Twenty years ago, a Time cover story on East Asian bailouts dubbed Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and Undersecretary Lawrence Summers “The Committee to Save the World.” Needless to say, that was hyperbole and, no, they didn’t.
Now it’s your turn.
Okay, Joe Biden has a big role to play. And, says New Yorker’s John Cassidy, some big challenges:
The first was uniting the Democratic Party after a chaotic primary season. To this end, Biden has reached out to the Party’s progressive wing and tacked to the left in some of his own policy proposals. He created a Unity Task Force—including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other supporters of Bernie Sanders—that released a lengthy set of recommendations earlier this month. Biden now supports Elizabeth Warren’s bankruptcy plan, which would make it easier for financially strapped people to discharge their debts. He has put forward a proposal to insure free tuition for many students at public colleges, modelled on an earlier Sanders plan. His climate-change strategy sets a target of 2035 for the creation of a zero-emissions power grid, which is just five years later than the deadline laid out in the Green New Deal. Some Sanders supporters are still scornful of Biden, but there has been no repeat of the internecine conflict that occurred in 2016.
The second task facing Biden was to fashion a coherent response to the tumultuous events of 2020. That’s where his Build Back Better plan comes in. The members of his policy team have worked on the assumption that the coronavirus-stricken economy will need substantial financial support for years. They think that this presents an opportunity to make it greener, more worker-friendly, and more racially inclusive. Biden’s proposals include spending two trillion dollars on projects to move beyond fossil fuels; seven hundred and seventy-five billion dollars on expanding care for preschoolers and the elderly; and a hundred and fifty billion dollars on supporting small, minority-owned businesses. He’s also promised to insure that forty per cent of the investment in green-energy infrastructure benefits disadvantaged communities, to expand rent subsidies for low-income households, to facilitate labor-union organizing, and to introduce a national minimum wage of fifteen dollars per hour.
The third challenge is not giving Donald Trump a ready target. While the acting president continues to dig his hole deeper, Biden is making a pitch for Trump Country voters, says Cassidy. He is adopting economic nationalism language and calling for rebuilding American manufacturing, but avoiding issues that might alienate white voters in battleground states.
“You cannot cede massive sections of the electorate if you want to be successful politically,” Ruy Teixeira of the Center for American Progress tells Cassidy. Or as I put it, if you don’t show up to play, you forfeit.
Meanwhile, Trump is bleeding support in the suburbs. Let him. Biden is thinking carefully about his Vice-Presidential pick and trying to build a tent broad enough to both win decisively and govern effectively.
What is clearer daily is that Trump is trying to undermine postal delivery to sabotage the election he already sabotaged with his flailing non-response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports mail delays across the area. Some residents have gone “upwards of three weeks without packages and letters, leaving them without medication, paychecks, and bills.” Mail carriers contracting the virus is not helping. But Trump’s actions are making it worse:
The new Postmaster General’s policies eliminate overtime, order carriers to leave mail behind to speed up their workdays, and slash office hours, which — coupled with staffing shortages amid previous budget cuts and coronavirus absences — are causing extensive delivery delays.
[…]
On top of staff shortages, the agency has seen a significant increase in packages due to a boom in online shopping as people stay home. Casselli said Philadelphia’s plant was processing about 30,000 parcels per day before the coronavirus. Now, it’s processing 100,000.
“They were short-staffed before COVID, and now they don’t have the manpower to process the mail that needs to be delivered,” said Casselli. “Mail is sitting for a week to 10 days before they’re even scanned to go out.”
The changes are part of the administration’s plan to turn public opinion against the beloved service and, ultimately, to privatize it, says Philip F. Rubio, author of several books on the Postal Service and professor of history at North Carolina A&T State University.
One might say Trump is attempting to turn the perfect storm to his advantage. Sabotage mail delivery to sabotage the by-mail and absentee vote while insisting the election results announced on November 3 are the only legal ones. Real Americans ignore the virus, don’t wear masks, and vote in person, dontcha know. He’s encouraging Republican voters to do just that and is expected to declare illegitimate late-arriving absentee and by-mail votes that turn against him.
University of Birmingham professor Nic Cheeseman, co-author of “How to Rig an Election,” has five warning signs he looks for ahead of elections in unstable democracies: “Organized militias, a leader who is not prepared to lose, distrust of the political system, disinformation, and a potentially close contest. Right now, the U.S. has all five.”
This means that to save the world, your challenge is not only to vote but to evade additional voter suppression tricks and traps and a deadly virus while doing it. Cue up the “Rocky” trumpet fanfare.
Jennifer Cohn has thread with voting tips you should read and pass on.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.