August 12, 2021

By JP Sottile

President Biden came out to take a victory lap after his bipartisan plan for infrastructure was passed by the Senate. He banked on scoring a win for "bipartisanship," and the Senate cashed that check. That's a win, politically speaking.

But he also went on the offensive regarding the $3.5 trillion "Build Back Better" budget framework the Senate passed overnight. It's a massive reboot of the so-called "social safety net," with an expansion of Medicare, subsidized child care, free community college and a host of other traditional liberal policies that have long wandered in the Neoliberal desert since Reagan sent 'em into exile in 1980 ... and, just as importantly, since Clinton barred 'em (seemingly forever) from reentry into American politics in 1996.

While it might seem like fanciful, Bidenesque “blah-blah” given the roadblocking presence of Senators Sinema and Manchin, the fact that Biden's team is even "going there" signals a significant shift in the political landscape. Perhaps emboldened by the rise of right wing populism in the GOP, Biden's team is placing a big bet on the loosening of Neoliberalism's death-grip on American politics. That's been the case since 1980. Supply Siders have set the terms of every debate and champions of FDR-style Demand Side economics have been painted as foolish anachronisms too stupid and weak to trust or too blind to see they are committing political suicide.

But the era of The Era-of -Big-Government-Being-Over might actually be over. At least, that's what we are going to find out ... because the upcoming off-year elections are going to be a huge political experiment. Putting gerrymandering and voting restrictions aside (which, I grant you, is a BIG aside), we are going to find out if American voters ... in particular, the moderates and independents who were attracted to Biden's "I'm the opposite of Trump" appeal ... are willing to reward Biden for delivering on his promise to work with Republicans and if those voters are also willing to prioritize policy over pugilism.

That's what the GOP will be selling ... political combat on culture and race and crime and immigration. And why not? That approach has worked for fifty years and, particularly after the Supply Siders took over, it's been an intoxicating cocktail to voters seeking someone to blame for their declining standard of living. Trump wasn't the first bartender, after all. And that fifty year-long drunken binge kept the FDR political coalition divided and conquered as it stumbled around the political landscape looking to brawl with its one-time partners.

Re-constructing that coalition by re-uniting working class White voters with the rest of the Democratic coalition would spell electoral disaster for the GOP. It's why they work so hard to paint Demand Side economics as "socialism," when, ironically enough, Keynes's idea was to save capitalism from itself.

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