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      If Democrats return to centrism, they are doomed to lose against Trump | Samuel Moyn

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      OpinionJoe BidenIf Democrats return to centrism, they are doomed to lose against TrumpSamuel MoynBiden was once touted as the ‘New FDR’. That ambition is fast dying – as are Democrats hopes of remaining in power Mon 8 Nov 2021 08.56 ESTLast modified on Mon 8 Nov 2021 15.52 ESTCongress’s passage on Friday of Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill would ordinarily have been a cause for celebration. But there is a good chance it was the beginning of the end of his presidency. After all, the bill’s final days marked a new consensus around a centrist set of economic remedies, chosen out of fears of what will supposedly happen when progressives with a transformative agenda exercise too much influence on the Democratic party agenda.Only 10 months ago, Biden came into office with great expectations – but greater terrors. Even more apparent at the start than now, Biden’s presidency has been defined by fear rather than hope. With the assault on the Capitol earlier in the month, the culmination of a four-year deathwatch for American democracy, the emergency could hardly evaporate overnight. With Donald Trump temporarily ousted, his replacement also drew 1930s comparisons. The question “is he or isn’t he?” had been asked of Biden’s predecessor for four years. To redeem the country from the fascist, was Biden going to be Franklin Roosevelt?Like FDR, Biden led Democrats who have rightly stressed economic transformation for the sake of the poor and vulnerable but also for the angry and disaffected voters of the stagnating middle. But unlike Roosevelt, Biden’s coalition is fragile and fissures emerged to threaten his success almost from the start – fissures that broke it apart definitively last week even in the midst of Biden’s infrastructure victory.Other causes were forced to the margins along the way. Biden subordinated even critical fixes to American democracy, like reforms of courts and elections, to the economic agenda. As for his immigration policies, which mostly resembled the disgusting ones of prior presidents, they were treated with a partisan silence, provoking rage among the few principled enough to demand fewer cruelties and restrictions no matter who is imposing them. But Biden got a pass because enough agreed with the priority to address the economic reasons for Trump’s breakthrough, which are undeniable.Yet in comparison to Roosevelt’s first “100 days” – which saw 15 major bills and gave the early phase of every presidency its name – Biden’s first 100 days were bogged down. A Covid-19 relief and stimulus bill was passed, adding $1.9tn in emergency spending to the $2.2tn of the first such bill signed by Trump in March 2020. But the real hopes fell on the big-ticket measures for “infrastructure” and welfare that Biden resolved to pursue separately. After all, the American Rescue Plan was only meant to be a temporary stopgap for an American society beset with deeper ills even beyond those that the virus laid bare.The game was on. At first the debate seemed to be about how costly to make the bills and how to fund them. This was especially true for the American Families Plan, which was supposed to take steps towards an American welfare state – including by making relief measures for children in earlier bills permanent. Progressives in Congress, understanding the risks, were lauded for an early victory in August, refusing to back the first narrower infrastructure bill if Democrats abandoned the second more ambitious social spending bill. Centrists tried to tag progressives as the obstructionists. But the mainstream narrative remained that by holding infrastructure hostage, progressives were wisely keeping centrists from returning to form.Even as it became clearer and clearer that the Democratic centrist senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and like-minded Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives, were doing damage to the ambition of the bills, a breakthrough after generations of Democratic austerity and neoliberalism still seemed possible. Then came the critical event that allowed for the centrist breakthrough last week: the election for Virginia governor last Tuesday.In an electoral shock, Republican Glenn Youngkin won – and, more important, grizzled and uncharismatic Democratic party sage Terry McAuliffe, who had once held the governor’s office, lost. Even though McAuliffe’s reputation for decades has been one of a centrist on economics – he served as Bill Clinton’s campaign chair in the 1990s – centrists scored a narrative victory. Wasn’t it because of progressive excess that voters were turning on the party? “Wokeness derails the Democrats,” one headline ran. Lawmakers in Washington scurried to marginalize progressives by passing the infrastructure bill, with some progressives voting no, and others citing promises that Democrats will still continue on to the welfare measures.The rush to judgment was peculiar. It is not until 2022 that the Democrats will need to show something for themselves, and there was no reason to abandon the social spending plan. Suddenly, however, progressives holding tough – since some Republicans supported the infrastructure plan – were dispensable.The new narrative was that Youngkin won because of antiracist rhetoric many Democrats have adopted, along with elites branded as “out of touch” by other elite commentators. Centrists saw a golden opportunity to call for a return to their moderation, including in containing spending.In an extraordinary op-ed, the New York Times called for an “honest conversation” about abandoning progressive goals across the board – including the economy, where Americans demand “bipartisan solutions” that respect inflationary risks and refuse to spend very much. The truth was that Americans had gotten bipartisan neoliberalism for decades, but no matter. One Twitter commentator snarkily noted that it was hardly surprising that “the lessons from Tuesday’s election” matched the “ideological goals” neoliberal elites “had before the election and decades before that. What are the odds!”Democrats blew by the possibility that McAuliffe’s failures were mainly his fault, and due less to “critical race theory” that allegedly was already reshaping public education than to an abandonment of parents forced to endure school closures for years (itself an economic issue). Either way, the critical error is assuming that voters rejected progressive economic policies, which are popular across the board.Even before the events the other day, Democrats defined what was in Build Back Better – their slogan and the name of the welfare bill – downwards. Free college was stripped out early, family and medical leave – standard across industrialized democracies for decades – were killed late, and Biden kowtowed to centrists who demanded a more marketized version not just of environmental concern but of funding government across the board, as taxes hikes were reversed. With its fate no longer hostage to infrastructure, in spite of written promises from some centrists that progressives reportedly exacted at the last minute, there is no reason to be optimistic about the final bill’s fate.An infrastructure bill for a country in decay and decline was much needed and has itself eluded Democrats for decades. Though cut in half to win acceptance, its $1tn for a grab bag of spending – much focused on transport – is nothing to trivialize. But rarely in history has a greater looming defeat been snatched from the jaws of a political victory as the other day.In the first year of Biden’s presidency, Democrats agreed that the only alternative to barbarism is, if not socialism, some modicum of economic change. Many agreed that opening acts of Barack Obama’s administration had been fatefully insufficient. Now, despite the lessons of the Obama presidency, Republicans are set to recapture one house of Congress after two years – or both. By contrast, FDR gained seats in both houses after delivering substantive change, and won the presidency three more times.Of course, even if progressives were to secure a welfare package and retain influence in their party, Trump – or an even more popular Republican – could still win the presidency. But this outcome is a near certainty if the Democrats return to centrist form – as seems the likeliest outcome now.
      Samuel Moyn is a professor of law and history at Yale and the author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World
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      Democrats ‘thank God’ for infrastructure win after state election warnings

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      Biden administrationDemocrats ‘thank God’ for infrastructure win after state election warnings
      Concerns party will face disaster in midterm elections next year
      Trumpism without Trump: how Republicans won in Virginia
      0Martin Pengelly in New York@MartinPengellySun 7 Nov 2021 10.59 ESTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 13.56 ESTVoters in Virginia and New Jersey this week sounded a serious warning to Democrats, key players in the Biden administration and Congress said on Sunday: the party needs to get things done or it faces disaster in midterm elections next year.Biden hails ‘monumental step forward’ as Democrats pass infrastructure billRead moreThe energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, said “we thank God” something was done on Friday night: a $1tn infrastructure deal sent to Joe Biden’s desk by the House.Three days after Democrats lost a race for governor in one state Biden won comfortably and barely held the other, House centrists and progressives managed to come together, with some Republican support.Biden hailed a “monumental step forward” and a “blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America”. He also said “the one message that came across” in Virginia and New Jersey was: “Get something done.”Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, echoed his boss, telling NBC’s Meet the Press the American people “wanted to see more action in Washington. They wanted to see things move more quickly, and three days later, Congress responded.”But Democrats punted again on the second half of the president’s domestic agenda, the 10-year, $1.75tn Build Back Better package to boost health and social care and to seek to mitigate the impact of the climate crisis.Granholm told CNN’s State of the Union: “I think that the Democrats in the House got the message very loud and clear. Pass the bill and pass the second part too, because these contain things that everyday people care about.“The governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, ran on the phrase ‘Fix the damn roads’. And that’s what this bill does. It fixes the damn roads. It fixes the bridges. It gets broadband to real people. It fixes your homes so that they’re not leaking energy.”Granholm also said the infrastructure bill did not help with childcare and other “costs of living for real people”. That, she said, is the job of Build Back Better, which now awaits analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, a measure demanded by centrists.The New Jersey centrist Josh Gottheimer told CNN he and his allies wanted to make sure the bill was “fiscally responsible and paid for”. He said he was confidant it would pass but dodged when asked repeatedly if his group would vote no if CBO analysis differed from White House and congressional estimates.In New Jersey, the Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, won by an unexpectedly narrow margin. Taking a page from Donald Trump’s playbook, the Republican Jack Ciattarelli has refused to concede.In Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, a former governor, suffered a devastating defeat by Glenn Youngkin, a businessman who kept Trump at arm’s length while campaigning on culture war issues including the place of race in education.Asked if Youngkin could have been beaten had major legislation been passed in Washington before election day, Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia, told CNN: “I wish the House would have moved earlier.”Warner also said voters needed to be told what was in the Biden bills, rather than what they cost. The bills’ cost is regularly condemned by Republicans – and by Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who remains a key obstacle in the Senate.The White House adviser Cedric Richmond told Fox News Sunday Manchin was “a lot more conservative and everybody sees that but he’s been a willing partner to come to the table with constructive dialogue. And we’re confident in where we will go with our Build Back Better framework. We’re optimistic we’re going to get it done. And the truth is we need to get it done.”Richmond also rejected Republican claims that increased spending will add to inflation. Granholm said the administration saw current inflation as “transitory”.Larry Hogan, the governor of Maryland and a Republican moderate with presidential ambitions, told CNN Biden had “nearly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory”.The infrastructure bill “should have been an overwhelming win back in August”, Hogan said. “And I think [Biden] should not have let it get sidetracked by the progressives in the House. I think that was bad for Joe Biden. I think that was reflected in the election results because I think they misread the mandate.Joe Biden’s best hope of retaining power is Trump, the ogre under the bed | Michael CohenRead more“You know, Joe Biden won a very narrow election by winning swing voters and they’re not where the progressive caucus is, I can assure you, and the vast majority of Americans are not for the second bill.”Progressives contend otherwise. In tweets on Saturday, the Washington state congresswoman Pramila Jayapal highlighted news from the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow and said: “This is EXACTLY why we need the Build Back Better Act. We will deliver climate action – for our communities, future generations, and our planet.”She also retweeted the Rev William Barber, the leader of the Poor People’s Campaign. He said: “My prayer is that Congress will keep its word and vote to pass Build Back Better, because if not, that political betrayal will be a political crime and integrity breach.”Such a failure, Barber said, “would abandon over 140 million poor and low-wealth people who make up 43% of the nation and 30% of the voting population”.That, he said, “could split the Democratic party in ways that may be irreparable”.TopicsBiden administrationUS politicsUS domestic policyDemocratsHouse of RepresentativesUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      Joe Biden’s best hope of retaining power is Trump, the ogre under the bed | Michael Cohen

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      OpinionJoe BidenJoe Biden’s best hope of retaining power is Trump, the ogre under the bedMichael CohenDespite Friday’s win in Congress, little is going right. But with the ex-president around, anything is possible Sun 7 Nov 2021 02.30 ESTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 04.06 ESTIf there is one truism of modern American politics, it’s that good fortune is a fleeting thing. Almost a year to the day after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, his Democratic party was dealt a body blow on election day 2021.In Virginia, former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe lost to Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, as the Republicans won every statewide race and took control of the state’s house of delegates. In New Jersey, incumbent governor, Phil Murphy, barely held on in a state that went for Biden by 16 points. Meanwhile, the powerful Democratic president of New Jersey’s state senate was defeated by a Republican truck driver who spent a mere several thousand dollars on his campaign.Does this mean that the bloom is off the rose for Biden and America is on its way to another Trump presidency? It’s too soon to tell, but it does not look great for Democrats, even though the House passed the $1 trillion infrastructure bill on Friday. While social media sizzled with red-hot takes on why the party underperformed in Virginia and New Jersey, the reality is more boring. For 40 years, the candidate of the president’s party has gone down to defeat in Virginia’s off-year gubernatorial election. From that perspective, McAuliffe losing in Virginia was the expected outcome.Moreover, the approval ratings of the president have a trickle-down effect on party candidates and, right now, Biden is deeply unpopular. His approval ratings, at this point in his presidency, are the lowest in modern polling history, save one past president – Donald Trump. That’s not good company to keep.Since the end of August, Biden has been buffeted by one bad news story after another. The image of ignominious US withdrawal from Afghanistan cast a pall over his presidency and punctured his aura of competence. As Covid vaccinations levelled off, cases again began to rise, forcing many Americans, who believed just a few months ago that the pandemic would be soon over, to go back to masking and social distancing. Meanwhile, in Washington, Democrats bickered among themselves about the size of Biden’s “build back better” agenda, and the president who ran on his ability to get things done in Washington looked like a helpless bystander.In short, this White House has not had a good story to tell for months and in Virginia and New Jersey they paid the price. But if there is one silver lining for Democrats, it’s that midterm elections are a year away and there is time to right the ship.For all the sturm und drang in Congress over the president’s massive, multitrillion spending packages, a second major bill is also likely to pass, joining the infrastructure bill.The second would devote an estimated $1.75tn to much-needed social safety net programmes, including universal pre-kindergarten subsidies for childcare, an expansion of Medicare benefits for senior citizens and Medicare coverage for the poorest citizens and, potentially, billions for the country’s first paid family and medical leave programme. Half-a-trillion dollars are also budgeted for fighting climate change. Passage of both bills will not only thrill Democratic voters but could spur further economic growth.While September was the worst month for Covid cases and deaths since vaccines became readily available, there was a significant decline in new cases in October. More than 70% of eligible adults are now fully vaccinated and vaccines for children aged five to 11 were rolled out last week.However, the combination of strong economic growth, a return to pre-pandemic normality and legislative success will not guarantee political success. Indeed, the same traditional political forces that contributed to Democratic underperformance on Tuesday will weigh on the party next year.Historically, the party in power gets shellacked in midterm elections, losing an average of 26 House seats. With Democrats holding a razor-thin majority in the House, it’s hard to imagine the party outrunning that history. And as much as Biden’s legislative agenda might seem like a winner for Democrats, voters don’t always reward the party in power for getting stuff done, particularly if they don’t feel it. The 63 House Democrats who lost their seats in 2010, months after the passage of Obamacare, can attest to that.Democrats also face a larger set of structural problems: a constitutional system that favours small rural states (usually won by Republicans); a rival political party that is restricting voting rights and aggressively gerrymandering congressional maps to maintain power; and an energised Republican electorate.Ultimately, what should perhaps be most disturbing for Democrats about Tuesday’s elections is that their voters came out in droves, but they couldn’t overcome huge Republican enthusiasm.All this may change in 2022, when Trump will probably play a more prominent role and Democratic candidates can use him as a foil to attack Republicans. In fact, one of the likely reasons Youngkin prevailed in Virginia is that he successfully distanced himself from Trump and made it difficult for McAuliffe to link him to the ex-president. That may be harder to do for Republican congressional candidates, many of whom regularly boast about their support for Trump.Trump is likely to remain the gift that keeps on giving for Democrats – the living, breathing bogeyman under the bed who keeps their voters up at night. As much as Democrats may want to run on their legislative agenda, the spectre of Trump could be their most effective strategy for maintaining power and is probably Biden’s best hope for re-election. The structural impediments to electoral success will remain, however, particularly as Senate Democrats, led by West Virginia’s JJoe Manchin, seem unwilling to enact the kind of far-reaching political reforms that would undo them. Moreover, the Republicans’ unabashed assault on democratic norms and voting rights is likely to continue. The short-term road ahead for Democrats is rocky.Still, as John Maynard Keynes famously quipped, in the long run we are all dead and if Trump is the path to Democratic success, so be it. After all, there is one other important truism of all politics – winning is better than losing.
      Michael Cohen’s most recent book, co-authored with Micah Zenko, is Clear and Present Safety
      TopicsJoe BidenOpinionDemocratsUS politicsDonald TrumpRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

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      Both/And review: Huma Abedin on Clinton, Weiner and a political life

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      BooksBoth/And review: Huma Abedin on Clinton, Weiner and a political lifeThe close aide to Hillary Clinton has written a tale spliced with pain but blind to her boss’s weak spots

      Abedin: Kiss from unnamed senator was not sexual assault
      Lloyd GreenSun 7 Nov 2021 02.00 ESTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 02.02 ESTIn 2015, Hillary Clinton’s brains trust deliberately elevated the stature of the “extreme” Republican contenders, the “pied pipers”, Donald Trump included. On election night in 2016, Clintonworld stared into the abyss.In Trump’s Shadow: David Drucker surveys the Republican runners and riders for 2024Read more“It was sheer disbelief,” Huma Abedin writes in her new memoir. “More like shock.”Clinton, Abedin as campaign vice-chair and other aides failed to grasp that Trump was spearheading a movement, his mien his message. Clinton branded half of his supporters “deplorables”.Not surprisingly, in her memoir Abedin shows a blind spot to Clinton family shortcomings. When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, for example, “it seemed very likely” to her that it “was untrue”. Somehow, an intern who rose to become one of Hillary’s closest confidantes forgot that even before Lewinsky, Bill Clinton’s sexual conduct had almost throttled his White House ambitions. Bill and Hillary even appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes to salvage his viability.“I’m not sitting here some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” Hillary said.Not surprisingly, as Hillary’s so-called “second daughter”, Abedin has a problem coming to grips with an immovable likability deficit that cost her boss both times she ran for president.“Why was HRC not likeable?” Abedin asks. “This was particularly difficult to understand for those who knew her, since as far as we were concerned that was a quality she had in abundance.”Others have plumbed such waters – and found Clinton wanting. Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post, for example, a Pulitzer Prize winner, portrayed Hillary sporting a “foul mouth” and being loathed by the agents who protected her. After members of her Secret Service detail overheard Chelsea Clinton calling them “pigs”, Leonnig wrote, the first daughter was reminded that their job was to “stand between you, your family and a bullet”.Chelsea reportedly responded: “Well, that’s what my mother and father call you.”Abedin does not discuss how, out of office, Hillary scooped up windfalls in the commodities market and easy millions in Wall Street speaking fees, all while doing her best impersonation of Mother Teresa.Clinton’s second run for president tarnished her image. In December 2017, a Gallup poll pegged her favorability at 37%. But unlike Mandy Grunwald, an adviser to both Clintons, Abedin refuses to admit that Hillary has foibles.According to Grunwald, Clinton could sound like she “DOESN’T think the game is rigged” against normal Americans, mustering only recognition that the “public thinks so”. Said differently, Clinton conveyed obliviousness to the Great Recession of 2008-09, its casualties and anxieties.In April 2015, nearly half of the US self-identified as working- or lower-class. Between November 2007 and late 2016, white Americans in that bracket lost more than 700,000 jobs.Abedin describes sitting with Clinton in Iowa, watching Trump “ramble incoherently about himself”. She captures Clinton saying: “I just don’t get it.” Similarly, Abedin mocks Bernie Sanders’ call for a “revolution” and glosses over the fact that Clinton only beat the Vermont senator to clinch the nomination in early June 2016, more than a week after Trump wrapped up the Republican nod.“With each contest, she methodically racked up the number of delegates she needed to secure the nomination,” Abedin writes. That’s pure spin. It was supposed to be a coronation. They didn’t plan on winning the Iowa caucuses by a razor-thin margin or getting walloped in New Hampshire, where Clinton won on her first go-round.A youth-driven movement helped propel Sanders’ rise. Aspiration and grievance counted. The bankers had gotten their bailouts. Sanders supporters were staring at a future bleaker than their parents had known. Clinton had gone from the “beer track” candidate of 2008 to the pick of the wine drinkers, the coastal establishment. And yet, according to Abedin, defeat by Trump still came as a bolt from the blue.Both/And lets the reader play voyeur and counselor too. Abedin delivers the skinny on her courtship by, marriage to and traumatic estrangement from the former congressman Anthony Weiner. She shares that they attended couples’ therapy, and that he possessed darker secrets than she first thought.She also describes how an unnamed senator shoved his tongue down her throat and pinned her against a couch while the pair were in his apartment for late-night coffee. Abedin writes that she repressed memories of the event until they came rushing back amid Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, when the supreme court nominee was accused of, and denied, sexual assault.Asked by CBS if the senator had committed a sexual assault, Abedin paused.“Did I feel like he was assaulting me in that moment?” she told Nora O’Donnell. “I didn’t, it didn’t feel that way. I was in an uncomfortable situation with a senator and I didn’t know how to deal with it.”‘A xenophobic autocrat’: Adam Schiff on Trump’s threat to democracyRead moreThis does not appear to be the final word. Members of the Senate worry about who else the unnamed senator may have abused. Philippe Reines, a former Clinton aide, says it is up to Abedin “alone to decide what to share, with whom, how and when”.Abedin’s eye for style asserts itself throughout her memoir – even as she deals with how her husband made damaging headlines. In May 2011, she woke up in Buckingham Palace and surveyed the room. Her “long, fitted gown for the evening’s white-tie dinner hung on the bathroom door”. An “elegant chestnut-brown writing desk” stood at the “foot of the bed”. The same weekend, Weiner alerted his pregnant wife to his sexting habits. Weiner went to prison but he and Abedin are not completely estranged.Both/And is also a story of Abedin’s life before and outside politics. She tells of being born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, of spending most of her youth in Saudi Arabia, a father and mother who held doctorates, of family ties in the Middle East, the subcontinent and the US. It is the strongest part of the book, a tale of an immigrant, of an upward arc.
      Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds is published in the US by Scribner
      TopicsBooksHuma AbedinHillary ClintonUS politicsAnthony WeinerPolitics booksDemocratsreviewsReuse this content More

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      It’s not all about the culture war – Democrats helped shaft the working class | Robert Reich

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      OpinionUS politicsIt’s not all about the culture war – Democrats helped shaft the working classRobert ReichResults in Virginia and New Jersey do not make Republican dog-whistle politics the future. The left must do more to help Sun 7 Nov 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 01.03 EDTAfter Tuesday’s Democratic loss in the Virginia gubernatorial election and near-loss in New Jersey, I’m hearing a narrative about Democrats’ failure with white working-class voters that is fundamentally wrong.Is this a presidency-defining week for Biden? Politics Weekly Extra – podcastRead moreIn Thursday’s New York Times, David Leonhardt pointed out that the non-college voters who are abandoning the Democratic party “tend to be more religious, more outwardly patriotic and more culturally conservative than college graduates”. He then quotes a fellow Times columnist, the pollster Nate Cohn, who says “college graduates have instilled increasingly liberal cultural norms while gaining the power to nudge the Democratic party to the left. Partly as a result, large portions of the party’s traditional working-class base have defected to the Republicans”.Leonhardt adds that these defections have increased over the past decade and suggests Democratic candidates start listening to working-class voters’ concerns about “crime and political correctness”, their “mixed feelings about immigration and abortion laws”, and their beliefs “in God and in a strong America”.This narrative worries me in two ways. First, if “cultural” messages top economic ones, what’s to stop Democrats from playing the same cultural card Republicans have used for years to inflame the white working class: racism? Make no mistake: Glenn Youngkin focused his campaign in Virginia on critical race theory, which isn’t even taught in Virginia’s schools but comes out of the same disgraceful Republican dog-whistle tradition.The other problem with this “culture over economics” narrative is it overlooks the fact that after Ronald Reagan, the Democratic party turned its back on the working class.During the first terms of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. They scored some important victories, such as the Affordable Care Act and an expanded earned income tax credit.But both Clinton and Obama allowed the power of the working class to erode. Both ardently pushed for free trade agreements without providing the millions of blue-collar workers who thereby lost their jobs any means of getting new ones that paid at least as well.They stood by as corporations hammered trade unions, the backbone of the working class. Both refused to reform labor laws to impose meaningful penalties on companies that violated them or enable workers to form unions with simple up-or-down votes. Union membership sank from 22% of all workers when Clinton was elected to fewer than 11% today, denying the working class the bargaining leverage it needs to get a better deal.The Obama administration protected Wall Street from the consequences of its gambling addiction through a giant taxpayer-funded bailout but let millions of underwater homeowners drown.Both Clinton and Obama allowed antitrust to ossify – allowing major industries to become more concentrated and hence more economically and politically powerful.Finally, they turned their backs on campaign finance reform. In 2008, Obama was the first presidential nominee since Richard Nixon to reject public financing in his primary and general-election campaigns. He never followed up on his re-election campaign promise to pursue a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United v FEC, the 2010 supreme court opinion that opened the floodgates to big money in politics.What happens when you combine freer trade, shrinking unions, Wall Street bailouts, growing corporate power and the abandonment of campaign finance reform? You shift political and economic power to the wealthy and you shaft the working class.Adjusted for inflation, American workers today are earning almost as little as they did 30 years ago, when the American economy was a third its present size.Biden’s agenda for working people – including lower prescription drug prices, paid family leave, stronger unions and free community college – has followed the same sad trajectory, due to the power of big money. Big Pharma has blocked prescription drug reform. A handful of Democratic senators backed by big money have refused to support paid family leave. Big money has killed labor law reform.Resilience: the one word progressives need in the face of Trump, Covid and more | Robert ReichRead moreDemocrats could win back the white working class by putting together a large coalition of the working class and poor, of whites, Blacks and Latinos, of everyone who has been shafted by the huge shift in wealth and power to the top. This would give Democrats the political clout to reallocate power in the economy – rather than merely enact palliatives that paper over the increasing concentration of power at the top.But to do this Democrats would have to end their financial dependence on big corporations, Wall Street and the wealthy. And they would have to reject the convenient story that American workers care more about cultural issues than about getting a better deal in an economy that’s been delivering them a worsening deal for decades.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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      Biden hails ‘monumental step forward’ as Democrats pass infrastructure bill

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      The ObserverJoe BidenBiden hails ‘monumental step forward’ as Democrats pass infrastructure billThe president will sign $1tn package into law after House ended months-long standoff by approving bipartisan deal

      ‘She betrayed us’: Arizona voters baffled by Kyrsten Sinema
      0Martin Pengelly in New York and David Smith in WashingtonSat 6 Nov 2021 12.41 EDTFirst published on Sat 6 Nov 2021 10.45 EDTJoe Biden saluted a “monumental step forward as a nation” on Saturday, after House Democrats finally reached agreement and sent a $1tn infrastructure package to his desk to be signed, a huge boost for an administration which has struggled for victories.Trumpism without Trump: how Republican dog-whistles exploited Democratic divisionsRead more“This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America,” Biden said, “and it’s long overdue.”There was also a setback, however, as Democrats postponed a vote on an even larger bill. That 10-year, $1.85tn spending plan to bolster health, family and climate change programmes, known as Build Back Better, was sidetracked after centrists demanded a cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Biden said he was confident he could get it passed.Walking out to address reporters at the White House, the president began with a joke at the expense of his predecessor, Donald Trump.“Finally, it’s infrastructure week,” he said.Under Trump, the administration’s failure to focus on infrastructure amid constant scandal became a national punchline.“We’re just getting started,” Biden said. “It is something that’s long overdue but long has been talked about in Washington but never actually been done.“The House of Representatives passed an Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. That’s a fancy way of saying a bipartisan infrastructure bill, once-in-a-generation investment that’s going to create millions of jobs, modernise our infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, our broadband, a range of things turning the climate crisis into an opportunity, and a put us on a path to win the economic competition of the 21st century that we face with China and other large countries in the rest of the world.”The House approved the $1tn bill late on Friday, after Democrats resolved a months-long standoff between progressives and centrists. The measure passed 228-206. Thirteen Republicans, mostly moderates, supported the bill while six progressive Democrats opposed it, among them Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.Approval sent the bill to the desk of a president whose approval ratings have dropped and whose party struggled in elections this week. Biden said he would not sign the bill this weekend because he wanted those who passed it to be there when he did so.“We’re looking more forward to having shovels in the ground,” Biden said. “To begin rebuilding America.“For all of you at home, who feel left behind and forgotten in an economy that’s changing so rapidly, this bill is for you. The vast majority of those thousands of jobs that will be created don’t require a college degree. There’ll be jobs in every part of the country: red states, blue states, cities, small towns, rural communities, tribal communities.“This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America, and it’s long overdue.”This week, Democratic candidates for governor lost in Virginia and squeaked home in New Jersey, two blue-leaning states. Those setbacks made leaders, centrists and progressives impatient to demonstrate they know how to govern a year before midterm elections that could see Republicans retake Congress.At the White House, Biden said: “Each state is different and I don’t know but I think the one message that came across was, ‘Get something done … stop talking, get something done.’ And so I think that’s what the American people are looking for.“All the talk about the elections and what do they mean? They want us to deliver. Democrats, they want us to deliver. Last night we proved we can on one big item. We delivered.”The postponement of a vote on the spending bill dashed hopes of a double win. But in a deal brokered by Biden and party leaders, five moderates agreed to back the bill if CBO estimates of its costs are consistent with numbers from the White House and congressional analysts.The agreement, in which lawmakers promised to vote by the week of 15 November, was a significant step towards shipping the bill to the Senate. Its chances there are not certain: it must pass on the casting vote of Vice-President Kamala Harris and with the approval of Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, centrists who have proved obstructive so far.The spending bill “is fiscally responsible”, Biden said. “That’s a fancy way of saying it is fully paid for. It doesn’t raise the deficit by a single penny. And it actually reduces the deficit according to the leading economists in this country over the long term. And it’s paid for by making sure that the wealthiest Americans, the biggest corporations begin to pay their fair share.”Republicans have highlighted what they say will be the bill’s effects on dangerous economic inflation.Why does the media keep saying this election was a loss for Democrats? It wasn’t | Rebecca SolnitRead more“According to economists,” Biden said, “this is going to be easing inflationary pressures … by lowering costs for working families.”He also said: “We got out of the blue a couple of weeks ago a letter from 17 Nobel prize winners in economics and they determined that [the two bills] will ease inflationary pressures not create them.”Biden acknowledged that he will not get Republican votes for the spending bill and must “figure out” how to unite his party. Friday was an exhausting day for Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker. She told reporters: “Welcome to my world. This is the Democratic party. We are not a lockstep party.”Biden said he was confident he could find the votes. Asked what gave him that confidence, the president alluded to his legislative experience as a senator and vice-president, saying: “Me.”On Friday night, Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, delayed travel to Delaware as the president worked the phones. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters Biden even called her mother in India. It was unclear why.“This was not to bribe me, this is when it was all done,” Jayapal said, adding that her mother told her she “just kept screaming like a little girl”.
      Associated Press contributed to this report
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      Biden hails ‘monumental step forward’ as Democrats pass infrastructure bill – video

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      Joe Biden on Saturday hailed Congress’s passage of his $1tn infrastructure package as a ‘monumental step forward for the nation’ after fractious fellow Democrats resolved a months-long standoff in their ranks to finally seal the deal. His reference to infrastructure week was a jab at his predecessor, Donald Trump, whose White House declared several times that ‘infrastructure week’ had arrived, only for nothing to happen

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      Why does the media keep saying this election was a loss for Democrats? It wasn’t | Rebecca Solnit

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      OpinionUS politicsWhy does the media keep saying this election was a loss for Democrats? It wasn’tRebecca SolnitThe election swept in a number of women and politicians of color at the state and local level. Yet pundits want to pretend this was an electoral catastrophe Sat 6 Nov 2021 06.18 EDTLast modified on Sat 6 Nov 2021 10.36 EDTPretty much anything that happens to the Democrats is a sign that they’re weak and losing and should be worried, according to the storylines into which mainstream media tends to stuff news. Pretty much nothing, including losing, seems to signify that the Republicans are losers. In so habitually and apparently unconsciously fitting a wide array of new and varied facts into familiar old frameworks, the media shape the political landscape at least as much as they report on it.House Democrats expected to vote on Biden’s $1.75tn package after months of contentionRead moreIt’s in the language. The New York Times editorial board thunders that “Democrats deny political reality at their own peril” and then insists that this election in which a moderate lost is a sign that the party needs to get more moderate. Bloomberg News found a way to make a victory sound like defeat: “Phil Murphy clung on to win a second term as New Jersey’s governor, surviving by a narrow margin.” It was about the same margin by which a Republican won the Virginia governorship, but the language around that was apocalyptic (though Virginia usually elects a governor who’s in the other party than the president, and New Jersey – which not long ago gave Republican Chris Christie two terms – re-elected its first Democratic governor in decades on Tuesday).According to the Washington Post, which seemed to believe that Virginia was a national referendum on the party: “Democrats scramble to deflect voter anger.” The verbiage that followed was stuffed with the emotive language of a pulp novel, though it was presented as news: “An off-year electoral wipeout highlighted the fragile state of the party’s electoral majorities in the House and Senate. But a new round of bitter recriminations threatened to dash Democratic hopes of quickly moving past the stinging defeats.” Fragile, bitter, stinging. Wipeout, dash, defeat. It is true that Terry McAuliffe lost, and also true that he was a corporate centrist who, reportedly, ran a lousy campaign; it’s also true that he is not the Democratic party, and the nation didn’t vote in Virginia’s election.As for this week’s election, it swept in a lot of progressive mayors of color. The most prominent was Michelle Wu, who won the Boston mayor’s seat as the first woman and first person of color. Elaine O’Neal will become Durham, North Carolina’s, first Black woman mayor, and Abdullah Hammoud will become Dearborn’s first Muslim and Arab American mayor. Aftab Pureval will become Cincinnati’s first Asian American mayor. Pittsburgh elected its first Black mayor, and so did Kansas City, Kansas. Cleveland’s new mayor is also Black. New York City elected its second Black Democratic mayor, and Shahana Hanif became the first Muslim woman elected to the city council (incidentally, New York City and Virginia have about the same population). In Seattle, a moderate defeated a progressive, which you could also phrase as a Black and Asian American man defeated a Latina. A lot of queer and trans people won elections, or in the case of Virginia’s Danica Roem, the first out trans person to win a seat in a state legislature, won reelection.In Philadelphia, Larry Krasner, who in 2017 was the first of a wave of ultra-progressive district attorneys to take office across the country, swept to a second term with 69% of the vote. “I want to congratulate him. He beat my pants off,” said his Republican rival. In Cleveland, Austin, Denver and Albany, citizens voted in police-reform measures, and while a more radical measure in Minneapolis lost, it got a good share of votes. 2021 wasn’t a great election year for Democrats but it’s not hard to argue that it wasn’t a terrible one, and either way it just wasn’t a big one, with a handful of special elections for congressional seats, some state and local stuff, and only two gubernatorial elections.It is true that the Democratic Party is large and chaotic with a wide array of political positions among its elected officials, which is what happens when you’re a coalition imperfectly representing a wide array of voters, by class, race, and position from moderate to radical on the political spectrum. It’s also true the US is a two-party system and the alternative at present is the Republican party, which is currently a venal and utterly corrupt cult bent on many kinds of destruction. It’s the party whose last leader, with the help of many Republicans still in Congress, produced a violent coup in an attempt to steal an election.A friend who is an independent Democratic party organizer remarked to me: “Democrats are analyzed completely differently from Republicans, mainly because Democrats try to govern and to enact policies that affect the entire country. The media don’t cover the fact that Republicans don’t govern and can’t seem to report on what a party doesn’t do and doesn’t talk about.”Looming in the background, of course, is the fact that Republicans themselves believe they are losers, because they’ve hitched their wagon to the shrinking demographic of angry white suburban and rural voters. Their efforts to suppress votes and undermine voting rights, control or replace election officials, gerrymander like crazy and overturn election results are the moves of a party that doesn’t believe Republicans can win fair elections. All this is treated as more or less ordinary and mostly not very newsworthy.We’re only a year out from the election that won back the White House and gave Democrats control – if by the slimmest of margins – of the House and Senate. Georgia elected two Democratic senators and Arizona sent in a Democratic senator to take a seat that had been held by Republicans for more than half a century. Which was, actually, quite a lot of winning, but you wouldn’t know it from the news.The New York Times editorial board, in one of those familiar “the party is doing it wrong” claims, declared Tuesday’s results “a sign that significant parts of the electorate are feeling leery of a sharp leftward push in the party, including on priorities like Build Back Better,” though Data for Progress reports that “With a +29-point margin, likely voters support the Build Back Better plan. The plan is very popular with both Democrats and Independents, who support the plan by respective margins of +83 and +19 percentage points.”Eric Levitz at New York Magazine has noted that, according to polls, “only a quarter of the public thinks the Build Back Better agenda is going to help ‘people like them’”, and he links to an ABC report that also says “Democrats are failing to sell the legislation to the public, who are broadly unaware of what is in the spending packages.” Though if the public is broadly unaware of what’s in the biggest and most transformative legislation in decades, that’s a huge failure by the media as well as the party. Reporting that people don’t see what’s in it for them instead of reporting on what is in it for them might be the problem in a nutshell.
      Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her most recent books are Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell’s Roses
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