PUT AWAY THE CHAMPAGNE. BIDEN MAY BE A CAPTIVE OF MITCH MC CONNELL AND THE REPUBLICAN SENATE
(AND THE NOTION THAT BIDEN IS A PROGRESSIVE BECAUSE HE GREW UP IN SCRANTON MAKES AS MUCH SENSE AS THE IDEA THAT ROY COHEN WAS A LIBERAL BECAUSE HE GREW UP IN THE BRONX.)
Put away the Champagne. Biden may be a captive of Mitch Mc Connell and the Republican Senate
(And the notion that Biden is a progressive because he grew up in Scranton makes us much sense as the idea that Roy Cohen was a liberal because he grew up in the Bronx.)
By
David Gottfried
Don’t get me wrong. I am glad that Biden defeated tyrannous Trump. However, Biden only looks good in comparison to Trump. Unfortunately, scads of giddy, stupid Democrats seem to think everything will be alright because Biden has been elected. The hardest thing about being a Democrat is being stuck in the mud with comrades who know next to nothing.
As I am sure anyone who reads this knows, the President is not a magician. He cannot wave a magic wand and get things done.
He needs the assistance, or at least a lack of opposition, from Congress. So many people, it seems, don’t even seem to know that Congress enacts laws, not the President.
Because so many Democrats are intellectually obtuse, Democrats often perform miserably in off year Congressional elections. After Bill Clinton get elected in 1992, Democrats thought they had done all they would ever have to do, stayed home in 1994 and the Republicans swept Congress and never let Clinton get a damn thing done. Likewise, the election of Obama, in 2008, convinced Democrats that it was smooth sailing ahead, they stayed home in 2010, Congress was bled dry of Democrats and Obama was Mitch Mc Connell’s victimized boy toy for the last six years of the Obama presidency.
In this past election, Democrats did show up to vote as it was not an off-year election. As the vote comes in, we find that Biden did win some states that were a big challenge for Democrats. However, the returns show that many Democrats, after having voted for Biden, left the polls and ignored the “down ballot” races, or contests such as those for Congress.
Of course, many voters have always ignored down ballot races. And plenty of Republicans do as well. But somehow I just can’t understand how people can be so fucking, abominably stupid. Of course, if they hated all of the down ballot candidates, they would be well within their rights to leave after making their presidential selection. However, somehow I don’t think they hated all of the down ballot candidates. I don’t think they knew much of anything about anything with respect to the down ballot candidates.
Also, this election makes me sick for another reason: Even if we did not have to contend with a Republican Senate, the Republicans could get everything they wanted with Biden because he is really a crypto conservative Republican.
You probably disagree. You think he has a strong affinity for working people. This idea has been hammered into you by the press. For decades, the press has said he had a working-class background ad nauseum. We have been reminded on dozens of occasions that he was raised in Scranton Pennsylvania, and we are told that means he is as proletarian as the characters on the old TV sit com “The Honeymooners.” (Actually, his verbal gaffes make him seem like Ed Norton, played by Art Carney, the brain-dead municipal sewer employee of “The Honeymooners.”)
But alas we make our political judgments on the basis of affiliations, tastes and vague vibes. Volvos are for liberal democrats. Another sort of car is for Republicans. In 1988, George Bush senior pretended that he liked to eat Rolletes, or fried pork rinds, because many working-class Democrats in the heartland ate the same snack. The media faithfully reported that he liked fried pork rinds, and that he absolutely hated broccoli, and Bubbas and fried chicken eating mamas from Florida to Flagstaff, Arizona voted for Bush.
I fear I am going to bore the hell out of you, but I must briefly review Biden’s record to demonstrate that he is, in terms of economic policy, not the least bit hospitable to poor people or working people.
First, Consider, the deep-seated economic conservatism of his political history (For the sake of economy, I am not reviewing his long history of dalliances with racists and racist policies):
a) He was one of only 19 Senators who voted against the Humphrey-Hawkins full employment bill
b) He was such a fierce critic of social welfare spending that he was praised by Harold Jarvis, an associate of Ronald Reagan’s California conservative mafia.
c) Biden once boasted that he had been ranked the sixth most fiscally conservative Senator by the National Taxpayers Union.
Since the three immediately preceding examples are a tad dated, let’s fast forward to Biden’ desultory record as Vice President:
1) Although polls showed that in January 2009 a majority of Americans wanted Medicare for all Americans, Biden convinced Obama to dump the public option.
2) Obama had supported “card check,” a program which would make it easier for workers to unionize. However, Biden campaigned for Senators who opposed Card check, and John Podesta’s sister in law, who was appointed to the white house at Biden’s urging, worked with corporate lobbyists to defeat card check.
3) Mitch Mc Connell preferred to deal with Biden as opposed to Harry Reid, the democratic leader of the Senate, because Biden was the “soft underbelly” of the Obama administration. When Mc Connell threatened to shut down the government. Biden, to appease Republicans, favored cutting 4 trillion dollars from the budget.
4) In 2012, the Bush tax cuts were set to expire. Harry Reid thought they ought to expire. But Biden intervened and let the Bush tax cuts be reinstated. Harry Reid told the White House not to let Biden negotiate with Mc Connell again.
5) Obama made a Goldman Sachs officer, Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury at Biden’s urging.
6) And let’s not forget, when Biden was in the Senate, his fellow grafters in Congress called him “the Senator from Mastercard.”
Maybe Biden will do a decent job. Certainly, he needs our steadfast support in combatting Covid and in battling Neanderthal Republicans who oppose universal mask-wearing. However my prognosis lacks hope as a covid patient’s bloodstream lacks sufficient oxygen.
We are told that he cares about people in pain because of the deaths and misery of those near and dear to him. However, this reasoning displays an awfully poor understanding of the way people react to pain. Very often, when one experiences pain, one becomes embittered and one does not care about the misfortunes of others. For example, in his childhood, Richard Nixon lost 2 or 3 brothers because of Tuberculosis. Richard Nixon is not known as a compassionate man. Likewise, John Connolly of Texas grew up in poverty and he became a staunchly conservative politician. By contrast, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklyn Roosevelt grew up in palatial and lavish wealth, and they were fierce advocates for the poor and dispossessed.