With Joe Biden's own audacious New Deal, the democratic left rediscovers its soul

[DonViejo]

Will Hutton

After Trump’s ruinous tenure, the new president is seizing a unique moment to act

Sun 4 Apr 2021 03.00 EDT

‘It’s bold, yes, and we can get it done.” So declared President Joe Biden launching his $2tn plan last week to overhaul US infrastructure – ranging from fixing 20,000 miles of roads to remaking bridges, ports, water systems and “the care economy”, care now defined as part of the country’s infrastructure. Also included is a vast uplift in research spending on eliminating carbon emissions and on artificial intelligence. And up to another $2tn is to follow on childcare, education and healthcare, all hot on the heels of the $1.9tn “American Rescue Plan”, passed just three weeks ago.

Cumulatively, the scale is head-spinning. Historians and politicians are already comparing the ambition with Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programme. In British terms, it’s as though an incoming Labour government pledged to spend £500bn over the next decade with a focus on left-behind Britain in all its manifestations – real commitments to levelling up, racial equity, net zero and becoming a scientific superpower.

Mainstream and left-of-centre Democrats are as incredulous as they are joyful. Bernie Sanders, congratulating Biden, declared that the American Rescue Plan “is the most significant legislation for working people that has been passed in decades”. It was “the moment when Democrats recovered their soul”, writes Robert Kuttner, co-editor of the progressive magazine the American Prospect, ending a 45-year embrace of “Wall Street neoliberalism”. He concludes: “I am not especially religious, but I am reminded of my favourite Jewish prayer, the Shehecheyanu, which gives thanks to the Almighty for allowing us to reach this day.”

What amazes the party and commentators alike is why a 78-year-old moderate stalwart such as Biden has suddenly become so audacious. After all, he backed Bill Clinton’s Third Way and was a cheerleader for fiscal responsibility under both him and Barack Obama, when the stock of federal debt was two-thirds of what it is today.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/04/with-joe-bidens-own-audacious-new-deal-the-democratic-left-rediscovers-its-soul

[Indykatie]

1. Folks Miss that Biden Evolves With the Times - He's a Man of History and Knows the Time is Right

[Srkdqltr]

2. Because Biden is 78 he knows things.

He knows where all the bodies are buried and why.
He knows what works .
He knows what they did in the past that didn't work.
He is smart enough to know what needs to be done.
And how to get it done.

[tirebiter]

3. The future

Live it or live with it-The Firesign Theatre

[PatSeg]

4. "Moderate stalwart"?

I think Biden was moderate on some issues and quite liberal on others. He is a pragmatic politician, as well as open minded. That would have applied to FDR and LBJ also. We label people as "liberal" in retrospect, because of what they accomplished, but they were multi-faceted individuals, who did not fit into a limited pigeonhole.

Hardcore liberals often refer to Biden as moderate or centrist, but conservatives call him left-wing.

[Tommymac]

6. Spot on. Prez Joe is a pragmatic realist and a healer.

He feels for The People, and he is doing everything he can to relieve some of the pain and suffering and make this World a less hurtful place.

His heart is huge and his brain even bigger. If leftist policies will accomplish this in the best way, then he is going to run left.

The real story in my mind is the job Sen Schumer is doing. I never would have thought he would be Joe's left guard pulling and blocking downfield.

[PatSeg]

7. Yes, well said

"If leftist policies will accomplish this in the best way, then he is going to run left."

Chuck Schumer has surprised me as well. I don't think I've ever been this impressed with him. Maybe Joe brings out the best in others?

[Tommymac]

15. Very true - imo the mark of a great leader is to elevate those he leads.

To bring out the best in those he entrusts to do the job.

[PatSeg]

18. Oh yes and that is what he is doing

and doing it so well.

[LizBeth]

5. The more the people are open to this stuff, the further the Democrats will go. Over the last

handful of years and especially after Republican behavior the last four years, the nation themselves have opened up to more progressive policy which allows our Democrats who are mostly progressive the ability to have more extensive policy helping people. This is a different time today than just 2016.

[Johnny2X2X]

16. Agree

The American Relief package was wildly popular. This infrastructure deal will be just as popular and it will create jobs.

All the GOP has left is wedge issues like "cancel culture", "Immigration", and "Voting rights."

Deliver for the American people and you're going to see your power expand. This is the right time to be bold and Republicans know it too and that's why they're scrambling, they cannot let Dems take credit for all of this if they pass it. This is DefCon 1 for Reps, they've always known that if Democrats could deliver a liberal agenda the voters will reward them for a generation.

[Martin68]

8. Very good article. but I take issue with the title. It is the Democratic Party that recovered its

soul, not the Democratic left, according to the article.

[gratuitous]

9. Agreed

What the Democratic left is "rediscovering" isn't its soul (or moral center), but hope that some of the stuff they want can get done. The Democratic left hasn't felt like that since at least 2009, maybe 1993. Possibly longer.

[Martin68]

10. Good point. The left has often been unwilling to acknowledge that accomplishing goals in a

democracy requires patience and compromise. Of course, the Trumplican Party makes compromise impossible except between Democrats.

[Beastly Boy]

11. Wait a minute... Biden is no longer a middle of the road incrementalist third way neoliberal?

It wasn't that long ago that the far left would pile on Biden for being all of the above and worse! What happened?

And before I hear "Biden has changed", no he hasn't. He is still an adherent and a practitioner of the art of the possible, as he has been for his entire political career. It is the far left that is changing its rhetoric, and in a very telling manner. The radical "political revolution" is dead. Biden killed it. Predictably, art of the impossible doesn't work.

[betsuni]

13. Thank you.

And all those "corporate Democrats" beholden to wealthy donors and Teh Establishment who will stop at nothing to thwart progressive ideas are imaginary too.

[ShazamIam]

12. I wonder about all this at the same time all the privatization of government work is continuing?

President Obama had an E.O. killed by Trump that required a $10.10 minimum wage for employees of government contractors.
Has that E.O.l been reinstated by the Biden Adm.? I can't find any reports that he has, I haven't looked deep.

[betsuni]

14. "a 45-year embrace of 'Wall Street neoliberalism.'" Not true, a myth.

The myth that FDR and LBJ were democratic socialists or socialists and the Democratic Party espoused democratic socialist policies with The New Deal through the Great Society, but from the '70s the party ignored the working/middle classes in favor of elites and Wall Street, shifted to the right with the same economic policies as Republicans.

No evidence the ideology or economic issues of the Democratic Party moved to the right. FDR and LBJ were liberal Democrats just like today's Democrats, not populists, not socialists. Neoliberal as insult: "An attempt to win an argument with an epithet."

[Hortensis]

17. I never lost it. And I now suspect RW subversion in the polling industry,

similar to that in the media, which we know are very heavily influenced by wealthy conservatives, misrepresented what Democrats waned for years. Certainly the overall results didn't represent my thinking.

Just carefully avoid asking the right questions, and interpret the results to those that are asked.

It was the enthusiastic reaction of mainstream liberal Democrats to Elizabeth Warren's calls for bold action that broke it open and belied what years of polls had been reporting.