Dec 12, 2021
The Biden Presidency Is Disappointing Because That’s How It Was Supposed to Be
“Nothing would fundamentally change”, he promised his rich donors. Joe Biden has kept true to his word.
At work I have a friend named Marty who passed me an article from The New York Times, a guest essay really, written by Prof. Corey Robin of the Brooklyn College in New York. Entitled “Why the Biden Presidency Feels like Such a Disappointment,” Dr. Robin explored the reasons that, despite seemingly successful accomplishments in his first year such as passing two Covid-19 relief packages, the Biden presidency seems to disappoint just about everyone.
While many are disappointed, I must admit that I gave myself no illusions as to what a Biden presidency would have meant when I voted for him in 2020. After all, he’d said the quiet part out loud by making a promise to his rich donors that “nothing would fundamentally change.” Nor was I particularly impressed with the results: Hung Congress? No thanks.
Nevertheless, I agree with most of what Dr. Robin has written. I agree, for example, with the following claim: “Corporations are viewed, by liberals, as more advanced reformers of structural racism than parties and laws, and tech billionaires are seen as saviors of the planet.” Indeed, in my drafts I derided the optimistic train of thought “that thinks the market will course correct itself and billionaires will save the planet.”
I also agree with him that President Carter — who has done more good out of office than any of his successors — was the first neoliberal president and that this is what began the gradual process of arriving at where we are today.
In fact, just about the only points I’d take issue with are when Dr. Robin claims that “[Obama] tried to get a public option in the Affordable Care Act” and that, while in desperate need of it, “An independent social movement is what Mr. Biden does not have.”
For the first critique, whatever you think of him now, I kindly refer you to Glenn Greenwald’s 2010 article for Salon entitled, “The Democratic Party’s Deceitful Game”.
For the second, I would first argue that Mr. Biden does actually have an independent social movement that could create unrelenting pressure on senators like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin but that Mr. Biden follows in the footsteps of his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, and chooses not to use it.
Biden Chooses Not to Be Transformative
In 2007, Jon Schwarz wrote about what he termed “the iron law of institutions”. This means:
the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution “fail” while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to “succeed” if that requires them to lose power within the institution.
In 2015, this idea resurfaced in an interview with Bernie Sanders, who criticized Obama’s dismantling of his grassroots army and his decision to send them packing:
“I have a lot of respect and admiration for Barack Obama,” [Sanders] said, but the “biggest mistake” he made after running “one of the great campaigns in American history” was saying to the legions of people who supported him, “Thank you very much for electing me, I’ll take it from here.”
As Schwarz observes, this was probably much less a mistake than it was a calculated political decision to solidify his own influence within the Democratic Party regardless of what that means for the Party’s demise or success.
To be sure, Barack Obama, to this day, holds extreme sway over the Democratic Party as evinced by his influence in getting every single candidate other than Joe Biden to drop out of the race when it appeared Bernie was on the verge of victory. Dr. Robin also mentions this.
But Dr. Robin is wrong that Mr. Biden does not have an independent social movement. The organizing has been done multiple times in that past whether it was Howard Dean’s grassroots organizing campaign in 2004, Barack Obama’s Organizing for America, or Bernie Sanders’ enthusiastic campaigns in 2016 and 2020. Those people can still be called upon to mobilize again.
The real reason Biden is “disappointing” is not for lack of such movements, but because he has decided to not call upon such movements. The result is that Biden, having been afforded the choice to be a president like FDR (transformational) or a president like Barack Obama (not transformational), seems to have chosen to be the latter.
We have seen this time and time again such as when the Democrats did not fire the Senate parliamentarian to overrule her on the minimum wage hike choosing instead to “respect the process”. When Republicans were in office and faced a similar conundrum, they fired the guy. (And Americans don’t care how something is done or if had 50 votes versus 60 votes — they just want it done. Democracy is only popular insofar as it works, so if you’re elected to do something — do it).
Or take student debt, where Biden repeatedly lies and says he cannot forgive it — he can — but chooses otherwise.
With more serious legislative binds such as that concerning the Build Back Better agenda, Biden could mobilize all sorts of supporters to take action since the ideas are so popular and he could use his bully pulpit more than he has but, again, he chooses not to. Nor does he encourage someone like Nancy Pelosi to hold a vote — she says she’ll only bring a bill to the floor if it has the votes. To hell with that! Force the vote, put anyone who dares on record for voting down popular reform.
But they don’t because they know confrontation would force them to actually do something. That’s why Democrats shirk from it. They benefit from the status quo, so why change it?
And that’s exactly how it was supposed to be. Why else would the Democratic establishment rally around Joe Biden to decide the outcome of a primary elections in a 24-hour period? They were set to lose them. The reason was they panicked. And why did they panic? Because they knew that there was a guy promising to be more like FDR who might actually change things (or try), and a guy promising to do more of the same — neoliberalism — which got us here to begin with.
But it might be useful to remember that, throughout history, when history needed them most, centrists have always preferred that the far-right take charge than those who might threaten their vested interests. So it is today with people like Joe Manchin, who knows voter reform might actually make things more competitive and tilt America a bit leftward. That would not be so good for his empire of coal. Nor would it be good for Biden and his credit card friends or his Big PHARMA friends or his military-industrial friends.
Thus, in 2022 and 2024, centrists just might get their way. They’ll lose the election, but hey, they’ll keep their party just how they wanted it and remain part of the privileged elite, too. After all, there’s always the revolving door and a nice book deal around the corner.
