By Charles C. W. Cooke
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Axios reports this morning that
President Biden has been consulting with historians in his quest to figure out
who he is — and that, right on cue, those historians have suggested that Biden
is a Great Man who has been sent to completely overhaul the United States.
Among the ideas with which the president’s consultants apparently agreed are
that now is the time for Biden to “jam through once-in-a-lifetime historic
changes to America,” that he must “go even bigger and faster than anyone
expected,” and that it would be a good idea for him to “jam through what could
amount to a $5 trillion overhaul of America, and vast changes to voting,
immigration and inequality.”
Evidently, the Biden years are set to involve a lot of
“jamming.”
Let us mince no words: This advice is deranged. FDR and
LBJ, to whom the historians apparently have compared Biden, were both swept
into office in landslide victories, alongside large congressional majorities — often
large supermajorities — that were on board with their agenda. Joe
Biden, by contrast, won the Electoral College by 45,000 votes, enjoys no
majority in the Senate, and has a House majority so thin that the Democratic
Party is trying to steal a House seat in Iowa that has already been certified for
the GOP. As Lloyd Bentsen might have said: I’ve read about FDR, and Joe Biden,
you are no FDR.
Does Joe Biden know this?
Thanks to the Republicans’ suicidal post-election
behavior, it will certainly be much easier for the Democratic Party to spend
gobs of cash that we don’t have — and, maybe, to put some of that spending on a
permanent footing. This represents no small alteration and should be resisted
at all cost. But the remaining the areas in which Biden hopes to make
“once-in-a-lifetime historic changes” represent an entirely different
story. Axios suggests that Biden “loves the growing narrative
that he’s bolder and bigger-thinking than President Obama,” and I daresay that
he does; for a certain sort of mediocrity, being fluffed by Michael Beschloss
and Ezra Klein is a dream come true. But the important questions remain the
same now as they were before that narrative emerged — and, indeed, remain the
same as they were during President Obama’s interrupted tenure. What does
Congress think? What do voters think? And how do those two
inquiries intersect?
Here, we come back to earth. In today’s Politico Playbook, a
former Obama administration staffer suggests that the growing willingness of
individual Democratic senators to put their foot down on issues that are
important to them “shows that Biden isn’t feared on the Hill. He’s no LBJ.” Having
established that, Playbook goes on to confirm just how precarious the entire Democratic
agenda will remain even if the Senate were to abolish the legislative
filibuster.
Immigration reform? Uh oh. Per a Morning Consult
poll, “Forty-three percent of voters overall believe that undocumented immigrants
who are currently living in the U.S. should have a pathway to citizenship —
down 14 points since January.” That includes just 25 percent of Republicans and
57 percent of Democrats. Gun control? Seems unlikely. A ban on
“assault weapons” is not even on the table, and, because the various players
have such dramatically different conceptions of what is acceptable, any push
for “universal background checks” is unlikely to get to 50 votes. Voting? H.R.1 may be
well-supported in the press, but it’s a total mess of a bill, it is vehemently opposed by the
Republican Party, it has been savaged by election officials in Joe Manchin’s home state, and it
contains a host of provisions that are, frankly, spectacularly unpopular across all political and
demographic groups. And climate change? Well, if you really believe
that the “Green New Deal” would be popular — even among Democratic constituencies — I’ve
got a carbon-neutral bridge to sell you.
Which leaves . . . what? D.C. statehood? Not only is that
unconstitutional, it’s a 70–30 issue in Republicans’ favor. Packing the Supreme Court? That doesn’t
appeal to more than a third of Democrats. Single-payer health care? Now
we’re just getting silly.
If Axios is correct about Joe Biden’s
mindset, then Biden has perpetrated a monumental fraud on the American public.
For the man whose quiet pitch was more “return to normalcy” than “fundamentally
transform,” to believe that he is the Progressive Chosen One would be an
extraordinary thing indeed. Biden is there to play caretaker, to serve as a
stand-in, to represent compromise in a deeply divided nation.
“Overhaul of America”? You and whose army?
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