Wayne O'Leary

State of the Democrats

Because of the increased polarization of American politics, it’s been said, there will be no honeymoon for Joe Biden in 2021. That’s not true; there will be a political honeymoon for the newly installed president, just not of the usual kind.

Conservative America will not grant the honeymoon; it’s consumed by ideological hatred. Instead, the harmonious interlude will be granted by Democratic progressives, who in the spirit of Bidenesque “unity” are cutting the incoming president and his administration some slack to see how things develop politically. This forbearance is reinforced by what, up to now, appears to be a more activist, left-leaning Biden giving off a Rooseveltian vibe in his early pronouncements and actions.

Nevertheless, the intra-party honeymoon will be of short duration and dependent on the president following through (or at least attempting to do so) on his promises to the party’s progressive wing on relating to issues of economic justice, climate change, voting rights, immigration, and unionization. Hanging over everything of course, will be the response to the pandemic, which is really Job One. If the virus is not contained and controlled, the rest of the agenda becomes moot.

The easy part, issuing a slew of executive orders reversing Trump policies, themselves largely done through executive order, has already been carried out. Those include, among others, rejoining the World Health Organization, ending the Muslim ban, reinstating rolled back vehicle-emission standards, terminating construction of Trump’s Mexican border wall, killing the Keystone XL pipeline, reentering the Paris climate accords, and preserving threatened national monuments on public lands. Nothing much for the Democratic left to grouse about here.

In the longer term, however, the administration’s path looks considerably rockier as regards party unity. A brief perusal of the Biden cabinet and senior-advisor nominees announced so far indicates that about two-thirds, maybe more, are centrists whose views were soundly rejected during the 2020 primary season, with a large number being retreads from the Obama era of moderate incrementalism and bipartisan aspirations. The question then becomes, Can leopards change their spots?

Several of the anointed centrists carry considerable negative baggage. There’s presumptive Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, a former venture capitalist, who, as Rhode Island governor, built a reputation as a Republican-lite enemy of taxation, business regulation, public pensions, and labor unions. There’s the Biden pick for Agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, whose previous stint in the job (under Obama) betrayed a coziness with big agribusiness he later parlayed into a position as chief lobbyist for the dairy industry.

There’s Neera Tanden, head of the Center for American Progress, the corporate-funded centrist Democratic think tank, tapped for director of the Office of Management and Budget despite a history of divisive antagonism toward Sanders supporters since the 2016 campaign. And for attorney general, there’s Judge Merrick Garland, the bland Obama Supreme Court nominee known for periodic conservative rulings and cordial relationships with Republicans.

These establishment selections are balanced somewhat by a handful of progressives: Xavier Becerra (a Medicare for All advocate) at Health and Human Services, Marty Walsh at Labor, Deb Haaland at Interior, Jared Bernstein as economic advisor, et al. But the overall impression is of an administration lineup chosen on the basis of ideological familiarity, one selected to represent the status quo ante and the Democratic Party’s special-interest groups, the latter a concession to the demands of identity politics.

In the president’s words, “This cabinet will be the most representative cabinet in American history. … We’ll have a cabinet of barrier breakers, a cabinet of firsts.” The emphasis, in other words, is not on what potential members of the government think and believe, or what innovative policies they might implement, but on their social-group identification.

Beyond personnel decisions, the Biden team’s rhetoric thus far suggests that for them, racial and gender equity (race especially) are the most fundamental matters facing the country other than the immediate coronavirus crisis. This is opposite to the approach taken by the progressive-populist movement led by Bernie Sanders over the previous half-decade, which had attempted to advance largely economic policies and programs beneficial to all Americans irrespective of any specific social category — evidently, a quaint notion in the Democratic Party of the post-Trump era.

Economic populism, encompassing the critique of American capitalism formulated prior to the onset of the pandemic, is the Democratic Party crusade that’s suddenly receded into the background, displaced by a multitude of other concerns— from business recovery and immigration to structural racism and electoral reform. Racism is the problem Democratic politicians (centrists especially) seem most anxious to discuss, assuming the pandemic is temporary and will at some point be behind us.

There are reasons for the focus on race, which, I would argue, is a major issue, but neither the only nor the most important one. Of course, there’s the immediate political imperative to carry the South, which for the Democrats means solidifying the black vote. But it’s more than that.

First of all, for the current crop of senior Democratic leaders — the Bidens, Pelosis and Schumers — civil rights advocacy is what makes one a liberal or progressive; it was the left-leaning cause when they came of age in the 1960s. Memories of the economic populism of the New Deal are dim or nonexistent (except for someone like Bernie Sanders, who comes out of New York’s social-democratic tradition).

Furthermore, being for a minority-rights agenda is relatively easy and painless, politically speaking; it requires few taxes and (outside the South) involves little risk. And it’s a feel-good exercise. Who, after all, can be against racial fairness? Even Charlton Heston was at the 1963 March on Washington. Taking on the corporate establishment and allied wealthy interests is something else entirely; it’s the ultimate heavy political lift, which is why today’s centrist-minded, socialist-phobic Democratic Party would rather not do it.

Remember, the mere mention last year of Medicare for All, a clear threat to the insurance industry, was enough to generate paroxysms of fear among Democratic moderates. Serious climate-change legislation, which would likewise entail broad government restrictions on business as usual, led to Democratic moderates running as fast as possible from anything called a Green New Deal.

These topics are bound to come up again. That’s when we’ll know Joe Biden’s intra-party political honeymoon has ended.

Wayne O’Leary is a writer in Orono, Maine, specializing in political economy. He holds a doctorate in American history and is the author of two prizewinning books.

From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2021

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