Progressives Don’t Get What They Want Because They’re Not Honest about What They Want

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

 

Like an old rattletrap sputtering its way to the junkyard, the Biden administration is wheezing toward its exhausted conclusion. Bereft of enthusiasm or energy, it can barely muster even a perfunctory display of vigor. But in some ways, the Biden-era’s death throes are only minimally distinguishable from its headiest days — in part because administration officials are trapped in a self-referential loop. That’s not entirely the Biden White House’s fault. Rather, their problem is that they remain beholden to progressives who will not be satisfied by public policy because public policy cannot deliver what they actually want.

 

This week, White House senior adviser and communications director Ben LaBolt outlined Joe Biden’s objectives for the final three months of his presidency. We can expect that the president’s focus will be devoted to two subjects: addressing the “climate crisis” and countering “the scourge of gun violence.” Biden plans to remind voters of the steps his administration took in concert with Congress to address these issues, even on the margins. But the fact that Biden’s voters need reminding is a function of the dissatisfaction the president’s progressive allies take with incremental achievements borne of legislative compromise.

 

Biden and his fellow Democrats can tout the 2022 Safer Communities Act all they like, and they frequently do. It was, as the president often says, the “most significant gun safety law in nearly 30 years.” But even after its passage, the threat posed by gun violence still ranks high on the list of American concerns — higher still among Democrats. And understandably so. Anti-gun-rights activists did not want red-flag laws, crisis-intervention programs, stricter definitions for federally licensed gun dealers, or enhanced background checks. They want meaningful declines in rates of gun-related homicides and, more specifically, an end to highly visible and terrifyingly random episodes of mass gun violence.

 

Congress cannot do that. The law, therefore, was never going to be equal to the demands imposed on it by its supporters. It was destined to be forgotten. If it is remembered at all by its backers, it will be as a half-measure that failed to tame the problem it was supposed to tackle.

 

The same could be said of the shell game Biden and his fellow Democrats played with climate legislation. With wry chuckles, Democrats can now admit that the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” was an elaborate bait-and-switch designed to convince the public that the president was focused on their primary concern. In reality, that initiative was designed to distribute public goods to favored actors in the green-energy sector under the guise that these disbursements would have a measurable impact on climate change.

 

A gimmick supposedly aimed at mitigating the problem of too much money circulating in an economy that couldn’t meet demand involved flooding the already overheated economy with even more taxpayer dollars — $458 billion in new spending, to be exact. Much of that funding was allocated to green-energy initiatives, and climate activists hailed it at the time. “This is so huge because this is kind of the last chance to adopt significant climate policy,” said Northeastern University professor Laura Kuhl of the “biggest piece of climate legislation that’s ever been considered in U.S. policy.” Phew! Right under the wire.

 

And yet, in the same way that environmental activists are unsatisfied with (indeed, fail even to acknowledge) America’s two unbroken decades of consistent CO2 emissions reductions, the spending in the Inflation Reduction Act could never satisfy them. They don’t want action on the margins, and the rank-and-file among them do not benefit from the cronyism enjoyed by well-placed green-energy producers. What Biden’s progressive base wants is to reverse what they see as the conditions contributing to extreme weather events. Their metrics for success include measurable declines in the number of severe storms, fires, and droughts. Congress cannot deliver that outcome via legislation, and the president cannot will it into existence by decree. Politics, conventionally understood, is unequal to progressives’ demands.

 

The Left isn’t in the market for incrementalism and compromise — the stuff America’s civic covenant encourages. They want a radical change in outcomes and are willing to endorse radical reforms in their pursuit. Biden’s mistake was in attempting to appease his Left flank from the start. They could never be satisfied. So, he’s left to roam around the country in the waning days of his presidency promoting his own unloved achievements — victories scorned by their supporters and resented by their opponents.

 

Biden’s left-wing allies will readily admit that his presidency failed to live up to even their modest expectations, but they’re likely to attribute his shortcomings to his own infirmity or the recalcitrance of Republican adversaries. That’s a dodge. Absent self-reflection, the Democratic Party’s true believers will continue setting their party’s leaders up for failure. And in the similar absence of courage, those Democratic leaders will continue to fall into the traps their own voters set. And all of it because no one in this equation can afford to be honest.