Four Ways of Looking at the Radicalism of Joe Biden

[DonViejo]

It’s unexpected, but it’s not inexplicable.

By Ezra Klein
Opinion Columnist

April 8, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET

Joe Biden didn’t wake up one day and realize he’d been wrong for 30 years.

I covered him in the Senate, in the Obama White House, in the Democratic Party’s post-Trump reckoning. Biden was rarely, if ever, the voice calling for transformational change or go-it-alone ambition.

But you’d never know it from his presidency. The standard explanation for all this is the advent of the coronavirus. The country is in crisis, and Biden is rising to meet the moment. But I don’t buy it. That may explain the American Rescue Plan. But the American Jobs Plan, and the forthcoming American Family Plan, go far beyond the virus. Put together, they are a sweeping indictment of the prepandemic status quo as a disaster for both people and the planet — a status quo that in many cases Biden helped build and certainly never seemed eager to upend.

Over the past few months, I’ve been talking to White House staff members, to congressional Democrats, to policy experts and to the Biden administration’s critics to better understand why President Biden is making such a sharp break with Joe Biden. Here are a few of them, though this is by no means a complete list.

The collapse of the Republican Party as a negotiating partner. Most discussions of the renewed ambitions of the Democratic Party focus on ideological trends on the left. The real starting point, however, is the institutional collapse of the right. Before Biden, Democratic presidents designed policy with one eye on attracting Republican votes, or at least mollifying Republican critics. That’s why a third of the 2009 stimulus was made up of tax cuts, why the Affordable Care Act was built atop the Romneycare framework, why President Bill Clinton’s first budget included sharp spending cuts. Both as a senator and a vice president, Biden backed this approach. He always thought a bipartisan deal could be made and usually believed he was the guy who could make it.

more
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/opinion/biden-jobs-infrastructure-economy.html

[PatSeg]

1. Interesting, but I really didn't find

the beginning of Joe Biden's presidency unexpected. Perhaps his agenda was a bit faster and more aggressive than I'd anticipated, but I always expected him to be more on the progressive and transformational side. I think people who are very surprised probably weren't really paying that much attention over the years. Biden was as progressive as the times, the situation, and his position allowed.

There is a big difference between being an influential senator or Vice President and being the actual President. This is often when we find out who a person really is. It comes with an extraordinary amount of power and the ability to make a lasting difference. In Biden's case, he stepped up to the unique opportunity with focus and competence. Not all do.

[lagomorph777]

2. Biden has completely shocked me.

I was convinced that the Democratic Party establishment had locked itself into a centrist death-spiral, analogous to the way the GQP has locked itself into a death spiral of extremist hateful insanity. I was convinced that the Dems would continue to appease the GQP forever, and they would go down together.

I was wrong.

[TheRealNorth]

3. Why are people echoing Republican buzzwords?

Calling Biden a radical is frankly offensive to me. I expect that of Republicans, but not of (supposed) lefties.

[abqtommy]

4. It's the NY Times. They have to sell their copy. But not to me! I totally agree with you.

[TheRealNorth]

13. Maybe it is the fault of the editors....

But titles matter because not everyone will read the entire editorial/article. Even Trump understood the importance of the scrolling marquees at the bottom of the 24/7 news channels.

[GoCubsGo]

7. Yes, calling him "radical" is laughable.

If Biden is radical, then so is two-thirds (or more) of the country, who approve of what he's trying to do. The real radicals are the ones who are trying to block his every move. All Biden is doing is giving up the the Republican policies that have failed for decades, and going back to what worked before America went insane.

[Claire Oh Nette]

10. since FDR

Biden pulled the rug out form the nonsense of trickle down and reminded us all that Keynesian economics was right after WWI and is still right.

The GOP has been trying to undo the New Deal since it passed. They failed. In the mean time, the Democratic Party expanded voting rights and civil rights and passed Medicare and Medicaid, which the GOP has also tried to undo and failed.

Democrats brought us The Affordable Care Act, which the GOP labeled as Obama Care. People like the components of the ACA, and ObamaCare works, and is one of those brilliant GOP did it in MA, so how can you object programs.

Absentee ballots work, and GOP used them for decades, and now they're reduced to arguing against them because they benefit everyone. The GOP continues to add to its list of popular, successful programs to oppose without ever adding a single policy or program that people are clamoring to keep.

Biden is shoring up programs and policies Americans support on both sides, and ditching the things that only worked for the top 1%. Biden is also cleverly helping Americans, protecting Americans, planning ahead for Americans, putting Americans to work.

He's not reducing everything to Republicans and Democrats, or even more simplistically, Red States and Blue States.

He's uniting, and the loudest GOP voices in reaction are increasingly isolating the 25% die hard base. THey'll self deport, self infect, self incriminate, and continue to self destruct, if we're lucky.

[ms liberty]

5. An excellent article and in my view, accurate. n/t

[malaise]

6. Why is it radical to do what was done in the 50s to the 70s?

Why is the social good now considered radical?

[ProfessorGAC]

8. + A Million

"...to promote the general welfare...".
Right there in the Constitution, twice with the same context.
Never heard an originalist explain that away. Because they can't. So, they just ignore it.

[malaise]

9. The oligarchs agenda has really risen to the top

Bangs head

[Claire Oh Nette]

11. Why is the social good now considered radical?

Because the social good now applies to those Black people, and those Spanish speaking brown people, no matter where they come from, and Teh Gays, and those atheists, and those Pagans, and those ... (insert non-white, male, christian, republican other here)

[malaise]

12. LOL