveals the president’s son to be a Hunter-gatherer of political headaches for the White House, with scandals growing progressively from the bottom up and middle out. 

Normal Democrat presidents usually fall back on reliable constituent groups to maintain their foundations of support during moments like these. But big-city “blue” mayors and governors are beginning to peel themselves away from the White House, bolder in their criticism (especially of border “policies” — portending evasion of political support. Big media, the predictable print and electronic cheerleaders of the Biden administration, are beginning to display heretical skepticism and criticism of the White House — portending erosion of political support. Ethnic constituencies, the core groups taken for granted by Democrats for decades, are beginning to abandon knee-jerk loyalty to the Democrat Party — portending an evaporation of predictable support.

The Dissolution of Union Support

A dissection of one traditional “base” constituency of the Democrats — and of Biden, who long ago sold his soul to Big Labor — illustrates the nature of the tsunami that threatens the Old Man and the Old Order. It is Exhibit A in the pending Case of the Missing Voting Bloc.

Unions, once a last lifeline, can be counted on by Bidenocrats — but their members cannot. Biden has a lock on solid support from union bosses. Over the past generation, organized labor has become less organized — that is, politically monolithic — and is a minority within a minority of the old working-class bloc. (RELATED: The Latest Union Strike Might Turn Workers Red)

As Trump filled, and fills, stadiums, Biden barely fills union halls. Union members, willing to advocate for higher wages and working conditions and benefits — who wouldn’t? — no longer see themselves as wage-slaves and oppressed crusaders; they largely self-identify as stakeholders, even struggling at the moment, in the capital economy. They check different boxes than their grandparents did. 

The days of sit-down strikes are practically over. Screeching union thugs like Randi Weingarten are vestigial relics of past days when such creatures and their bullhorns were common. The chanting robots we see populating the UAW strike-barricades are likewise shadows of once-common hordes during yesterday’s seasons of boycotts, sympathy strikes, and shutdowns. (READ MORE: Union Opposition to Electric Vehicle Kickbacks Could Upend 2024)

Today, most union members are more concerned with social issues than with economic warfare. Their families are less obsessed with mandatory membership in locals than with mandatory propaganda being forced upon their children at school. They welcome health benefits but often dissent from the inclusion of legal abortion and gender-altering surgery. They tend to memorize Bible verses and hymns more than they do radical slogans and protest songs. 

Any why not? Despite the labor-union socialist mantras Biden spouts like a wind-up toy, his policies are the enemies of his sainted “workers.” His former, putative, voting-stooges realize it; he — no surprise — does not. The mad push for EVs is the most potent job-killer since buggy-whip craftsmen were furloughed. In various, and numerous, energy industries, Biden has sided with Greens over Workers. Those lower- and middle-class families he purports to embrace are making sacrifices aplenty at home and looking for second and third jobs. Even the Hollywood writers’ strike likely is inspiring less sympathy than annoyance among the general public — a reminder that (issues aside) knee-jerk strike actions hit closer to home than they once did.

The last gasps of the “Bidenomic” chimera — once again, the hallmark of the new Bidenocrat Party — are the skin-of-teeth avoidance of major labor disruptions in the rail and UPS showdowns. But the UAW strike suggests that his magic wand has broken. As the union notably withholds its endorsement of Biden’s reelection, it creates the impression that it is also holding its nose. 

So the Old Order changeth. Shifts, transitions, and realignments are not unknown in social and political cultures. For two generations, for instance, it was never thought that Blacks would ever vote, as a reliable bloc, any other way than Republican. More recently, members of the Establishment GOP, whether choosing to take their marbles and leave the playroom or feeling ostracized by the New Populists, are closer on many issues to the old Democrats. To the extent that they are “grass-root,” it is the grass of 10,000 country clubs, as Alice Roosevelt Longworth once quipped about their kind.

The game has changed in American politics — and it is a game in which the Democrats hold square pegs to a new board that has only round holes. Farmers, workers, “Joe six-packs,” average folks, and ethnics mostly are swimming with traditionalists, people of faith, patriots, and military families, all of whom are deplorable strangers to the Bidenocrats. 

Biden himself, if he ever washes ashore, will be seen trudging through the sand, confused as always, wondering how the damn tide went out when he wasn’t looking. 

Rick Marschall is a former political cartoonist and frequent commentator. His 75th book, The Most Interesting American, about Theodore Roosevelt, will be published next month by Post Hill Press. Find him on weekly blog at MondayMinistry.com/blog.