The defining characteristic of Biden's political career

 

Jeffrey St. Clair >

+ The defining characteristic of Biden’s political career has been to make compromises with the right, no matter how far right the right gets. What started with amicable lunches with Strom Thurmond has ended with him knee-deep in a genocidal war with Netanyahu. It’s no surprise that Biden ended up here. It’s where he’s always been headed. It’s mildly surprising that the rest of the party has so willingly gone along for the ride, on a doomed political trajectory fueled by burning the aspirations of their own base.

+ Indeed, for most of his political career, Biden has been so desperate to compromise with the right that he’s rarely cared whether the person he’s compromising with even compromises anything back.

+ Day after day, Biden keeps committing political suicide and no one in his party seems to care. He combines the arrogance of RBG with the political tone-deafness of HRC, all wrapped up in the demyelinating brain of a man who lacks the political skills to slow his freefall. Biden’s job rating has fallen to an all-time low since taking office at a mere 34%.

+ Biden’s approval numbers began their downward slide about the time he retreated from the social welfare spending during the pandemic.

+ It’s not the first time Biden’s cut welfare, either. He helped ram Clinton’s dismantling of welfare through the Senate in 1996, one of 26 Democratic senators to vote for it. He meant it. Biden: “Government subsidy is not the ultimate answer to the problems of the poor…We are all too familiar with the stories of welfare mothers driving luxury cars and leading lifestyles that mirror the rich and famous. Whether they are exaggerated or not, these stories underlie a broad social concern that the welfare system has broken down.”

+ Bill Clinton, Al Gore, HRC, Barack Obama & Biden all share the same New Democrat philosophy: hawkish on defense, pro-business & banks, punitive criminal justice policies and a desire to roll back Great Society social programs. Clinton and Obama had the rhetorical skills to sell symbolism to the base, to make people see what isn’t there. The others don’t and they paid the political price.