I'm Not Asking a Lot From the Dems. But Even That Might Be Too Much.

The Dems Are Off to a Slow, Muddled, Uninspiring Start. And That's Not a Good Thing.

They’re conflicted, these days, my feelings about the Dems. I hold out hope that they might be a little bit better than they have been. And hope, as we all know, or should, is the last resort of the powerless.

I’m not asking a lot from the Dems. I have a number of basic key issues that I want to see progress made on. They’re basic in the, well, sense that they’re the most fundamental things necessary to bring America within even shouting distance of being a functioning society. I’m not asking for the Dems to make America Canada or Europe overnight—I understand that, in the dismal and psychologically defeated stance of American politics, that’s “unrealistic.”

What are my key issues? It’s not a long list, really. A decent healthcare system, not the failed wreck that charges people a million dollars at a time. Debt. Retirement. A higher minimum wage—did you know if it had kept pace with productivity it’d be about $25? Women’s rights, which are under severe attack from a theocratic right. A commitment to pursuing justice for the fascism that the American right now openly espouses and champions.

That’s not an exhaustive list. It’s just what’s at the top of my head, right now, what comes to mind. You can add to it as you see fit. I’d summarise it, simply, as “the things any sane person would want”, and sane person in this context means something like “anyone that’s not a complete idiot and thinks it’s debatable whether people should have access to small and life altering and perhaps even life saving amounts of medicine and money.”

And yet even as I survey this modest list—remember, this is hardly the stuff of genuine, radical, sweeping reform—I have to admit a dismal conclusion. The Dems don’t seem to be interested, very much, in most of the problems on it. Not in a serious way, and definitely not in a unified, systemic way, as a political bloc. Biden does not seem to be leading a loud, visible, very public charge in this direction.

Not the way, that say, Trump instantly began to demonise immigrants and refugees. Biden is mostly silent, except when he takes the stage to be empathic. But America needs a lot more than empathy. It needs leadership. That means direction, guidance, orientation. The job of a President isn’t just to sit back—it’s to lead, in a public way, changing attitudes, norms, values, codes, with words, arguments, big and powerful ideas. Is that really happening? Put your personal like or dislike for Biden aside for a second and be honest.

Take the example of student debt. American pundits are busy debating whether Biden has the “power” to cancel it. Many of them, right here on Substack. LOL. Do you know how utterly ridiculous that is?

Let me explain, in case it’s not clear. By the time Trump had been in office for about a month, he was pursuing a vigorous agenda of, well, actual fascism. He’d already floated bans. He’d put the people in place to design the policies of concentration camps and Gestapos. He was busy leading a moral crusade to demonise and scapegoat immigrants and refugees and women and gays and everyone else that wasn’t a “real” American. In other words, in his first few weeks in office, Trump got stuff done. It was horrible stuff, to be sure. All the wrong stuff. Fascist stuff. But it was still stuff, as in policy, change, action.

Nobody on Trump’s side cared if he “had the power” to, say “ban” Muslims. He just issued an executive order to do it. Am I saying that’s what Biden should do, when it comes to some of the issues above? Of course I am. A President should use their power. What the hell else is the point of power? To create abstract debates that dumb pundits can write columns about—or to actually get stuff done? My grandpa’s old maxim—that you had better use your power or lose it—has never been truer than right now in America, because the Dems have about two years to show Americans they mean business.

Trump’s wrecking ball swinging, even by executive order, from the day he took office seems to me to disprove a certain defensive idea which comes from die-hard liberals, which is that “Biden’s only been in office for a month!” I don’t find that much of a defence, to be honest.

Anyone that’s been in a position of power knows that the first 100 days are the most consequential of all, which is why every garden-league CEO makes such a big deal about them. They matter. They set tone, vision, consequences, the outer limits of what’s possible. But the Dems seem to be dithering, and wasting those first 100 days, instead of using the power they have like they mean it, which is all the power you can have in the American political system.

There are a few wrenches in the works, it’s true. Good old Senator Manchin of West Virginia—do I have that right? Senator Sinema of Arizona. These “moderates” take every opportunity to derail any semblance of a genuinely progressive Democratic agenda. Why are they doing it? They’re grandstanding, making a power play. They are holding American hostage for the sake of their own political fortunes.

Same as it ever was. But no serious political party should tolerate members playing opportunistic games with its agenda—especially not a moment of grave national crisis. Members who hold parties hostage for the sakes of their own gain should be swiftly punished. And political parties do indeed have the means to punish obstructionists—the Republicans do it all the time. Funds can be withheld, committee seats can be denied, organisational assistance can be pared back. Political parties make or break candidates—not the other way around. The Dems letting a couple of opportunistic grandstanders like Manchin and Sinema hold their whole agenda for America’s future hostage—what little there is to begin with—is a huge, huge mistake.

It demonstrates a lack of, to put it a little rudely, balls. Cojones. Ovaries, if you want. A sheer lack of willingness to do the necessary. I’d like to see Biden simply single out the obstructionists in a public speech, if that’s what it takes—after he assures Americans of a powerful concern in all the issues above. Instead, I get the feeling that Biden’s leaving many issues to, as Dems do, be “debated” by the same old idiotic pundits and professors.

All those debates are fake, because all those people have been wrong our whole lives. Take the example of good old Matt Yglesias and his partner in junior league neoliberalism, Ezra Klein. The Batman and Robin of punditry have been wrong about every single issue they have ever touched. They have never—literally never—been right about anything, from war to poverty to fascism. Hell, do you remember when Matt was like "we shouldn’t have public libraries?” I do, or at least I think I do. America’s orthodox school of thinkers is dead wrong. That is because they seem not to understand that the world exists, and is now jumping leaps and bounds ahead of America. They don’t look at vastly more successful countries like Canada or Germany or France and ask: wait, what did they do right that we did wrong?

I’m not asking a lot from the Dems. But I think I’m asking too much. I get the sinking feeling I’m asking more than they can deliver. Want to deliver. Ever planned to really deliver.

That’s not a good place to be, my friends. Not for me, but for America. And for the Dems. Because if they can’t deliver meaningful reforms, fast, in these first 100 days,

do you know who wins in 2024? Come on, you know. Not them.