Democrats Need to Run on Biden's Record, Not From It
We have to figure out right now what our message is going to be before the mid-term election season starts next year. Here's a suggestion: run on Biden's impressive record.
Like it or not, we have to give republicans credit for some things. The most important is in their consistent (albeit fraudulent) messaging.
Through the use of over 1,500 right-wing radio stations, about 700 religious stations pushing republican memes and candidates, and several hundred right-wing Spanish-language stations, republicans have figured out how to disseminate talking points to their base without having to provide anything more than culture war red meat about trans Americans, immigrants, liberals, progressives, and the Democratic party in general.
It’s easy to do when a handful of wealthy businessmen and women who root for the tax cuts republicans have so dutifully handed them over the past four decades control the corporate media.
The so-called “liberal media” is a chimera despite right-wing hate mongers’ incessant bashing of it. There is nothing — literally nothing — at the scale of openly conservative messaging comparable to what’s being pumped out on Fox so-called “news”, Newsmax, and One America News Network (OANN). The closest we come to a truly “liberal” media rests in the hands of Free Speech TV, available on some streaming services like Roku; a handful of terrestrial stations like WCPT ; the “Progress” channel on SiriusXM; and myriad podcasts. MSNBC, the cable news channel the right wing loves to bash, is owned by NBC Universal, a subsidiary of Comcast, and is not available on basic cable like Fox is. CNN has been trying so hard the past few years to lure the Fox audience, it’s pathetic.
Put simply, the media is as “liberal” as the corporations that own it.
Without a media ecosystem, and, in fact, a media that is actually pretty hostile and hypocritical toward Democrats, it’s up to Democratic politicians and committees to pound away at the progress they have made instead of just assuming it will speak for itself. This was a serious mistake the Biden White House and Democratic party made the past four years and continues to make.
So as we enter a dark time in America, when, in just over 100 days, the 34-count convicted felon and his complicit cronies in the republican congressional majority march us toward autocracy and dismantle two centuries of liberal democratic governance, we have to figure out right now what our message is going to be before the mid-term election season starts next year.
Here’s a suggestion: Instead of attempting to distance itself from the “old guy” Joe Biden, which some Democrats are already starting to do, the Democratic party must use this opportunity to run on the astonishing successes of the Biden-Harris administration. While they’re at it, remind people of the Obama-Biden administration’s successes as well like it hasn’t before. That will give the majority of the American people not paying attention a look at what the media hasn’t been telling them.
But there’s a caveat: the messaging has to be relentless.
It can’t just be coming from Sen. Chuck Schumer standing on the Senate floor monotonously reading a banal statement. It can’t be coming from a news personality allowed to report on only what the board of directors deems harmless to the corporation’s bottom line. It can’t be from obscure progressive podcasts hosts addressing an audience of like-minded people.
It has to come from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), from elected Democrats in Congress and the state and local levels. And they have to hammer away in bumper-sticker sound bites, which is something else republicans do well.
The Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) and RootsAction are circulating a petition urging the DNC to convene an emergency meeting to plan "truly bold action" against the former host of Celebrity Apprentice and his sycophants. With 7,000 signers, 1500 of whom provided comments, already as of last week, it demonstrates the frustration people are feeling over a Democratic establishment that appears like a deer in headlights facing the treats against it and us.
That “truly bold action”, again: Biden’s record.
The Biden/Harris administration had:
•Invested $12 billion in new funding for women’s health research;
• Capped out-of-pocket expenses for pharmaceutical drugs at $3,000;
• Lowered the cost of hearing aids by allowing them to be made available over the counter;
• Launched the American Rescue Plan ARPA-H initiative for advanced
research on cancer and other diseases;
• Reignited the “Cancer Moonshot” initiative with the goal of cutting the cancer death rate by at least half over the next quarter century.
By the time Joe Biden left office in January, there were 66,000 ongoing infrastructure improvement projects across the United States. 196,000 miles of roads and 11,400 bridges were being repaired. 367,000 lead pipes were being replaced. Airports and seaports were and are undergoing modernization. Just after the November election, the Biden administration announced an additional $1.5 billion investment in railroad upgrades along the Northeast Corridor.
All of this is being brought to us compliments of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act President Biden signed nearly four years ago.
In October, The Economist published a story announcing “America’s economy is bigger and better than ever”, and another boasting “The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust”.
President Biden was the first national executive to take on the neo-liberal “trickle-down” economic policies started during the Reagan administration. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) requires companies reporting more than $1 billion in profits to pay a 15% minimum corporate tax rate, and wealthy shareholders to pay a 1% tax on stock buybacks. It also requires Americans making over $400,000 to pay a little more in taxes.
13 million families covered under the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) were seeing health insurance costs decrease by an average of $800 a year, and three million more Americans are now insured.
Most “surprise billing” medical charges from out-of-network insurance providers are are banned under the “No Surprises Act”.
Medicare negotiatied for more affordable pharmaceutical drugs.
Insulin costs were capped at $35 per month for almost four million diabetic seniors on Medicare, and lower out-of-pocket cost of inhalers for tens of millions was in the works by the time the Biden-Harris administration’s time was up.
Weeks after a bipartisan majority of the U.S. Senate voted to pass the Social Security Fairness Act, President Biden signed it, eliminating the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO) that reduced or eliminated retirement benefits for more than 2.4 million public service retirees, like police officers, firefighters, teachers, federal, state, and local government employees. The changes apply to all benefits payable after last December.
Biden also became the first US president to apologize for generations of Indigenous children’s systemic abuse in government-sanctioned boarding schools.
He invoked the decades-old Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to “protect the entire U.S. East coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California, and additional portions of the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska from future oil and natural gas leasing.” This major decision prevents expanded oil drilling in 334 million acres of the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) stretching from Canada to the Florida’s southern tip, and the Eastern Gulf of Mexico; the entire west coast; and 44 million acres of the Northern Bering Sea. This act has no expiration date, and since reversing it would require an act of Congress, it is immune from any executive order the illegitimate president might want to issue to reverse it.
Joe Biden oversaw more uninterrupted job growth in his single term than any of his three most recent predecessors — more than 16.1 million. Last year saw an additional creation of 2.23 million jobs, 256,000 in December alone. To put that into perspective, the first three years of the former host of Celebrity Apprentice’s presidency, we added 6.6 million jobs, 2.1 million of which were shed during the pandemic.
Obama saw job growth of 7.1 million.
George W. Bush, 5.2 million.
While Bill Clinton holds the record with 32 million, his annual average trails Biden’s.
In contrast, by the time the failed businessman and realty-TV slumlord (reluctantly) left in 2021 — after violently trying to hold onto power and stealing classified documents — the economy was again in the toilet, in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic his administration saw coming and ignored.
Next on the list: junk fees.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) finalized a rule prohibiting those exploitative hidden fees irking us every time we buy concert tickets, or book a stay at a hotel or vacation rentals. Vendors will now be required to present all prices transparently before prospective customers finalize transactions.
According to an FTC release, the rule change “targets specific and widespread unfair and deceptive pricing practices in the sale of live-event tickets and short-term lodging, while preserving flexibility for businesses.”
Biden surpassed his predecessor (and successor) in federal judgeship appointments — 235. This means, on his way out the door, President Biden secured a Supreme Court justice, 45 appeals court judges, 187 district court judges and two judges on the U.S. Court of International Trade.
Let’s not forget, Biden was the first sitting president to march a picket line with striking union workers, lending to his distinction as “the most pro-union and pro-worker president in history”.
In his tenure, he created the “Made in America” office, required Project Labor Agreements on most major federal construction projects over $35 million, and signed the Butch Lewis Act to save more than one million pensions — which Vice President Kamala Harris helped deliver when she broke the Senate vote tie for the American Rescue Plan which included Butch-Lewis.
No matter what pundits say about President Biden’s age, “inflation” (aka corporate greed), and our tepid pushback on the Israeli government’s assault on Palestinians in Gaza, Joe Biden will go down in history as the most legislatively consequential president in modern history.
President Biden and his surrogates should have been spending the past four years reiterating their accomplishments as much as the Liar-in-Chief reiterated his faux accomplishments. The adjudicated sexual assaulter was lying through his teeth, but because he was screaming about “the best economy in history” and held “Infrastructure Week” each month without actually investing in any infrastructure, the media picked up on it and amplified it.
Republican lawmakers that voted against Biden’s infrastructure initiatives have had no qualms about taking credit for the jobs and money coming into their districts. It helps when their constituents have no idea their republican lawmakers voted against those jobs and money for purely political purposes.
Republicans voted against a comprehensive immigration bill despite it having just about everything they crow about because their potentate-in-waiting told them to.
Republicans have mastered the fine art of projection. They really want people to believe they are the stewards of the economy, the “fiscally responsible” party, despite facts to the contrary.
So, Democrats…
Yes, Joe Biden had a terrible debate last year.
We can argue, as people still are, over whether he should have gotten out of the race earlier, or about whether he should have even been in it at all.
Yes, Hunter Biden had his own personal demons to deal with.
Yes, the Bidens’ dog, Commander, bit Secret Service agents.
Biden’s old.
He has cancer.
Every one of these is a GOP talking point anyone can glean from half an hour watching Fox or Newsmax, et al.
What people won’t get are the aforementioned successes, and that is precisely what the Democratic party should be running on.
If not, we’re done.
If we don’t win back at least one house of Congress, we risk descending into a strongman dictatorship we have never seen nor are prepared to deal with.
It’s your choice, Democrats.
Let’s get it done!