“I beat the socialist.”
-President Biden, May 14, responding to a reporter’s claim that ‘wasn’t the President’s American Families Plan, socialism?’
Biden’s snippy remark poses a question and offers insight into the “path forward” for Biden’s agenda:
What is socialism? and will the AFP pass Congressional juggernaut politicizing and deliver?
Whereas Sen. Bernie Sanders, the self-avowed “socialist” Biden beat, tried to link politics to societal vision and progressivism, Biden is turning ‘politicizing’ on its head, a process he is particularly confident in showing. The AFP is not “Bernie’s Progressivism-Lite.” The AFP is a work of political knitting in progress.
What’s left of the Republican Party doesn’t ‘get it.’ To paraphrase Democratic strategist James Carville’s infamous call to arms — ”it’s the economy, stupid”— the AFP’s call to arms is “it’s the wealth, stupid.”
Whereas Bernie’s “Burn” feels preachy, Biden’s calculating feels like following a dance card: we don’t know what’s next and what’s next may not ‘look pretty.’
This is the subtext of Biden’s sell: be confident and accept — don’t run — from the outcome.
Biden is old enough to remember the US Senate as the “most elite white men’s club in America.” This memory and the Senate allies of yore don’t count for much in 24-news-cycle America and a seething social media. Biden’s message must fall on a restive public increasingly impatient with DC and correctness. His sales force are the DC “glue,” the career government operators who surface with each succeeding administration and wait their time in Democratic Party affiliated think tanks. Ron Klain, Gene Sperling, Jared Bernstein. These folk Biden recruited from his eight years as VP and on the campaign trail(s).
In 2020 Biden voters were voting for more than simpatico “Uncle Joe.” They were voting for a government infrastructure. The ‘house is betting that these voters will form the core in 2022 and preserve the Democrats’ slim majority in Congress.
The ‘house is betting also that American voters of whichever stripe will gravitate to the notion that big government is ok. That big government, like the vaccine, can work if enough citizens participate. We may not reach “herd immunity” but we’ll get close enough so we can send our kids back to school. That we can make a corrupt medical industrial complex work.
Biden appreciates that the pandemic “success story” has limited political shelf life. America needs concrete reassurance, bridges where chasms once were.
Biden’s core ‘concrete reassurance’ is that we can tap into America’s untapped economic resource, wealth. Opposing this reassurance is the subtext Republicans defend: (we support) infrastructure we can attach a bond to or attach a contract to and sell to investors, (we support) infrastructure that will increase investor-class wealth not diminish it. That will solidify donor class power.
“Trickle-down economics doesn’t work,” we hear Biden repeat on the road. What he’s arguing is that the donor class simply wants to hold onto their wealth and enough Americans will realize that their rainy day savings are ready sacrifices for sustaining other’s wealth reserves. So Biden reasons, if you (donor class) want to maintain your wealth, share some of it, do your part, help us build together.
Democrats may be making “baby steps” towards income equality but at least the party can go to the polls in 2022 and not say, “we raised taxes,”again. This is not more “tax and spend.” This is “redistribute wealth.”
The engine behind the AFP is the US Tax Code. Ironically, the government taxing bureaucracy is guaranteeing a tax break for American families, using an analogous strategy popular with investors — ”park your money where it won’t be taxed.”
Well, your tax dollars can be parked with your future, your kids.
The other engine behind the AFP is the corporate tax rate and the “income/wealth nexus,” the transfer of income to wealth. There is enough fat -39.6% in fact -to trim and benefit the most. America seems to agree with this idea. Why do I keep seeing the skies littered with private jets and I can’t afford to buy a discount ticket to see my grandchildren in Los Angeles? Or when do I get the car keys?
Bernie’s voice is infrequently heard these days except when a fraught issue, like Israel/Gaza needs clarity. America “gets” Bernie. Of the 2020 Presidential candidates, Bernie inspires. Other former candidates carry water.
And the old fashioned pulpit politics? That ship has sailed.
May 17
