Biden Beat Trump… and Now Obama?
During his first days and weeks in the White House, Joe Biden is signaling that he will go bigger than he and President Obama did during the economic collapse of 2008-9. Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion relief package, if it gets through Congress relatively intact, will immunize 100 million Americans in 100 days against the rampaging coronavirus, put $1,400 more dollars in the hands of Americans, expand Obamacare by making it more affordable, rescue flailing local and state governments, and help schools open classrooms again by making them safer. On the global level, Biden is promising that the U.S. will immediately rejoin the civilized international order by embracing the Paris accord and making the climate crisis a top priority, rescinding the travel ban on Muslim countries, and reuniting children caged at the Mexican border with their families.
Biden can be another FDR, as he’s been promising, because the post-Trump times seem even more devastated than the economic crisis that President Obama inherited from George W. Bush. Biden is also the first Capitol Hill creature to take over the White House in decades, so even Republicans are praising his deft touch as a “finger-tip politician.” The GOP, of course, has its own deep problems — but while the party sorts out its post-Trump identity, some Republican legislators might find it useful to be seen as being cooperative with can-do Joe during a medical and political crisis that has torn apart the country.
Biden, as opposed to the more cerebral Obama, seems like the right POTUS for these wrong times. Obama, as the the first African American president, was also under more pressure to appease the political establishment — and power centers like Wall Street — than Biden will be. Biden is poised to use his crisis as more of an opportunity, funneling government aid to the people who really need it, not just to the big banks.
I was a Bernie-Elizabeth Warren enthusiast. Both of these Democratic candidates thought much bigger than Biden on the campaign trail, and I was excited at the prospect of either one of them going all the way. But Democratic primary voters — traumatized by Trump — decided that old Joe was the best shot at winning in 2020. And they were right. Now Joe Biden also seems like the best hope we have for redirecting America and actually getting some big legislation through Washington’s long gridlock.
Go. Joe, go. Three cheers from the left of the Democratic Party as you get sworn in this week and pursue the art of the possible.
