President Biden's speech Wednesday was a liberal speech. Not populist. Not angry.
The American government is good because Americans are good and the government is us.
Our Constitution opens with the words, “We the People”. It’s time we remembered that We the People are the government. You and I. Not some force in a distant capital. Not some powerful force we have no control over. It’s us. It’s “We the people.”
In another era when our democracy was tested, Franklin Roosevelt reminded us—In America: we do our part. That’s all I’m asking. That we all do our part.
It would be easy to dismiss this as boilerplate political good-government talk, but in fact it was a dramatic change from the Sanders message, the Trump message, and the Reagan message.
Biden's America is not rigged by corrupt forces inside it. He isn't Bernie Sanders. He did not condemn a swamp of corrupt millionaires and billionaires. He did not say that capitalism was unfair. He did not condemn corporations nor cite their influence in campaign. He did not condemn lobbyists. He did not say that the problems in America stem from the fact that the system is rigged against the poor, working people, and people of color. A lot of people on the progressive left feel that way, and Biden does not feed that appetite for resentment. Biden promises them the programs they want, but not for reason they want it. Biden is a centrist, not a populist.
Trump, too, envisioned a swamp of corruption. For Trump, the problem wasn't wealth itself, but rather the haughty elites of the media, of the universities, of the so-called experts in foreign policy and trade who let America be taken to the cleaners by foreigners. Trump said the whole American system was rigged against regular Americans. We were being invaded by uncontrolled immigration. He said we were led by American dupes who signed bad deals with Iran, with China, with Mexico. He said we let ourselves be cheated by our NATO allies, by Japan, by South Korea; they are sponging off us and we let them get away with it. We are being scolded by "woke" moral tyrants who call us racists and who themselves tolerate looting and violence in the name of racial justice. We are beset by bad people, many of them in power, both visibly and hidden in the Deep State. For Trump, government is part of the swamp.
That isn't Biden. Biden is more like Ronald Reagan in temperament and in a vision of America. Biden is Mr. Everyone-Settle-Down. Can't we all get along? Good Ol' Joe is a mild unifier, in reputation and temperament. Biden, like Reagan, is an optimist. It was morning in Reagan's America and Biden finished his speech on Wednesday by saying that Americans can do anything--anything--if we do it together.
But Biden is no Reagan. President Reagan is famous for saying government was the problem, not the solution. Reagan said America and Americans were inherently good. We just needed government to get out of the way. Biden, like Reagan, starts with the premise that we are all good people and that America's problems will be addressed if we better express who we really are. Reagan said that private enterprise expressed that essential nature. Biden says that government does. It is all of us--we the people--and it is good.
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I have personal experience trying to explain to people that my clients who earned $400,000-plus in income did not really have it that easy, that they earned their money and were taxed plenty. I learned from that experience that the overwhelming response was derision. "Give me a break, Peter," they said. Folks earning $400,000-plus are doing just fine and taxing them more was just fine, too. There is not a big constituency of people who feel sorry for the top one percent.
Biden does not sound like a firebrand. "Good Ol' Joe's" message is not one of opposition to the wealthy. He doesn't claim their wealth is unfairly earned. He doesn't demonize them. He just says they are part of America and they need to do their part. It isn't confiscation. It is sharing.
Trump's populism on the right and Sanders' on the left prepared Americans to be cheerfully willing to raise taxes on the one percent. GOP officeholders cannot agree. They took a pledge not to raise taxes, no matter what. Biden, with his mild manner, may have uncovered an issue that will divide a few Republican voters from their officeholders in 2022.
You don't have to resent billionaires to want to tax them--Biden doesn't. But a lot of people do resent billionaires and blame them for the ills America faces.
4 comments:
Biden has been what America needed. Competent, caring, being less divisive has been so refreshing. I wonder if he would be too old to run again? I think he would get re-elected.
The reason you had trouble convincing folks that people making over $400k a year didn’t have it “easy” is because you were looking at it from a different perspective. Having employer funding health care makes life EASY. As does having the money to pay your mortgage, maintain your vehicle, fund your children’s education, take a vacation, buy healthy food, live in a safe neighborhood, not worry about how you will pay your rent or the next medical bill. Sure, folks making $400k a year may work hard, but so do farm workers, day care providers, nursing home care givers, Amazon warehouse workers, miners, loggers.......... the list goes on. And they don’t work in clean offices or at home on the computer - they work at often mind numbing jobs for abusive employers in dangerous conditions. So no, they won’t have much sympathy for someone making $400,000 a year.
It's important to make a distinction between income and wealth. The average income in the US is $32,000. A successful professional can earn half a million. Generational wealth is compounded into billions.
Income does divide people. But a bigger divide is between those who work out of a love of what they do, and those who do it just for the money and are miserable.
Misery loves company.
Republicans demonize the poor. If you are poor it's due to your "laziness". If you are not quite rich and can be convinced it's because of handouts to undeserving slackers they will get your vote, and your money.
"Q" pranked millions with hints that the "baby eating" government was soon to be overthrown and replaced with a white supremacist regime. They stormed the Capital and were shocked when Trump and the Army didn't follow. "Fooled ya!"
Add white supremacy and religious intolerance to this and one can start to see exactly what constitutes the Republican descent into autocracy and corruption.
They didn't have that far to fall.
When the income tax was proposed most people in the United States did not earn the income that triggered the tax. No loopholes were in place for the high earners to avoid paying income tax. But the the trigger point where earned income is taxed remained stuck in the original schedule. The tax was never suppose to be borne by "the little guy" where now a majority of the income tax is paid that way. After deductions from payroll wage earners see roughly half of the earnings as net income. The other payroll portion is "taken" by federal, state, and local income tax, social security withholding, medicare and medicaid withholding, health insurance, industrial accident insurance and where imposed union dues. In the Eisenhower administration the tax rate at the top of the schedule was 90% and corporations paid about half of the total revenue stream into the general fund of the United States. We're a long way from that now. The Estate Tax was also a large source of revenue and it had a social purposed it kept unearned wealth from contributing to wealth disparity we see now. Earning by CEOs are also disproportional to their contribution when compared to line workers. If a CEO's corporation has a bad year most still receive a bonus plus contracted salary and benefits while a line worker that did the work will see perhaps a cut in pay and a reduction in the employed ranks.
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