Eric Levitz summarizes five themes from President Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night:
1) If Biden gets his way, you won’t have to “learn to code.”
On Wednesday night, Biden charted a middle ground between the social democracy of FDR and the meritocratic liberalism of his former boss. In the years since Obama’s presidency, the notion that America can educate its way back to shared prosperity has fallen out of favor in elite policy circles. While expanding access to higher education remains a top policy goal of the Democratic Party, this is no longer seen as an adequate response to inequality or middle-class decline. And for good reason: The skills gap is a myth, and most of the fastest-growing occupations in the U.S. do not require a college degree. Meanwhile, the Democrats’ eroding support among non-college-educated Americans has become the party’s defining political challenge.
When Biden talks jobs, he is talking working-class ones for those Americans who feel left behind by the economy.
2) If you don’t want to soak the rich, you want to screw the middle class.
In his address, Biden offered a simple rejoinder to his tax plan’s skeptics: Either you oppose my popular spending initiatives, or you support increasing the deficit, or you want to raise taxes on the middle class:
So how do we pay for my Jobs and Family Plans? I’ve made clear that we can do it without increasing deficits. Let’s start with what I will not do. I will not impose any tax increases on people making less than $400,000 a year. It’s time for corporate America and the wealthiest 1% of Americans to pay their fair share…When you hear someone say that they don’t want to raise taxes on the wealthiest 1% and on corporate America – ask them: whose taxes are you going to raise instead?
Taxing the rich is popular. Biden is heading off the deficit hawks at the pass and signaling to median voters that he is there for them.
Biden hailed his American Rescue Plan as a bipartisan based on its strong support among Republican voters, even if every Republican in Congress opposed it. Last night Biden headed off complaints that his new initiatives would not get bipartisan support in Congress, Levitz explains:
3) If you’re not with him, you’re against American global supremacy.
Later in the address, Biden sought to turn the GOP’s own caterwauling about China against it. The president affirmed the notion that the U.S. and China are locked in a (zero sum?) competition for economic and geopolitical dominance. He then cast his proposed investments in American infrastructure and green technology as indispensable to victory in the great power competition — and suggested that Republicans who oppose such policies are putting America second:
We’re in a competition with China and other countries to win the 21st Century … I applaud a group of Republican Senators who just put forward their proposal. But, the rest of the world isn’t waiting for us. Doing nothing is not an option. We can’t be so busy competing with each other that we forget the competition is with the rest of the world to win the 21st Century.
In other words, why do my Republican opponents hate America?
4) If your favorite Democratic policy doesn’t pass, don’t blame me.
If you believe we need a secure border – pass it. If you believe in a pathway to citizenship – pass it. If you actually want to solve the problem – I have sent you a bill, now pass it.
From “gun control to police reform to the PRO Act to immigration,” Biden name-checked it, writes Levitz. In other words, if immigration is your top issue, put up or shut up.
Finally, if the nation’s first pandemic State of the Union address lacked pizzazz, well….
5) If you reelect me, I’ll keep you bored and well-fed.
Yet the speech was not boring in the sense that its contents were irrelevant to the median American’s interests. Like a lecture on personal finance, Biden’s remarks were dull but potentially useful, or at least clearly intended to be of use. And this is ultimately Bidenism’s dispensation: Stick with Joe and you’ll be pleased with your bank account, and bored with your political system.
That is already happening. If you reconfigure your ACA policy, you’ll get what Levitz means about your bank account in a concrete way. Also, if you received too much in ACA subsidy last year because you underestimated your income in November-December 2019, you’ll be thanking Democrats when you do your 2020 taxes. Check for tax software updates.