Biden Is Not Super Progressive. Stop Being Surprised When He Shows You He Isn’t.
The Republican narrative during the 2020 election was all about the takeover of what they said was an extreme liberal political agenda. Conservative media continuously tried to tie President Biden’s campaign to the right-wing’s boogiemen like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Republican candidates like Kelly Loeffler couldn’t go more than five minutes without saying “radical liberal” about her Democrat opponent, Reverend Raphael Warnock.
The tactic didn’t work, obviously, as Biden won the election and Democrats took control of the Senate thanks to sweeping the two seats up for grabs in Georgia. Warnock and Jon Ossoff both ran on relatively progressive platforms, but nothing nearly as extreme as the GOP made it out to be.
The truth of the matter is that for all the blustering rants from conservatives about “socialist agendas” and “leftist” views in the government today, the Democratic party is still very much just left of center.
Yes, there has been movement more to the left in recent years thanks to the backlash against the Trump administration and its far-right policies, but even with that shift, Democratic policies are in line with one would expect from a moderate Republican a few decades ago.
You only have to look as far as the battle over the proposed minimum wage hike that is currently going on in Democrat political circles right now for an example.
On one side you have the Bernie Sanders’ and AOC’s who are pushing hard to pass the measure through budget reconciliation, saying they’ll do whatever it takes. On the other side, you have the Joe Manchin’s and even the Biden administration saying it most likely won’t be something they would be able to get done or even have the stomach for in the first place.
Despite a higher minimum wage being one of the most popular pieces of the proposed Covid relief package among voters, establishment Dems simply don’t want to rock the boat too much and risk driving away their corporate donors, many of which would be looking at increased labor costs. They are still trying to strike a balance using the political math from a decade ago.
And we can’t really blame Joe Biden for not being all the way onboard with the increase. Decade after decade, Biden has told us that he is not necessarily an overly progressive member of the Democratic party.
Sure, when he was vice president during the Obama administration he came out and championed many “socialist” policies they were trying to pass, but that is what a vice president is supposed to do. And somewhere deep down I have to assume that some of his more moderate or even right-leaning views were affected by working with President Obama, but he hasn’t shown that there have been major changes.
After all, Biden was one of the coauthors of the regressive 1994 crime bill that many blame for the sharp increase in mass incarceration rates, particularly of Black Americans. He defended his role in passing the legislation for many years and only recently came out and expressed his regret for the effects it had on society.
Biden issued an executive order banning the use of private prisons on the federal level shortly after taking office, a move seen by many as a step in the right direction. However, others have criticized the move as a public relations stunt to help rehabilitate Biden’s image among the Black communities that he helped decimate by jailing young Black men at a disproportionate rate.
Progressives have also pushed the Biden administration to commit to forgiving up to $50,000 in federal student loan debt per person, citing it as one of the biggest problems plaguing younger generations today. During a recent town hall on CNN, Biden said that he would not commit to such a large amount, saying he wasn’t sure he was even legally able to. He did say that the $10,000 his campaign had mentioned was a much stronger possibility but, again, did not outright commit to anything.
While many will say that he would be even more popular among voters if he went with the higher amount, we can’t forget that Biden has always been more towards the center in the majority of his views, even fiscally. Doing a smaller forgiveness amount would still endear him to some more progressive voters while not necessarily driving away more deficit-minded moderates, which he still sees as the path forward.
So, while there has been an increased focus on Democratic senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona thanks to their reluctance to ram through major financial legislation that could hurt them in traditionally red states, we have to wonder whether the West Wing is a bit relieved to have some political cover to slow down the more progressive agenda a bit.
Time after time throughout the years, Joe Biden has shown us that he is willing and able to adapt, but there are hard limits. Despite the desire of many legislators and voters on the left, we simply do not have the ultra-progressive administration that the GOP likes to claim. We have centrist, moderate, appease-both-sides, I-can-work-across-the-aisle Joe Biden.
In the words of Maya Angelou, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
