So how’s it going for President Joe Biden and the progressive revival?
Shut up, he argued. The light pink wave that surged in the United States at the 2020 election, sweeping away the chaotic and ineffectual Trump administration and promising a powerful centre-left movement through American life, is running into the sand. Biden promised that he would get out in front and sell his programs and policies, as Donald Trump did, and as Barack Obama did not.
But that hasn’t happened. Nor have many of the programs and policies or the great American revival that was intended to replace Trump’s largely counterfeit one. Inflation has surged to 7% in a country where low prices compensate to a degree for low wages, and even though it is hardly Biden’s fault, he is being blamed.
Having retreated to the usual Democrat stance — all governance, no politics — at the same time as inflation hit, and after four years of Trump’s relentless salesmanship about how great is this economy, many Americans now see an absence of leadership, just as things begin to bite. Inflation affects all but the rich everywhere, but in the US it reaches far further “up” into what Americans call middle-class life — more or less stable working-class life — than elsewhere, and more threateningly.
The surge of inflation — after years of pump-priming crashing into COVID — would in more centrist Democrat administrations have prompted an immediate abandonment of the physical infrastructure and social “build back better” programs that the administration had promised, tighten spending, take an unemployment hit and stabilise prices — even supposing that’s how it works any more.
But Biden’s administration is genuinely centre-left — for a variety of reasons — and so there was an attempt to get the triple-whammy done.
The initial proposal was to group infrastructure and social spending in one vast US$5 trillion (over 10 years) plus bill, a move by progressives to try to prevent centrist Democrats from voting up the infrastructure bill only.
When that was flatly refused by centrists, progressives struck a deal in which separate infrastructure and social bills would be voted on together in the Democrat-controlled House and sent to the Senate. Once that was struck, two extreme centrists, i.e. right-wing Democrats — senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — promptly announced that they would not support the social spending bill in its proposed US$3.5 trillion form.
Progressive Democrats held up the infrastructure bill righteously and determinedly — and then caved and passed it, in standard ritual form, with only the half-dozen leftists of “the squad” (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others) refusing their vote.
The $1.5 trillion (over 10 years — defence spending is never done this way, otherwise that figure would be $8 trillion) infrastructure bill is insufficient of itself; it is catching up on collapsing bridges, roads, water supplies etc after decades of neglect, and is far from extending whole new rail systems or the like.
The “build back better” social infrastructure bill was rather more ambitious — a plan to really roll out some very basic social democratic payments such as parental leave, child tax credits, improved disability payments, education supplements and more in the first six months of the administration. It was in first instance part of a deal to get Elizabeth Warren to swing behind Biden, and was then built out to get Bernie Sanders on board. Sanders was made chair of the budget committee, an extraordinarily powerful position for a non-Democrat left independent to hold, but one that also laces him into the power structure.
The bill, having got out of the House, was then decisively rejected by both Manchin and Sinema. Manchin represents West Virginia, a ferociously Republican state (hitherto Democrat — it voted for metropolitan liberal Michael Dukakis in 1988, but not for Biden), and his ability to hold it as a Democrat has caused the party to cut him a lot of slack. Nevertheless, for key votes such as these, Manchin is expected to fall into line. His refusal marks him out as a virtual independent.
Towards Sinema, the senator from Arizona, there is far more anger. Biden won Arizona — the state is following Colorado from red to blue — so Sinema’s risk from progressive policies is far less. Furthermore, she is from the left, having been an anti-war Green Party candidate, from the Phoenix boho scene in the late ’90s/2000s.
Sinema is often spoken of as a potential Republican crossover, and has a sort of nudge-nudge wink-wink relationship with Senator Ted Cruz, of all people. Sinema became widely notorious when she voted no on a recent bill, with a thumbs down (permissible) and a curtsy (less common) in a sort of Harry Potter outfit. Given that the vote was for a $15 federal minimum wage which would have extended a living income to millions, it was a snotty gesture.
Between the two of them, Manchin and Sinema are destroying Biden’s chance to impose the program he and the progressive leadership had outlined. In the usual manner this is being assessed as “Biden’s weakness” etc etc, although there is no moving senators like Sinema or Manchin.
Their most recent departure is probably the worst yet, a refusal to vote to suspend the Senate filibuster (requiring 60 votes to pass legislation, rather than 51), which would allow two voting acts to be passed by the Senate — one, to lessen the possibility that the Republicans will steal a lost election through state legislatures now filled with Trumpists, and, of equal importance, to prevent the voter suppression that Republicans are employing to stave off defeat. Both are appealing to some notion of unity or consensus — but really to appeal to grumpy right independents who vote incumbent.
That is a measure of the degree to which not only party discipline but the force of the mainstream liberal project is evaporating.
There would have been a time when centrist/right Democrats would suck up the pain and sell the core program. Manchin and Sinema are willing to see — have seen — Biden’s program falter and fail, and give the impression that he is a weak or indecisive president — actually the opposite of reality.
It is creating a vacuum ready for another right-wing populist to sweep in. It is a political tragedy, made of dysfunction, ambition and decline, and potentially an absolutely unnecessary political tragedy of major proportions.
