The Biden Team is building out.
It is a serious, competent, reasonable group of people whose resumes read as experienced and moderate.
Biden says they look like America. They do.
But they are also representatives of the meritocracy liberal elites that a great many people dislike and distrust. 
Biden presented himself as a "Regular Joe," a guy in touch with his roots in a working class family, a guy who genuinely understood and empathized with people who depend on a monthly paycheck, people with traditional values of religious faith and patriotism. The hope was that he would win back votes of the White working class. It did not happen. Biden won by five million votes because the middle income moderates in the suburbs turned out for the guy who wasn't Trump.
Trump's support came--and still comes--from people who know what they dislike and distrust. They disliked Hillary and her liberal meritocracy elites and they dislike the snooty self-righteousness of "woke" culture and values. They resent coastal liberal elites, whose economic and cultural values appear to be becoming the new normal. Trump's people are fighting a tide of secular internationalism and cosmopolitan culture. Democrats held them in contempt, Trump said, but he loved them. They loved him back. They bought "I'm Deplorable" tee shirts at the Trump website.
Rich Lowry at The National Review, in an article headlined "Only Middle Finger Available" published just before the 2020 election wrote: "If Trump manages to pull off an upset in 2020, it will be as a gigantic rude gesture directed at the commanding heights of American culture."
Biden was the alternative to all that, the non-Hillary. Biden says his Administration will "look like America." He gets criticism for paying attention to gender and race, which criticism elevates it to an "issue" and Biden has taken a side, for diversity as a value in itself. White conservatives complain: But what about us White men? Women, Black, Hispanic, and Asians have reason to think Biden stood by them.
Joe Biden has a diversity problem.
On both left and right, people feel frustration over the narrowing of pathways to success. The rich get richer. The smart get richer. The pathways to success are narrower, and the people on the fast track appear to have organized the economy for the benefit of people like themselves, not the "regular Joes."
Biden does not appear to be fixing that problem. His Administration may look like America, but it is still an expression of liberal elitism, adjusted to be multi-cultural and multi-ethnic elitism, a version that exacerbates rather than solves the elitism problem. It adds the demographic marginalization resentment to the educational and social class one.
Biden does not appear to be fixing that problem. His Administration may look like America, but it is still an expression of liberal elitism, adjusted to be multi-cultural and multi-ethnic elitism, a version that exacerbates rather than solves the elitism problem. It adds the demographic marginalization resentment to the educational and social class one.
College background is a signal of the cultural orientation of a student and graduate, and of Biden's orientation toward the status quo meritocracy establishment. It is a blunt instrument of analysis, but it does signal something: Holy Cross is different from Yale. Michigan State is different from Harvard. LSU is different from Princeton. There are very smart students and graduates from all of them, but people generally get there from different tracks, and once on an elite track tend to stay there.
Joe Biden's website lists 55 people in the "White House Senior Staff" roster, with photographs and biographies. They all seem highly qualified There is a near-universal pattern. They are liberal elites, educated at a tiny pool of elite, national universities
Ron Klain, Chief of Staff, went to Georgetown, where he graduated summa, then Harvard Law where he again graduated summa and was editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Jake Sullivan, his National Security Advisor, graduated from Yale, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, then got a J.D. from Yale.
Yohannes Abraham, Chief of Staff and Executive Secretary, has degrees from Yale and the Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar.
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Brian Deese, Director of the National Economic Council, has degrees from Middlebury College, and then Yale Law School.
Bruce Reed, the Deputy Chief of Staff, graduated from Princeton, and was a Rhodes Scholar, with another degree from Oxford.
Dana Remus, White House Counsel, graduated from Harvard, then Yale Law School.
Susan Rice, Director of Domestic Policy, graduated from Stanford, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, where she stayed for a Ph.D.
It goes on and on like this, with a near un-broken series of resumes of people whose biographies project American meritocracy from the time these people were in the ninth grade, getting straight A grades, getting top test scores, achieving at the highest level in America's institutions. Who better to choose as leaders than our best, brightest high achievers? Is there a problem?
Yes. A great many Americans don't trust those people.
Their experiences are built around success that only a tiny fraction of people can achieve. There are only 1600 spaces at Harvard and only 30 Rhodes Scholars. Voters are afraid of the instincts and values of them because they perceive those meritocracy liberals to be more interested in global business, academic, and governmental institutions and policies that make sense for them than they are in the problems of "regular-Joe" Americans like themselves. Those elite liberals may not see immigrants as a threat to jobs, because in fact they don't threaten the jobs of Yale Law graduates. Those elites don't understand threats to neighborhoods because elites live in expensive ones. It is easy for them to support free trade because they don't work in a factory whose product competes with a Chinese manufacturer.
Those liberal elites can afford politically correct coastal elite values because they live lives of privilege. Screw them!
So some of Trump's supporters dress up in Viking outfits and storm the Capitol, whipped up by Trump who says to take the country back from people like those elites. A greater number stay home but silently applaud the Capitol rioters. And a greater number yet are just glad that someone understands the world they way they do, and on election day they voted for Trump.
They will again if Biden doesn't advance policies that seem focused on "regular Joes." This team might do it, but their instincts might be all wrong.
8 comments:
If I need a life saving surgery, I'm not going looking for a "regular Joe" to put me under the knife.
C'mon...We need smart, experienced and yes, educated people in government. Unlike the last administration these people have an understanding of the US responsibilities, both to citizens and our allies around the globe.
Go into any bar in America and you'll find a dozen loudmouths who know exactly what's wrong with the World and will enlighten you at length. They project their personal problems on the larger society so they can blame anyone or anything but themselves. Such folks have been with us forever, but it's not Regressives who have tried to make their lives better. Decades of Republican blame shifting and cynical tropes like "trickle down" and "individual responsibility" have led us to the precipice.
Our higher education system is like our healthcare system, profit oriented, and if it was more accessible ridiculous pejoratives like "liberal elite" wouldn't have any heft. Progressives, many of them from that system, have been agitating for change for years.
When we have more colleges than prisons we'll be closer to the World "Joe" finds out of his reach.
By definition, half of the population of this country has an IQ below 100. If we want an economy that has a good place in it for all American citizens, college is not the answer. We need more “blue-collar” jobs that require other positive attributes such as reliability, competence, and a commitment to developing a high level of skill.
I think Peter‘s post today is exactly on target. I hope that Biden and his team will be taking this issue to heart. That all of Biden’s appointees come from the heart of the liberal elite establishment is a cause for concern.
If Biden fails at this, in 2024 there is going to be great potential for a Republican who can appeal to Trump’s blue-collar constituency without embodying the character flaws that cost Trump so many votes.
Blue collar jobs are going to be less and less as machines do more and more. I watched one person cut, stack 30 acres of trees in ONE DAY! How many blue collar jobs were replaced by that machine? Not sure what the answer is, but I don’t think republicans have any better answer to that question than Democrats.
The central issue is reversing economic inequality in the U.S. That can be done by people with "elitist" credentials better than by high school dropouts. FDR assembled a "brain trust" of highly educated people who worked steadily and with significant effectiveness to help the victims of the Great Depression. I note that Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley went to the same elite schools as many of Biden's appointments. That hasn't turned off Trump's base voters from them. So I wonder if the "optics" you focus on matter much. The optics that probably matter are color of skin and, secondarily, gender.
What will count are the policies Biden's appointees promote and enact into law: e.g. a fairer tax system, a $15 minimum wage, universal health care coverage, forgiveness of college debt, and a National Labor Relations Board that isn't hostile to unions. These are called for in themselves as well as a way for the Dems to win back working class voters.
Nonetheless, it is sobering to realize that Trump's refusal to do any of these things-- rather, he furthered enriched the rich by his tax cuts and immiserated poorer folks with his spending priorities--didn't turn them away. Their grievances and bigotry, which he successfully coalesced and stimulated, have made all too many of them incapable of assessing their real friends and foes in office. Political realignment will take time.
Somehow, "elitist" FDR managed to find and maintain broad support amongst
the American people!
Agree with most here - Especially Herb. I just want to add, I think we need people who can think through problems we've never had before. Trump created the illusion that he could return the country to "Mayberry" or at least "Leave it to Beaver" - but he couldn't even if he was more competent because the inertia is too great.
As Dave says - the technology-led automation "monster" is out of the cage. Low skill work for middle class pay is history and will never come back. In Charles Handy's 2008 article on The Pursuit of Unnecessary Things - he coins the term "Adam Smith's Conundrum". He asks "What happens when we can produce more than we need with very little human labor?" That would have been unfathomable to Smith
We need thought leaders - and not just government leaders who can imagine a path to a new kind of economy without scaring people that the skills, identity and meaning they get from their jobs isn't going away. What's the first question most people ask? "What do you do"? Meaningful useful work is an identity.
Many years ago I taught a vocational retraining program at a local community college. The students were unemployed heavy equipment operators who drove those giant mining machines. The mine shut down and their skills were irrelevant. They had been very well-paid and proud of their work. Poof. Gone. Now they sat in a class learning building codes so they could be inspectors at a fraction of the pay. Hell of a letdown after 20 years hauling ore in the mines.
The guys wearing Carhartt's and Dickies are pissed and they don't trust the "suits". Joe sixpack can't solve these problems but they don't trust the people who might be able to.
Trump sold his elite buddies to the mob, saying don’t ya think you’d like to have smart people running the government? And the 100 IQ deplorables nodded in agreement. And his buddies ran away with huge tax breaks screwing the 100 IQ deplorables, the Lavern and Shirleys and the Squiggi’s on the production lines now gone off shore. If the Democrats operate like they are interested in creating jobs and actually can pull the lower middle class out of the sink hole, they can have all the elites they want to run a well greased government loaded with lots of fat for each state, the 100 IQ ers will throw down their long guns and kiss and hug once again.
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