Joe Biden was not my first choice for the nominee of the
Democratic Party. Indeed, I don’t think he was my tenth choice. But he is whom we have and I have already
voted for him. By one of those twists of fate that can never be predicted, he
is in the present circumstances probably our best bet to beat Trump. Absent the
pandemic, I am convinced Bernie could have won and perhaps even won big but I
am not at all sure that he could have won in the face of the pandemic. At any
rate, we will never know. It is bad enough having to cheer for Biden now, to
donate money, to vote for him, even perhaps to work for him. But if the best
happens and he is elected, carrying the Senate with him, then it is going to be
really hard for me to deal with the way in which he will govern. His natural
instinct will be to return to the good old days, to the way things were when he
was savaging Anita Hill. He has already told us that he expects after the
election to establish good working relationships across the aisle with the
mainstream Republicans who are, he believes, simply hiding out until Trump
leaves. Never mind that that would be the wrong thing to do if those
Republicans were there. They aren’t and haven’t been for a very long time.
However there is one thing working in our favor. The day
Biden is sworn in, he will face a raging pandemic and an economy in shambles
with the Supreme Court poised to terminate healthcare for half of America, to
undo the gains of the LGBT Q community, to put paid to any chance of dealing
with climate change, and to protect the already overwhelming power of corporate
wealth. Biden won’t have a year, as Obama did, to discover that his fondest
beliefs are illusions. He will have to act immediately. That will require the
termination of the filibuster, the packing of the Supreme Court, and the
passage of multitrillion dollar economic relief and stimulus bills.
Biden’s instinct will be to do the smallest amount that has any hope of dealing with the immediate crises but I don’t think he will be able to get away with that. The objective realities will be too pressing. That is the point at which all of us must bring whatever political pressure we can to bear on the new administration, even before it has found its way to the executive bathrooms.
4 comments:
I see the situation somewhat differently. I think the pandemic has helped Biden and would have helped Bernie or any Democrat. It is the clearest example of Trump’s failure that I can think of. The litany of his pronouncements beginning in January/February is devastating. If I were advising Biden, I’d tell him to hammer on Trump’s pandemic record day after day.
What’s ironic is that the pandemic, to just about any other president, would have been a golden opportunity to be a hero. He could have been a “wartime” president, but he was too narcissistic to see that. He could have cranked up the Federal government, given daily briefings with the experts in the background, explained the situation and what he was doing to confront it, and told people what they should be doing—like wearing masks in public and practicing social distancing. He could have sold red MAGA masks to match the hats. He really had a golden opportunity to be a hero, but was too self-absorbed to see it. Blame and deny is just about all he knows how to do.
I’m more optimistic about Biden as president than you are. I think he’d go as far left as Congress would let him, but wouldn’t fight for it if he didn’t think he could win. He surely knows he would have only four years and I suspect he wants to do something significant, to be more than just a caretaker.
Unrelated: I saw somewhere on the web today that Schumer is cozying up to AOC as fast as he can. He’s afraid she’ll primary him in two years, and apparently has already moved left on some Green New Deal issues.
May I ask, why do you think the pandemic would have hurt Bernie? I would also be interested in why you are so confided Bernie would have won, but I suspect I can use the search function for that.
Thanks as always for the enlightening musings. I am a long-time if irregular reader and I've learned a lot from you over the years.
Yeah, remember those days when Mitt "the weasel" Romney was the "good" Republican? Ah yes, those were the days.
It's an unfortunate political reality, far from my preference as well.
I'm not sure if anyone remembers, and I haven't seen mention of it in a while, but just after the primaries some in the punditry were pretty vigorously proclaiming Biden would enact the most progressive legislation since FDR (or maybe simply since LBJ).
I... don't think that's totally true, or that the talking heads' certainty speaks well of them, but there could be a kernel there. Even Lincoln was slated to govern fairly moderately until extraordinary times forced him to take extraordinary measures, no?
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