Sunday, January 24, 2021

US President Joe Biden Daily Dose



Today’s Daily Dose explores how the 46th president will govern. 

When Joe Biden told the world on Inauguration Day that he’d fight just as hard for those who voted for him as those who did not, it raised a few eyebrows. When he strode into his old White House haunts and immediately signed 17 executive orders undoing key Donald Trump policies and ticking through Democratic Party goals on the environment, immigration, the census and more, a few heads started spinning. How exactly is this unity thing going to work? How will Biden apply it to world affairs? 



Reaching those 74 million

Can Biden actually win over those who voted for Trump?

1. What That Number Is Not

Some want to define all 74 million Trump voters as MAGA-touting, QAnon-believing insurrectionists willing to storm the Capitol. But reality is more complicated. Many voted as much against Biden as for Trump, and perhaps half of Republicans believe the rigged election nonsense. When people paint all 74 million with the same brush, they play right into extremists’ talking points — making their influence, and existence, seem much bigger than it actually is. But if Biden were to target them, nothing draws converts to a radical cause more than martyrdom. As journalist Megyn Kelly put it on Wednesday’s special live episode of The Carlos Watson Show, calls from the left to strip degrees or disbar figures like Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley is “the crazy type of lunacy we should be avoiding.”

2. Balancing the Base

But Biden’s backers will insist their president not go chasing down the rabbit holes of Midwestern diners in search of Trump voters: They’ll argue Dems won and they should act like it rather than caricatures of meek lefties. There is a risk here if Biden is seen as trying too hard to win over Republicans that his base will feel left behind. Then again, Trump spent his entire presidency playing only to his hardcore supporters, which didn’t work out too well in the end. Unity is not so easy to come by.

3. Make a Difference

How? Focus intensely on legislation with direct impact. The Trump years showed voters care less about ideology than the perception that their leaders are fighting for them. The feeling that the government doesn’t work for us dominated the anti-establishment politics in both parties. Democrats promised that a Biden presidency would be meaningfully different from Trump’s. If Biden only passes politically safe, tepid policies that make little difference, Democrats can say goodbye to Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024.

4. Which Means Getting Bold

Notice no mention of whether laws are labeled “progressive” or “moderate.” Biden can push for popular reforms like decriminalizing marijuana. Pass paid family leave, universal pre-K and subsidized day care: Are any parents, liberal or conservative, really going to be upset with that? People forget price tags quickly if their taxes are truly improving their lives. The keys are “direct impact” and “popular.” You could well see more stimulus checks, criminal justice reform, infrastructure investment, affordable college and affordable health care — even Medicare for All could fit the bill. Meanwhile, there are pitfalls to initiatives like student loan forgiveness (supported in small doses, but inevitably both elitist and inequitable) and defunding the police, a trendy slogan neither popular nor positive in practice.

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Expectation games

Don’t assume you know what’s about to happen.

1. On the Agenda

“Go for it,” is what Megyn Kelly would tell Biden, as the former Fox News host said on our election aftershow: Anyone “who wants a ‘Kumbaya’ moment is probably a Republican trying to slow down your agenda or limit it.” Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said she’s feeling “hopeful,” and though she doesn’t expect to agree with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on everything, “I’m going to give them a chance. And even when I disagree, I’m not going to disagree readily.” But for conservative activist Grover Norquist, there’s already a mountain of disagreements on labor policy and more: “While he talks about unity … on the big-ticket items, [he’s] strictly partisan.”

2. Why Not More Broken Norms?

Given the norm-shattering “abnormal presidency ” of Trump, combined with Senate Republicans changing the rules to allow Supreme Court justices to avoid the filibuster, many Democrats are dreaming big with their return to power. They likely won’t be able to line up 60 Senate votes for a Biden climate plan to reach zero emissions by 2050 or a new Voting Rights Act in honor of the late Rep. John Lewis, but Democrats could elect to change the rules to pass them with their narrow majority.

3. From the Stone

The fall of the filibuster is far from guaranteed, though, as some worry about pulling a sword that could be turned against them by Republicans someday. Moderate Democrat Joe Manchin (pictured), now the critical swing vote on most Senate bills, has signaled he would refuse to end it. The West Virginian likely could only be swayed if Republicans embrace total obstructionism and block legislation near and dear to his heart, which means the GOP will have to tread carefully while respecting the Democrat’s wishes.


4. Manchin on a Mission

What Manchin will use his genie lamp for isn’t clear yet. He will hold tremendous power to drive cross-party agenda items, such as long-imagined infrastructure injections, opioid addiction aid, prescription drug pricing reforms and increased support for rural hospitals. If he wants to get bold, Manchin, who keeps photographs of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims in his office, could revive modest gun safety reforms he couldn’t pass in 2013. Smaller procedural shifts, such as a rule change to let every bipartisan bill in committee see a Senate floor vote, would help him codify the bipartisanship he so often promotes.

5. No Relief Guaranteed

Don’t max out your credit card assuming $1,400 stimulus checks are in the bag. Democrats now say it could take until March to pass a COVID relief bill. That’s problematic because even if Democrats use budget reconciliation to pass the $1.9 trillion Biden proposal with a bare majority, they will still need Manchin, whose initial gut reaction was that he would “absolutely” oppose another round of checks unless they were narrowly targeted. While he more recently suggested support for a third check, another month is an awfully long time politically.

6. Soak the Rich?

Democrats were universally opposed to Trump’s biggest legislative achievement: the 2017 tax cuts. Biden says he wants to undo them for those who earn above $400,000, as well as corporations, heirs and wealthy investors. But getting it done is going to be complicated, and there’s a question of how much political capital Democrats want to spend on tax hikes during a period of high unemployment.


Source: The Filipino Times

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