Well, you can’t blame him for trying.
In his first year in office, Joe Biden advanced an agenda of domestic reform as ambitious as any president since Lyndon Johnson. But now his legislation has stalled and his popularity has plummeted. Democrats are scrambling to pick up the pieces and looking at a possible shellacking come the mid-term elections in November.
Biden sought to reactivate the Democrats’ New Deal heritage of making capitalism work for working people. His party had been running away from that tradition since then president Bill Clinton famously declared in 1996, “The era of big government is over”. As a senator, Biden had been a key part of his party’s move rightward to neoliberalism.
Many were surprised, then, when he proposed trillions of dollars of new spending on domestic reform. This included a $1 trillion bipartisan Bill to repair America’s crumbling infrastructure and a $2 trillion economic stimulus plan to address the Covid emergency. Both passed last year. But its signature component, the omnibus multi-trillion dollar Build Back Better Bill, is now blocked.
With the benefit of hindsight, many observers have concluded that Biden miscalculated and that he should have backed only legislation he knew he could pass
To be financed mainly by making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, the Bill includes several popular provisions that would tangibly improve the lives of ordinary American families: universal preschool for three- and four-year-olds; subsidies for childcare; expanded healthcare coverage; and funds for housing, homecare, and higher education. The Bill’s most expensive and most important provision is more than $500 billion in funding for clean energy and to transition to a green economy.
After stringing his party along for several months, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin announced his opposition to the Bill in December. Though Democrats are still trying to salvage parts of it, there is small hope they can deliver tangible benefits to voters by November. Moreover, the defeat has left a lasting impression that Biden is a weak president and reinforced the view of most Americans that Washington is inherently dysfunctional.
Biden’s problem is not a lack of charisma but simple maths. Democrats have the narrowest majorities in Congress, particularly in the Senate where the parties are evenly divided at 50 with vice-president Kamala Harris breaking any tie. Passing any legislation requires keeping every senator on board. Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson probably couldn’t do any better with this Congress. Afterall, both had Democratic supermajorities when they passed their landmark legislation.
Just two senators have halted Biden’s agenda: Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona. Representing the heavily Republican West Virginia, Manchin wants to distance himself from Biden. Sinema’s motivations are more opaque. Her party base now reviles her, but she no doubt has an eye on life after her Senate term is through.
Manchin and Sinema blocked not only Build Back Better, but also an important voting rights Bill that would have reduced gerrymandering, restricted the role of big donations in political campaigns, and protected access to the ballot from the onslaught of legislation by Republican-controlled states to suppress voting (especially voting by racial minorities). They would rather protect the Senate filibuster, which requires the votes of 60 senators for non-budgetary legislation, than defend American democracy at a time of existential peril.
Americans should start bracing themselves for a return to power of the Trump-dominated Republicans in 2022 and maybe 2024
With the benefit of hindsight, many observers have concluded that Biden miscalculated and that he should have backed only legislation he knew he could pass. But Biden was not mistaken to set his sights so high. The climate crisis and the democratic crisis demand immediate action. Biden succeeded in uniting the vast majority of his fractious party around a long-term agenda to alleviate the festering economic inequalities that feed anger and resentment. That is the only long-term alternative to Republican authoritarianism.
If Biden erred, it was in not campaigning on this agenda in 2020. Had he done so, he might have won the Congressional majorities needed to fully enact it. In 2022, it is far more probable that he will lose the slim majorities he now has.
Biden may yet recover his footing; the Ukraine crisis and the announced retirement of Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer have given him an opportunity to pivot from domestic policy. But even if he does, the president’s party almost always loses seats in mid-term elections. And if Biden’s approval ratings continue to sink to 40 per cent or below those losses could be of historic proportions.
Americans should start bracing themselves for a return to power of the Trump-dominated Republicans in 2022 and maybe 2024, a party that has continued its dangerous descent into authoritarianism. With Build Back Better, Biden signalled that Democratic elites had finally hit upon a winning agenda. Sadly, they may have been too late.
Daniel Geary is Mark Pigott assistant professor of US History at Trinity College Dublin