A Vital, but Precarious Victory for President Biden, and More Importantly, the American Public

March 11, 2021

As we move toward the two-month mark of the Biden administration, now is as good as time as any to reflect on the state of this nation’s political culture. First, in response to Trump’s full-scale onslaught against this nation’s long-standing democratic tradition of the peaceful transfer of presidential power, I am willing to say no more than, in this case, our institutions (the courts, state officials and legislatures, the electoral college and Congress), held, though this was far from given. Notwithstanding Biden’s patriotic intent to fundamentally transform the political climate in this nation, well over half of Republican voters believe that Biden’s victory was the result of voter fraud, an evidence lacking position stoked by many high-ranking Republicans in Congress and throughout right-wing media outlets.  The massive effort underway within GOP state legislatures to expand the restriction on voting in upcoming elections in response to the false claim that our election process is fundamentally corrupt, further erodes the strength of democracy in this nation, which Democrats are trying to counter through the passage of an updated Voting Rights Act.  Given the unlikely scenario of ten Republican Senators voting for such a bill, short of some fundamental change in the filibuster rules, I do not see how any such legislation can garner the approval of both houses of Congress. In the meantime, Republican-led state legislators are seeking to run roughshod against expanding voter right while the conservative-dominated Supreme Court is on track to back GOP voter restriction initiatives.

Meanwhile, at the congressional level, Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief package passed without a single Republican vote in the House or the Senate. Biden insisted that it was important to go big to unleash enough economic power to sufficiently deal with the financial crisis brought on by the pandemic. The Republican-based $600 billion counteroffer was a non-starter on its face. Moreover, Biden has the experience of the Republican’s dickering with the relief stimulus of 2009 under Obama’s presidency, where, despite taking in many Republican proposals and keeping the final bill well under $1 trillion, passed with only three GOP votes in the Senate and none in the House. While that bill had some positive effect, many economists viewed the designated amount ($831 billion) far short of what was needed within the midst of a massive recession of 2008-2009 to pull the nation out of its economic downspin. Whether the current GOP blockade against this highly popular COVID relief aid bill is indicative of a concerted GOP strategy to oppose anything of significance that the Biden administration proposes remains to be seen.

The best-case scenario is that policy proposals related to infrastructure development, raising the minimum wage, and meaningful immigration reform, will take a great deal bi-partisan work both behind the scenes and through a variety information-based House and Senatorial committee hearings where meaningful approaches will need to be explored with a great deal of sensitivity and discernment.  This will require a good deal of give and take.  In the meantime, the Democratic Party will need to do what it can to expand its political capital by increasing its hold on House and Senate seats in the off-election year of 2022, which traditionally is a high bar for the party holding the presidency to attain.  It is my fervent wish that the GOP will develop a more sophisticated approach to the responsibilities of governing in responding with acumen to the core challenges this nation will face over the next two decades. Such issues as climate change, infrastructure development, immigration, racial equity, health care, and a viable foreign policy that can be built upon through successive administrations over a substantial period calls on something like President Eisenhower’s “middle way” between support of now long-established New Deal policies and a resurgence of the role of private enterprise in strengthening the economy.  In this scenario, government is neither the problem nor the single solution, but one sector interacting with business and our civic institutions to strengthen the quality of our public life.

While the GOP has demonstrated that it can win elections, it has not given evidence that it can govern in a manner that enhances the national interest in any sustainable, future-looking vision of the public good.  My fervent hope is that this can change as well as that of the Democratic Party’s ability to craft a sufficiently powerful message that can draw in broad unity among working- and middle-class people of all races and ethnicities along the values that bring it back to its roots in New Deal and Great Society liberalism. This is a vision grounded in the progressive reform tradition of the American political culture of the early twentieth century based on the core American values of equity, hard work, and fairness for the common man and woman, what President Truman referred to as a “fair deal.”  If anyone is called to lead this nation toward such a sustainable vision for the present and near-term future, it is President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., who possesses the policy competence, compassion, and political acumen to lead this nation at this critical time in our history. Much is on the table, which to squander in pursuit of ultra-partisan squabbles can only result in much loss. I call on the one who judges rightly to help us pursue our better angels, which to gain, is to attain something of the high calling embodied in the American spirit at its best. The challenges of the times calls for nothing less.