Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war! William Shakespeare
You know you’re doing something right as a President when you hit the 100 day mark, and your popularity is still solidly in the mid 50’s. Not only that, but your signature first accomplishment is close to 70% popularity, and your next three marquee goals are all polling in the high 60’s. Part of it is due to the almost Prussian messaging control coming out of the White House, with the emphasis on national unity and popular accomplishments. Out of it is also due to the almost complete moral and political bankruptcy of the GOP, and their inability to hold a cohesive opposing message.
But you know you’re really knocking it out of the park when a potential pain in the ass from your own party, like the vaunted AOC, comes out and admits that you have actually exceeded the far left’s expectations in the first 100 days. That’s not messaging, it’s solid, progressive accomplishments.
If you have ever watched Joe Biden, this should not amaze you. He has literally spent his entire adult life monolithically working to get to this place and moment in time. He spent 37 years as a US Senator, followed by 8 years in an office down the hall from the Oval Office as Vice President. There isn’t a button, switch, lever, or pulley in government that her doesn’t know where it is. And better yet, he knows exactly what each one does, and exactly how and when to activate it.
Just look at the Covid-19 vaccine rollout. Trump didn’t have a clue as to what to do to actually distribute the vaccines once they were available. Biden walked in, pulled the lever of the War Powers act to maximize the production of both raw materials and finished vaccines, tapped logistics experts in the military and FEMA to set up a workable distribution network, coordinated distribution with the states, and cut deals with national drug store chains to give out vaccine shots. And as a result, we ended up with 225,999 million shots in arms in 100 days. That’s not all Biden, that is the full and majestic power of the government of the United States, when it’s turned loose. But Biden had to know exactly how and when to turn it loose.
Let’s be honest. Joe Biden is an ambitious man. You don’t get to be President by blind luck, or desire, it takes an incredible motivation and drive. Joe Biden doesn’t want to be a good President, and he doesn’t even want to be a great President, he wants to be a transformational President. His entire adult life has led up to this moment, and he wants to make the most of it. It has already been reported in the media that Biden has had respectable presidential historians like Jon Meacham in the Oval Office to discuss what kind of agenda he would have to push and pass to be thought of as a transformational President. This is his legacy.
And President Joe Biden is the perfect man, in the perfect place, with the perfect skills, at the perfect time. Because what President Joe Biden is out to do is to completely redefine the role of the US government in American life. And he is off to one helluva start, ladies and gentlemen.
GOP President Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980, and took office in January of 1981. His shining achievement in 8 years was the initiation of Reagonomics, which was later morphed into trickle down economics, as a descriptive measure. The basis of the concept was that the more money that you shoveled in to major corporations, the more they would funnel back down into increased employment, as well as research and development. President George HW Bush later renamed it voodoo economics.
It was a pathetic failure. Rather than reinvesting all that extra kaboodle into R&D, or more jobs, corporations paid their executives more money, and bought back company stock in order to inflate the stock price for easier manipulation. But here’s the important part. In order to keep funneling more and more money to super corporations, the GOP started slashing benefits to the nations neediest Americans, instead telling them to become more self sufficient. The official GOP governing position was that it was not the governments responsibility to help the least among us.
This is the fundamental change that Biden is going for, and he’s going straight for the throat. After all, it was the Democratic led House that passed the original Covid relief bill, and shamed the GOP Senate into passing it so that Trump could sign it. And in 2021, it was the Democratic led House that passed the next relief bill, against unanimous GOP opposition. This is the Democratic vision of the federal government, an activist government that steps in to assist everyday Americans in a time of need.
Forget about the $1400 for a moment. In the second Covid relief bill, starting this summer, lower and middle class families are going to start receiving monthly checks to assist them in raising their families. Money for things like groceries, clothes, shoes and books. And if Biden gets his way, every family will get two years of affordable or free pre-k schooling, as well as two years of free community college after high school. He wants to lower the entry age for Medicare, and allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices with Big Pharma for lower rates, which will leak down to regular consumers.
This is the soft underbelly of the GOP, and they know it. Unfortunately for them, Biden also knows it. Because, as it turns out, the American people absolutely love it when you give them free shit! Biden’s proposals all have high degrees of public support to start with, but when you throw in the the fact that it will be paid for by soaking the rich?, then the approval rating goes even higher!
The country spent 40 years with the GOP telling them that they were on their own, the secret to a chicken in every pot, and even having that pot to piss in, was uncontrolled corporate greed. Now, Biden has already shown them how the government can work for them, and he’s showing how it’s done. This is the incubation of a transformational presidency. Now, how does the GOP rebut it against rising American sentiment for it to become law? Don’t touch that dial.
Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35
Just a correction–or maybe a need for clarification–but Bush the First described Reagan’s economic program as “voodoo economics” while he was running against Reagan for the 1980 GOP nomination. Bush had to swallow a lot of bullcrap after becoming Reagan’s running-mate–not just the economic program but also on abortion rights. Bush was personally opposed to abortion but he felt that was a matter for the individual to decide without government involvement and supported the idea of the ERA while Reagan’s GOP turned on both issues (that year’s platform formally supported an outright ban on all abortions as well as overturning the GOP’s decades-long advocacy of full equality for women).
The way you’ve written the article suggests that “voodoo economics” was only given that name after Reagan’s election.
I don’t think the framing that the government is giving the people free stuff is accurate. The labor of ALL the people contribute to the prosperity of the country (see: essential workers). It is supposed to be a given that all the people share in that prosperity. In fact, that is the whole point of the discredited trickle-down theory. Trickle down was erroneously thought to be the mechanism for sharing the prosperity. Now we know that the way to share the prosperity is by trickle-up. Start the dollars at the bottom and let each dollar do work for the economy at each rung of the ladder on its way up to the wealthiest people.