Biden's Revolution Takes Shape
Biden's Revolution Takes Shape
If you ever believed he would govern like Obama, it's time to rethink.
The past year has been a bewildering period in American political and social history. We are in the last, maddening stages of a year-long pandemic that forced deep changes in everyone’s lives. In the middle of it, we saw a sudden mass movement emerge around the policing of black America, pioneered by the young, a movement that now sees any difference in outcome between various identity groups as completely intolerable. We saw American cities in flames. We had an election with a massive, historic turnout, even as the plague was about to hit its peak.
We then witnessed the first violent transfer of power in American history, in which a sitting president falsely insisted he had won the election in a landslide, tried to rig the results in his favor, and then whipped up a crowd to storm the Capitol Building to prevent certification. And then we got the Democrats in tenuous control of the White House, House and Senate — despite doing rather poorly in the Congressional vote.
To make understanding all this even harder, we are also in the death rattle of a liberal democratic culture, where reasonable debate in any one venue is much rarer, reality is bespoke, and “news” is being replaced by “narratives” brimming with moral clarity. To see how this all shakes out is now impossible. Are these fads or enthusiasms manifestations of the wildness that plagues often bring — soon to subside? Or a permanent, seismic shift toward a very different America?
I suspect the latter. This seems to me to be a sea-change in American history and politics, greater than any since the 1970s. The most centrist candidate the Democrats put forward in early 2020 has, in his first fifty days, become the most radically progressive president since LBJ.
The Covid19 plague, in other words, has done what many others have in history. By shaking the society up in so many ways, by suspending it in mid-air while forcing the population into mass and fearful isolation, by shattering so many familiar patterns, it has blown the future wide open. And the conservative tendency in America, the usual brake on this kind of revolutionary change, is nowhere to be found. It was killed by the GOP many, many years ago, and in so far as it exists at all, lingers in a tiny, traumatized fragment of the Democrats or in a political party that is now an authoritarian, profligate cult wrapped in a con-man’s conspiracy theories.
And, unusually, the Democratic Party, given the slimmest of margins by Georgia’s Senate seats, has seized the day. They have actually grasped their opportunity and maintained impressive discipline! The American Rescue Plan is the first move of an administration that is proving to be everything the Republicans once falsely claimed about Obama: this administration really seems dedicated to a fundamental transformation of America. Biden is doing what Obama never could (or wanted to). Uncle Joe’s reputation for moderation, his old white-guy familiarity, his past centrism, his age and working-class affect, his confused senior stare and stuttering speech, has become a brilliant frontman for intensifying left-radicalism.
The nearly $2 trillion now being printed and borrowed and delivered directly to Americans is not about “rescuing” the economy. Pent-up demand, a big transfer of resources to ordinary people under the CARES Act, and an end to lockdowns will do that anyway. This package is about artificially super-charging the economy in the short term, while maximizing its redistributive effect. It’s a demonstration of the Democrats’ historically strongest argument: vote for us and we’ll take care of you.
It “slashes” poverty the easy way: by giving everyone who earns less than $75,000 a check for $1400, and by creating a new, no-strings subsidy for every child, in a direct repudiation of the welfare reform of the Clinton era. The goal is to make the subsidy permanent (and it sure will be hard to repeal). The ARP bails out union pensions; it expands access to Obamacare significantly; it creates generous spending programs for Native Americans, and even offers reparations to Latino, Asian and black farmers.
Eric Levitz excitedly lists all the left policy triumphs in the bill here. Jamelle Bouie can barely contain himself here. And it seems to me they have every reason to celebrate. Just six months, or even six weeks ago, much of this was a leftist pipe-dream. Now it’s reality. And the Republicans have failed to make it even faintly unpopular.
But wait, there’s more. The Biden administration sees this $2 trillion as a mere hors d’oeuvre for a possible $4 trillion more in infrastructure and green investment. A few trillion over the last year; and a few trillion in the ARP; even more trillions for infrastructure. After a while, we’re talking serious money.
But don’t worry. No new taxes will pay for it. Cakes will be eaten and had too. The government will either borrow these trillions, or just print them, and the Federal Reserve itself assures us that there will be no consequences to this, and that a bigger debt than any since the Second World War for the foreseeable future is no problem. Interest rates will not rise, they assure us. Inflation will, at worst, nudge above 2 percent. Just as Trump pumped a trillion into an established recovery, so Biden will up the ante and pump trillions and trillions more into an already surging economy.
Step back some more, and look at the rest of the Biden agenda. It’s pretty similar in scale and ambition. HR1 — reforming democracy — has some good parts, but it is also a Christmas tree of hyper-progressive goals. On “social justice” questions, Biden mandates “equity” as a core principle in all policy-making, and Ibram Kendi indoctrination sessions for government employees; he is likely to end due process for college men accused of sexual assault or rape; he wants to legislate that sex-based rights are trumped by gender-based rights, and to repeal the Religious Freedom Restoration Act when it comes to gays, lesbians and transgender people. After a lifetime of opposition, Biden now backs full public funding of abortion. On immigration, Biden’s goal appears to be facilitating as much of it as possible, while granting a mass amnesty. Am I missing something? Is there a policy area where the left is not in control? (Seriously, if you can find an area where they’re not, I’ll post it, and recalibrate.)
But don’t fucking tell me I should have voted for Trump. He’s insane. And he made this left triumphalism possible, by destroying the vestiges of fiscal conservatism in the GOP. It is so telling that Republicans have barely made any of the fiscal arguments I just cited — because they don’t have a leg to stand on. If they bring up the danger of debt, they deserve to be laughed and/or booed off the stage.
And the GOP beyond and before Trump made this sharp left turn possible by their long refusal to see how dangerous the soaring inequality of the neoliberal era actually was and is; by choosing a vast transfer of wealth to the already rich as their primary goal in the last two GOP administrations; and by fumbling the immigration question, when they could have made a deal under Trump. And in that respect, Biden’s radicalism is not without reason. Or purpose. We desperately need a correction.
Liberal democracy itself is threatened by the extreme gulf between rich and poor — and rebalancing this is vital. The lack of real economic gains for the vast majority for decades requires a major adjustment — and if sending people checks is the easiest way to do this, so be it. The resilience of low inflation and the persistence of a financial crisis recession suggests that a bigger stimulus in 2009 would have been preferable. Finding a way to support greater inclusion of minorities and women in every sphere of life and work is the right thing to do. Expanding healthcare to those most excluded it from it should not be a controversial question. In all these areas, the Democrats have their hearts and minds in the right place. A shift to the left in 2021 is completely defensible. Even the British Tories are economic lefties now. My 1980s self would look at my 2021 politics and be amazed how far I’ve come.
But a capitulation to the far left is something else.
What I fear is that economic history has not ended, and that uncontrolled borrowing, spending and printing will lead to inflation that destroys people’s savings and livelihoods. What I fear is the next recession, when our staggering debt could render the government incapable of mitigating it. What I fear is an assault on the very ideas of individual freedom, merit, objective standards, hard work, self-reliance and free speech that have long defined the American experiment — in favor of crude racial engineering.
What I fear is a generation’s rejection of limited government, and color-blind liberalism. What I worry about is a press whose mission seems increasingly devoted to enforcing elite orthodoxies, rather than pushing back on all forms of power. I fear an educational establishment that instills critical theory’s racism and sexism into the hearts and souls of children from the start, an establishment that regards the very idea of America as indelibly evil, and its founding ideals a myth and a lie.
I voted for Biden because the alternative was madness in every respect — and sure wasn’t conservatism in any recognizable sense. And the sheer, amazing relief of living without the former guy’s unhinged, all-pervasive id remains. No regrets. And I didn’t expect Biden to be a moderate, because he has always operated with an acute sense of where his party now is — and it is now controlled by the far left.
Still, I allowed myself to hope that, in some respects, Biden might temper the zeal of his base; that he would remember that black voters backed him in part because he wasn’t as radical as his fellow white liberals; that he could see something more than bigotry in people’s defense of their religious freedom; that he understood that the pace of demographic and cultural change was too fast for America to avoid a serious white nationalist backlash; and that he still saw a nation’s borders and sovereignty as worth defending.
It’s early. We’ll see where this goes. I’m open to changing my mind. But all the signs point to a revolutionary moment, enabled by an economic boom. The Democrats have seized the day. And maybe the decade.
New On The Dishcast: Sally Satel
Sally Satel, the author of many books, is a psychiatrist and journalist who just came back after spending a year with opioid addicts in Ironton, Ohio. She writes about that experience, and her views on addiction — that it’s not as simple as a “brain disease” — for the journal, Liberties. We also discuss depression, mental illness, and modernity.
To hear two excerpts from my conversation with Sally — on the story of how Nixon got Vietnam vets off heroin; and on the tragic impact that meth has had on too many gay men — head over to our YouTube page. Full episode here. That link also takes you to the latest smart commentary from readers on our episodes with Glenn Greenwald, Mara Keisling, and Michael Anton. As usual, Dishheads have a lot to say.
The Dawn Of Mass Child Migration
The truth of all immigration policy is that it is cruel. “Sorry, you can’t live here,” is always a form of cruelty, especially when the “here” is infinitely better than “there.” Yes, there are obvious degrees to this cruelty: the Trump administration’s wrenching kids from their parents’ arms and consigning them to large cages with minimal care, comes instantly to mind as deliberately inhumane, leveraging human suffering to deter future migration. But as we found out, the Obama administration had also been forced into some unpleasant compromises as well, and had been forced to separate kids from parents, in the middle of grappling with a previous border surge.
The Biden administration tried to end this cruelty immediately, in part by making minors an exception to the 2020 Covid border closure, housing them humanely, and processing them as fast as possible. The result, however, is perverse. We have actually created an incentive for thousands of kids to make these perilous journeys alone, without parents, assisted by some deeply shady characters and criminals. It’s as if we off-shored the cruelty so our hands would look clean. And the numbers of kids are rising fast:
More than 1,360 of the children detained in border facilities were jailed longer than the maximum 72 hours permitted by law despite being referred for placement in shelters by Homeland Security, according to one of the documents, dated Monday. One hundred sixty-nine of the children are younger than 13. As of Sunday, the health agency had more than 8,100 unaccompanied minors in its shelters, putting the system 13 days away from its “maximum capacity target,” according to the documents.
In order to be humane, we’ve created a new diaspora of minors, whose traumas will last a lifetime, who have few skills and scant learning, no stable family unit, and dispersed them throughout the US. Many join one undocumented parent, or relative, or “cousins” (sometimes gang members), or foster care, or the equivalent of orphanages. Vetting all those who will receive a kid in America is hard, given the sheer pace of the migration, and the limits on how long the government can detain them.
If we were intending to keep migrant families together, and to protect children from the trauma of separation, physical danger, and isolation, we’ve actually done the opposite. If the goal was to be humane, the unintended consequences could be the cruelest of all.
The View From Your Window
Stanford Hospital, Palo Alto, California, 7.25 am
Quotes For The Week
“I know if I’d had [reassignment] surgery at the age of 22, and then at 24 went on the [women’s tennis] tour, no genetic woman in the world would have been able to come close to me. And so I’ve reconsidered my opinion. … There is one thing that a transsexual woman unfortunately cannot expect to be allowed to do, and that is to play professional sports in her chosen field. She can get married, live as woman, do all of those other things, and no one should ever be allowed to take them away from her. But this limitation—that’s just life,” - Renée Richards, a medical doctor and the first transgender woman to compete in professional tennis.
“Apparently the permissible spectrum of opinion is so all-or-none, so left-or-right, so yes-or-no that you can’t oppose both Trump and the loony left simultaneously,” - Richard Dawkins.
“Identity should be considered fashion, treated as something that can be taken on and off, and something that will change over time. But instead of fashion, identity has become a suit of armor, and it’s keeping people away from each other and themselves,” - Rod Kaats, talking as a gay dad to his millennial daughter, Anya.
“I think that’s what representation does. It tells the world who is important and what important looks like. Does important only look like a straight white man from New York? Or does it also look like a six-three former football player gay Black kid with an afro, high-waisted pants and a white jacket? And the answer is yes, it looks like all of those things,” - Eugene Daniels, Politico.
Dissents Of The Week: Killing The SAT
In last week’s lead item, I noted a study showing that test prep only improves scores “on the order of 5 to 20 points.” But a reader calls for a distinction:
Wealthy people don’t send their kids to Kaplan or Princeton Review classes; they hire private tutors. The good ones start at $120 an hour. These people have records of boosting SAT scores considerably. My own son’s math score went up 200 points, and there’s no way he would have gotten into the college of his choice without a private tutor. My friend’s daughter got a middling 650 on her verbal test, and after seeing a tutor for a few sessions, gained a hundred points. There are lots of stories like this, and the studies you look at are probably combining group tutoring, books, and private tutors.
The study I cited did not, indeed, make a distinction with private tutors, but this study did: “the use of books, videos, and computer software offers no boost whatsoever, while a private test prep course adds 30 points to your score on average, and the use of a private tutor adds 37.” Not much at all.
Another reader suggests that public schools should go more in loco parentis:
Here are two additions to your list of what we need to do to increase black and Latino representation in higher ed, which you suggest needs to be addressed far earlier than SAT taking time:
1. Ensure kids have three meals. We can’t punish kids for the “sins” of their parents. My daughter, a public school teacher in NYC, finally got permission to take her class to a museum. Her kids, some 30+, had never been to one. At about 1:30PM she noticed they were becoming very agitated because they were extremely worried they would not be back in school for their milk and snack. Why? As more than half these kids told her, snack was their dinner.
2. Schools need to be open till 8:00PM with teachers, counselors, and homework helpers. In big cities, money from drug interdiction and financial fraud can be allocated to this.
I’m down with all that. Lastly, a general dissent:
The Daily Dish was my favourite when it was a blog and I miss it still. Your book club coverage of How Jesus Became God and the coverage of the Iranian revolution were amazing to go through with you. What I loved was the diversity of subjects you covered. Unfortunately I’ve found that I’ve stopped reading your Substack articles. I’ll see from the headline that it’s you giving out about the Woke yet again, and it feels like a chore to read through. I know I’m in the minority, but I’d prefer you to branch out to other topics again, maybe introducing Montaigne to your new audience or what you think of the job Pope Francis is doing.
I take your point. But when you believe, as I do, that this is a deep threat to liberal society, I can’t go AWOL. And I used to get the same complaints when I blogged other obsessions: marriage equality; Obama; torture; Christianism; and yes, the Green Revolution. This next reader is depressed like I am about wokeness:
If food contained sanity, then The Dish is my one meal per week, barely keeping me alive. Do you think that your (absolutely valid, well-reasoned) warning that killing the SAT hurts minorities means anything? Do you not feel that it’s like pissing in the wind? Has the cancer of critical theory not overtaken us so rapidly that we have no choice but to succumb? It certainly feels that way, and I sincerely wish that you might be able to provide me some hope that there’s still a fighting chance.
I wish I could. For the moment at least, this feels unstoppable.
The View From Your Window
Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1.53 pm
All Black Lives Matter, Ctd
On the growing concern that rhetoric like “defund the police” is harming African-Americans, Jean Marbella notes in horror, “Number of kids shot in Baltimore in past week: 5. Number of arrests in the shootings: 0.” One of the victims is 10-year-old Kaelin Washington, shot in the chest while walking to buy a bag of Cheetos. So far this year there are 46 homicides and more than 100 non-fatal shootings in Baltimore.
Over in Portland, Oregon, after politicians cut several police programs including the Gun Violence Reduction Team, gun deaths spiked:
Nearly half of the 55 total homicide victims in 2020 were people of color, many of them from Portland’s historically Black neighborhoods, according to city statistics. So far this year, there have been 17 homicides — a concerning number considering there had only been one homicide in the same period in 2020.
Correction Of The Week
“An earlier version of this article said that the Cat in the Hat smears a house with black ink in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. It was actually pink ink,” - Vox, updating a Dr Seuss hit piece by Constance Grady calling the book “uncomfortable, in light of the racial history of the way Black people, dirt, and ink are associated in American pop culture.”
Mental Health Break
This ink isn’t racist either:
Bonus MHB: More than 10 minutes of vivid 4K footage from Mars.
In The ‘Stacks
Could white evangelicals keep us from hitting herd immunity?
On H.R.1, the voting rights bill, Charlie Sykes shakes his head at “an overcaffeinated committee of progressive activists” that ruined a righteous cause.
Freddie picks apart the ridiculous claim that “defund the police” is the new “marriage equality” when it comes to activist success.
Suzanne Moore reviews Jordan Peterson’s new book — and Peterson: “The man is so god damned serious I am compelled to find him somehow hilarious.” As a sympathetic critic, she recommends that he take psychedelics, not benzos, to face the suffering of life.
OG blogger Jonah Goldberg, who conceived of The Corner, traces the downward trajectory of online discourse from the early aughts to present day: “Twitter is the fentanyl of blogging.”
In case you’ve missed them, Peter Beinart and Daniel Larison — two staples of our foreign policy coverage from the blog days — have their own substacks now. This week, Peter mulls over American exceptionalism, which in the context of Palestine is “an assertion not of fact but of faith.” Larison, for his part, is encouraged by Biden’s interest in repealing AUMFs — authorizations for the use of military force.
Welcome, Michael Tracey! His inaugural post is a must-read. Subscribe!
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think? Email your entry to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. Proximity counts. The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two TWD subscriptions. Happy sleuthing!
The results for the last week’s window are coming in a separate email to subscribers later today.
As always, keep the dissents coming, along with anything else you want to add to the Dish mix, such as the view from your own window, a Woke Watch suggestion, or an Yglesias Award: dish@andrewsullivan.com. Please try to be concise with dissents: the new format of The Weekly Dish is much more constrained than The Daily Dish, so it’s more difficult to include your smart criticism when it stretches into many paragraphs. We can’t always respond to email, but rest assured we read everything.
See you next Friday.
(Top photo of President Biden by Al Drago/Getty Images)