{"id":235160,"date":"2021-05-31T07:24:09","date_gmt":"2021-05-31T07:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=235160"},"modified":"2021-06-01T13:35:28","modified_gmt":"2021-06-01T13:35:28","slug":"taibbi-so-much-for-transformational-joe-biden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=235160","title":{"rendered":"Taibbi: So Much For “Transformational” Joe Biden"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Matt Taibbi — via TK News, May 28, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Joe Biden is cruising, in a happy-place few politicians reach. Outside of a few grumpy right-wing outlets he faces almost no hostile press questioning, political threats within his own party are minimal, and his approval rating, if one believes the latest Harvard CAPS\/Harris poll, hovers at an astonishing 64%<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Biden has the press paper-trained to a degree we haven\u2019t seen in modern times. Not even at the height of the media\u2019s drooling love affair with Barack Obama \u2014 a phenomenon I confess I was part of \u2014 did we ever see such enthusiastic, reflexive backing of White House messaging. The Biden press even reverses course on a dime when needed, with the past weeks being a supreme example.<\/p>\n

Last Friday, word came out via The Washington Post <\/em>that the Biden administration\u2019s new budget plan wouldn\u2019t contain a host of key ideas proposed on the campaign trail<\/a>, from a public health care option to raising the estate tax to forgiveness of student debt. Some of these were major, central campaign promises \u2014 the idea of a plan to insure \u201can estimated 97% of Americans<\/a>,\u201d for instance, was big Biden campaign rhetoric whose passing was barely commemorated. The key line in the Post <\/em>article:<\/p>\n

The White House jettisoned months of planning from agency staff as their initial plan could fuel criticisms that the administration is pushing new spending programs too aggressively.<\/p>\n

Say what? Just a few weeks ago, we were being told in headline after headline that Biden was a \u201ctransformational\u201d president who\u2019d heroically abandoned fruitless efforts at bipartisanship<\/a> and moreover had conquered the fear of deficit spending that kept Barack Obama from fulfilling his own \u201ctransformative<\/a>\u201d destiny. Insiders regaled us with tales about how this administration exiled the Clintonian tricksters like Larry Summers<\/a> who robbed Obama of his legacy by whispering false worries about inflation.<\/p>\n

We even saw the bizarre spectacle of Treasury Secretary and erstwhile deficit hawk Janet Yellen publicly throwing down with Summers<\/a>, battle-rapper style, about his excess fiscal caution, saying the biggest risk wasn\u2019t inflation but if \u201cwe don\u2019t do enough\u201d to address the economic damage of the pandemic. Yellen all but told Summers to go back to Cranbrook with his bitch-ass spending fears.<\/p>\n

Then a few weeks ago, on Meet The Press, <\/em>Yellen reverted to form<\/a> and said that Joe Biden \u201chas made clear that permanent increases in spending should be paid for, and I agree,\u201d adding that \u201cover the long run, deficits need to be contained.\u201d After that came the Post <\/em>story and word that the administration had backed off a host of plans, including a proposal to lower prescription drug costs, while also engaging with seeming seriousness in \u201cbipartisan\u201d negotiations on an infrastructure\/jobs bill.<\/p>\n

Why might a Democratic White House recently praised as \u201cradical\u201d by the <\/a>New York Times<\/a> <\/em>because they \u201cstopped devising compromised bills in a bid to win Republican votes\u201d suddenly be interested in getting Republican votes again? Politico <\/em>hinted at the answer:<\/p>\n

There also are deepening doubts about an agreement on how to pay for the infrastructure spending package. Democrats are resistant to tapping leftover Covid-relief money, which the White House argues isn’t sufficient to cover the plan, anyway.<\/p>\n

Translation: Biden is worried about deficits, and having Republicans on whom they can pin lower budgetary outlays is once again politically useful. Therefore, bipartisanship is back, fiscal restraint is back, maybe even austerity is back. Good times!<\/p>\n

Whatever one\u2019s feeling about the appropriateness of any of these policies, it\u2019s clear the messaging surrounding them has undergone a near-complete turnaround almost overnight, which would normally prompt at least a raised eyebrow or two in media. But all that\u2019s happened is that the moment the Biden administration stopped talking about being \u201ctransformative,\u201d the White House press quietly did the same, in silent recognition that they\u2019ll all be selling a different product for while.<\/p>\n

Joe Biden\u2019s journey to \u201ctransformational\u201d status and back has been an expert political PR campaign. It took a year, and Biden\u2019s camp never had to break a sweat.<\/p>\n

Biden had been a symbol of non-change since before disco, and embraced that image at the start of the 2020 campaign. In a fundraiser in June of 2019, he reportedly told supporters he didn\u2019t want to\u00a0\u201cdemonize\u201d\u00a0the wealthy, that\u00a0\u201cno one\u2019s standard of living would change,\u201d and that in fact, if he were elected, \u201cnothing will fundamentally change.\u201d\u00a0It was an iconic line. He was the un-Obama. Even Steven Colbert\u00a0ripped him<\/a>\u00a0for being an inspirational Shepard Fairey poster in reverse.<\/p>\n

Biden didn\u2019t push back on the meming and mockery for that incident or a dozen others like it. He seemed to understand that his appeal in the Trump era lay in the perception that he\u2019d lived in the middle of the political road for so long, he wouldn\u2019t know how to find the edge if he tried.<\/p>\n

Biden and his aides spent much of the 2020 primary race engaged in what Clinton-era political analysts would have called triangulation. They pushed back against Medicare for All, the decriminalization of border crossings, defunding the police, and other ideas that seemed to be hot among blue voters. \u201cStatus Quo Joe<\/a>,\u201d sneered the New Republic.<\/em><\/p>\n

The\u00a0reporters who covered\u00a0Biden\u2019s campaign\u00a0every day\u00a0were told\u00a0over and over\u00a0by surrogates\u00a0that Biden\u00a0was about stability, not big ideas<\/a>. Reporters wrote a lot of those stories. When Biden was doing well in polls, we were told he was \u201can implicit contrast to potentially riskier rivals\u201d who are \u201coffering more disruptive policy platforms,\u201d as the Washington Post <\/em>put it<\/a>. At other times, we were cautioned that Biden\u2019s \u201cadult-in-the-room civility and pragmatic compromise\u201d might not cut it, in an era when Democrats wanted an \u201cideological warrior<\/a>,\u201d as Politico <\/em>magazine wrote.<\/p>\n

Biden went so far as to describe himself as literally too old to have new ideas, saying voters would have to settle for him being a \u201cbridge\u201d a future group of possibly idea-having politicians. \u201cLook, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else<\/a>,\u201d he said in March of 2020. \u201cThere’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.\u201d When the primary race was down to him and Bernie Sanders, he said he was about\u00a0\u201cresults, not revolution<\/a>.\u201d And with such pronouncements, he walloped Sanders.<\/p>\n

There was a paradox in those results. Although the Democratic electorate overwhelmingly chose Biden in the two-horse race, polls suggested they preferred Sanders policy prescriptions on ideas like Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, raising corporate taxes, and so on. Well, maybe they did.<\/p>\n

In March of 2020, for instance, at the supposed critical moment of the Sanders-Biden showdown, 66% of voters<\/a> said they believed the candidate who promised \u201ctransformational change\u201d had the best chance of beating Donald Trump. This was compared to 34% who said they believed \u201csomeone who promises to build off previous administrations\u201d had the best chance to win. Yet by an almost exact opposite ratio, voters chose Biden at that time.<\/p>\n

One way of looking at those results was that many Democrats wanted more of the same, but also wanted to feel like they were voting for \u201ctransformative\u201d change. The Biden camp, which had seen both ends of this phenomenon in Obama\u2019s evolving relationship with Democratic voters, seemed to grasp this. Once Sanders was toast and Biden was the de facto <\/em>nominee, he and his aides began rolling out the word \u201ctransform\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

If we come together, we will defeat Donald Trump. And when we do that, we will not only do the hard work of rebuilding this nation \u2014 we will transform it.<\/p>\n

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 9, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n