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(Thread) Can Biden be "pushed to the left"?
The boringly accurate answer is "to some extent, in some areas, depending on what you mean."
But I think the glass-half-full way of stating these facts is both misleading and strategically unhelpful.
But I think the glass-half-full way of stating these facts is both misleading and strategically unhelpful.
It's misleading b/c it gives the impression that the left can accomplish (or even half-accomplish) it's most important near-future social democratic, ecological, and anti-imperialist goals *through* getting mainstream Dems like Biden to come on board (or even half come on board).
We just can't.
"To be clear," as centrist Dems are fond of starting these sentences, the Biden Administration isn't shaping up to be purely a rerun of the Obama Administration.
The unprecedented public health crisis and the resulting economic crisis has loosened the grip of deficit hawkery across the political spectrum. You can see that even in the *Republican* positions in budget negotiations.
The emergence of a small but not insignificant Bernie/Squad wing of the Democratic Party means that keeping everyone managed and not too mutinous requires throwing the occasional bone. And on the FP front the same war fatigue that helped bring us Trump has some impact on Biden.
All of those factors have combined to result in better than expected decisions and appointments in some areas. Great! But here are some things you'll never get from a Biden Administration:
Flipping on M4A--or even making a serious effort to create a public option. Ending the drone war. A real mobilization on the massive level that we'd need to rapidly transition to a green infrastructure to head off disaster. Meaningfully rolling back mass incarceration.
Flipping on tuition-free higher ed--or even making a serious effort to implement his campaign promise on two-year colleges. Anything even approaching a retreat from the "special relationship" with Israel. The kind of massive jobs program we'd need for a just climate transition.
Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.
This isn't a "purist" wish list. I'm not talking about, like, workers' control of the means of production here (even though that goal is at the heart of my politics). I'm talking about what used to be called the left's "minimum program."
The only possible path to achieving these things is defeating centrists in a whole ton of elections (and building a powerful enough labor and grassroots activist movement to overcome inevitable resistance from the top of society).
So the whole approach of rhetorically focusing on "pushing Biden to the left," celebrating and playing up small concessions in a way that misleadingly frames them as a down payment on achieving these goals, is profoundly unhelpful.
I know some people who I respect think that my preferred approach of playing up the Biden Administration's evils and declining to use the language of "pushing him to the left" is just defeatism for the sake of defeatism or trying to be hipsterishly above it all or something.
I don't really expect this threat to convince anyone who feels that way. But this, for the record, is *why* I disagree.
If the path to getting what we want is *defeating* these guys, not pressuring them (and btw I disagree with both the nice-lobbying and the "hardball" versions of the pressure strategy), the glass-half-empty rhetorical strategy is both more accurate and more helpful.
