We are living in the midst of one of our all-too-common experiments to see if the idea of America as a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”—in the famous words of Abraham Lincoln—can long endure.
Last Monday I wrote about the difficulty of living with the former guy. Today I want to talk about the current guy. *
However much it may surprise his detractors, President Joe Biden has worked hard to reclaim the promise of democracy.
“The American equation,” writes Lewis Lapham, “rests on the habit of holding our fellow citizens in thoughtful regard not because they are exceptional (or famous, or beautiful, or rich) but simply because they are our fellow citizens.”
“If the American system of government at present seems so patently at odds with its constitutional hopes and purposes, it is not because the practice of democracy no longer serves the interests of the presiding oligarchy (which it never did), but because the promise of democracy no longer inspires or exalts the citizenry lucky enough to have been born under its star. It isn’t so much that liberty stands at bay but, rather, that it has fallen into disuse, regarded as insufficient by both its enemies and its nominal friends. What is the use of free expression to people so frightened of the future that they prefer the comforts of the authoritative lie?”
As Lapham suggests, large numbers of billionaires and other oligarchs are not looking for democracy. Based on where they direct their political donations, it seems clear that what is wanted is someone who will lower their already low tax rate, cut business regulations, and fight for the rights of owners over those of workers. Someone who will, like another rising authoritarian 90 years ago, promise to crush labor unions and protect the interest of his donors.
They are seeking government by the few for the few.
President Biden’s work to reclaim our democracy is not recognized often enough by a media enthralled by horse-race reporting and performance politics. But that fact doesn’t make the president’s efforts to return to a government that works for ordinary people, instead of the nation’s wealthiest citizens, any less important and, yes, revolutionary.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson began a recent letter on the president’s efforts by noting the release of “another blockbuster jobs report.” The country added 272,000 jobs in May, far higher than the 180,000 jobs economists predicted. Wages are also up. Over the past year, average hourly earnings have grown 4.1%, higher than the rate of inflation, which was 3.4% over the same period.
The 15.6 million jobs created during the three years of the Biden administration are eight times as many jobs as were created in the 16 years of the last 3 Republican Presidencies, combined. Since 1989 and the end of the Cold War, the US has seen 51 million new jobs created, 49 million of which have been created under Democratic Presidents. That’s 96%. Just 2 million jobs—or 4%—have been created under Republicans.
While the news media generally doesn’t cover this news, Richardson goes into detail to explain how Biden’s incredible streak of economic growth happened.
The Biden administration has quite deliberately overturned the supply-side economics that came into ascendancy in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan took office . . . Adherents of that ideology rejected the idea that the government should invest in the “demand side” of the economy—workers and other ordinary Americans—to develop the economy, as it had done since 1933.
Instead, they maintained that the best way to nurture the economy was to support the “supply side”: those at the top. Cutting business regulations and slashing taxes would create prosperity, they said, by concentrating wealth in the hands of individuals who would invest in the economy more efficiently than they could if the government interfered in their choices.
But supply-side economics never worked. It did, however, “move money out of the hands of ordinary Americans into the hands of the very wealthy.” Between 1981 and 2021, more than $50 trillion dollars moved from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.
In the last few weeks we’ve seen repeated confirmation of the success of the Biden Presidency:
- “Inflation is down;
- food prices are down;
- crime and murder rates are way down;
- gas prices are down;
- we’ve had the strongest economic recovery of any advanced economy in the world;
- the best job market since the 1960s;
- the deficit is trillions less;
- the Dow has broken 40,000 and all three indices continue to hover in record territory;
- domestic oil, gas and renewable production continue to be at all time highs leaving America more energy independent; and
- consumer sentiment surged last month.”
“The Wall Street Journal called the American economy the ‘envy of the world,’ and the Economist just wrote about the unprecedented start up boom America is experiencing right now. Biden’s big three investment bills have dramatically accelerated the energy transition necessary to combat climate change and will be creating opportunities and jobs for our workers for decades to come.
By being focused on helping ordinary people, the US now has the lowest uninsured rate in its history. Signups for the Affordable Care Act coverage this past year were at the highest levels ever. The Biden Administration also erased more than $130 billion in student debt that had piled up due to past policies that favored loan and finance corporations over everyday people.
Another under-reported item is about how Joe Biden broke OPEC. “Domestic oil production set records in 2023, and we are setting records with renewable energy production too.”
MSNBC host Chris Hayes noted that
“The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, has had massive influence over American politics for six decades. President Biden’s ‘incredible’ oil market trading has broken this influence.
Some analysts believe that the current radicalization of the GOP is intimately linked to its repeated failure to handle the challenges of the post-Cold War era and its inability to govern in a time of rapid change.
Richardson is a student of Republican Party history. In order to keep a system in place that works for the few, today’s Republicans have “worked to make it extraordinarily difficult for Congress to pass laws making the government do anything, even when the vast majority of Americans wanted it to.” That helped them shift law-making power to the courts. And since the Reagan administration, Republicans have been packing our courts with “appointees who adhered to their small-government principles” at the expense of the people.
Joe Biden has been a good, even transformational president, who I believe has more than earned a second term. His administration has stood up against multiple challenges. Most important, under Joe Biden we are a government of the people, not of the wealthy few.
“’What joins the Americans one to another,’ Lapham writes, is ‘their complicity in a shared work of the imagination. My love of country follows from my love of its freedoms, not from my pride in its fleets or its armies or its gross national product. Construed as a means and not an end, the Constitution stands as the premise for a narrative rather than a plan for an invasion or a monument. The narrative was always plural—not one story but many stories.”
More to come . . .
DJB
*See my disclaimer for politics-related posts.
U.S. Capitol and steel workers photos from Pixabay.
MORE TO COME... 