Biden cannot govern from the center – ending Trumpism means radical action
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
I keep hearing that Joe Biden will govern from the "center". He has no choice, they say, because he will have razor-thin majorities in Congress and the Republican party has moved to the right.
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Rubbish. I've served several Democratic presidents who have needed Republican votes. But the Republicans now in Congress are nothing like those I've dealt with. Most of today's GOP live in a parallel universe. There's no "center" between the reality-based world and theirs.
Last Wednesday, fully 93% of House Republicans voted against impeaching Trump for inciting insurrection, even after his attempted coup threatened their very lives.
The week before, immediately following the raid on the Capitol, two-thirds of House Republicans and eight Republican senators refused to certify election results on the basis of Trump's lies about widespread fraud - lies rejected by 60 federal judges as well as Trump's own departments of justice and homeland security.
Prior to the raid, several Republican members of Congress repeated those lies on television and Twitter and at "Stop the Steal" events - encouraging Trump followers to "fight for America" and start "kicking ass".
This is the culmination of the growing insanity of the GOP over the last four years. Trump has remade the Republican party into a white supremacist cult living within a counter-factual wonderland of lies and conspiracies.
More than half of Republican voters - almost 40 million people - believe Trump won the 2020 race; 45% support the storming of the Capitol; 57%say he should be the Republican candidate in 2024.
In this hermetically sealed cosmos, most Republicans believe Black Lives Matter protesters are violent, immigrants are dangerous and the climate crisis doesn't pose a threat. A growing fringe openly talks of redressing grievances through violence, including QAnon conspiracy theorists, of whom two are newly elected to Congress, who think Democrats are running a global child sex-trafficking operation.
How can Biden possibly be a "centrist" in this new political world?
There is no middle ground between lies and facts. There is no halfway point between civil discourse and violence. There is no midrange between democracy and fascism.
Biden must boldly and unreservedly speak truth, refuse to compromise with violent Trumpism and ceaselessly fight for democracy and inclusion.
Speaking truth means responding to the world as it is and denouncing the poisonous deceptions engulfing the right. It means repudiating false equivalences and "both sidesism" that gives equal weight to trumpery and truth. It means protecting and advancing science, standing on the side of logic, calling out deceit and impugning baseless conspiracy theories and those who abet them.
Refusing to compromise with violent Trumpism means renouncing the lawlessness of Trump and his enablers and punishing all who looted the public trust. It means convicting Trump of impeachable offenses and ensuring he can never again hold public office - not as a "distraction" from Biden's agenda but as a central means of re-establishing civility, which must be a cornerstone of that agenda.
Strengthening democracy means getting big money out of politics, strengthening voting rights and fighting voter suppression in all its forms.
It means boldly advancing the needs of average people over the plutocrats and oligarchs, of the white working class as well as Black and Latino people. It means embracing the ongoing struggle for racial justice and the struggle of blue-collar workers whose fortunes have been declining for decades.
The moment calls for public investment on a scale far greater than necessary for Covid relief or "stimulus" - large enough to begin the restructuring of the economy. America needs to create a vast number of new jobs leading to higher wages, reversing racial exclusion as well as the downward trajectory of Americans whose anger and resentment Trump cynically exploited.
This would include universal early childhood education, universal access to the internet, world-class schools and public universities accessible to all. Converting to solar and wind energy and making America's entire stock of housing and commercial buildings carbon neutral. Investing in basic research - the gateway to the technologies of the future as well as national security - along with public health and universal healthcare.
It is not a question of affordability. Such an agenda won't burden future generations. It will reduce the burden on future generations.
It is a question of political will. It requires a recognition that there is no longer a "center" but a future based either on lies, violence and authoritarianism oron unyielding truth, unshakeable civility and radical inclusion. And it requires a passionate, uncompromising commitment to the latter.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US
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Although I generally agree with Robert Reich, the fact is Biden is going to govern from the center, much the same as Obama did. Joe Biden has been in the Senate or in Washington DC since the 1970's, his understanding of how Washington works has always revolved around compromise between the two political parties, and he's not going to change his governing philosophy just because Donald Trump was his predecessor.
Achieving a progressive federal government is a long haul project, and can only move as the attitudes about the role of government evolve and progress among the people of the country.
I think the country was beginning to move toward a more progressive attitude on many issues around the time Obama took office in 2009. But something happened that threw that momentum into long lasting turmoil - the introduction of widespread "social media".
Facebook and Twitter were insignificant, certainly in terms of political effect, prior to 2009. Since then they have become all but synonymous with overall public opinion about the issues of the day. Those and other social media have more importantly made fringe beliefs , outright lies, and massive disinformation the currency of the political right and even the traditional Republican Party.
The use of social media to spread disinformation on a massive all encompassing scale has set progressive politics back , but the tide of history will yet wash over all, its just going to take longer.
I agree, you don't have to be far left to simply believe in the laws of the land.
Except that the country did move further progressive during the Obama administration, the most obvious proof of this occurred when Trump and Congress tried to eliminate "Obamacare" as soon as they took over all 3 branches of the government.
Agreed again. Each generation loses more and more of its conservative (regressive) base. Better education has also, historically, created more centrist liberal thinking. Moving this country to a more progressive future is the ultimate long game. There will be failures and set backs, and huge waves of opposition, but it is inevitable.
Achieving a progressive federal government is a long haul project, and can only move as the attitudes about the role of government evolve and progress among the people of the country.
The percentage of the electorates desire about adopting a left wing type of progressive government might be growing a bit, but the main reason Trump was elected was because the people were not ready for the type of government that the Democrats and HRC offered in 2016.
So, in 2020, Biden's win was not so much a radical change in voter preference for yet more government in their lives, but a repudiation of Trump's personality of bluster, bullshit and the never ending tweets...rather than the policies he was trying to get passed. Biden has got to be the worst example of a leader to come along since Jimmy Carter, and there is no guarantee that all of the Democratic Senators will going along with any program or policy. After all, some Democrats are decent and very fine people.
If the Dems attempt to do anything too radical, like packing the Supreme Court, or adding states, the public will punish them in the midterms. Biden has a narrow window of opportunity to do something useful and beneficial to all Americans. But the odds are great that the idiot left wing will once again overreach and end up a failed party once again.
Where do you come up with this nonsense? First of all , Trump is overwhelmingly the worst example of a political leader, not since Jimmy Carter, but ever.
Second, the idea that Joe Biden is somehow mentally diminished looks sillier by the day. Biden has given many interviews and press conferences where he seems totally in command of his responsibilities.