As Afghanistan predictably slips out of the headlines, Biden is pivoting to a series of domestic challenges, including the delta variant; the infrastructure bill and reconciliation package; severe weather episodes worsened by climate change; and a Republican Party bent on undermining fundamental rights (e.g. voting, access to abortions) and democracy itself.
Biden has generally been loath to sharpen attacks on Republicans while he still struggles to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill. However, his reticence simply gives the GOP dominance of the airwaves and social media without extracting any measurable goodwill from them. Without an aggressive White House message, Democrats — who do not enjoy a captive media akin to the right-wing echo chamber — tend to fall into infighting and hand-wringing.
On a range of issues, Biden has an opportunity to convey just how greatly GOP extremism and irrationality threaten the lives, prosperity and political rights of Americans. He would be foolish not to take advantage of the moment.
He can start with the pandemic. Biden plans to lay out a six-point plan Thursday for curtailing the spread of the deadly delta variant. He would do well to explain why we are dealing with a revival of the coronavirus. He might even quote West Virginia’s Republican Gov. Jim Justice, who scolded anti-vaccine and anti-mask gadflies: “For God’s sakes a-livin’, how difficult is this to understand?” The coronavirus uptick did not just “happen.”
We face a resurgence because the MAGA crowd actively undermined the vaccine rollout, flouted health-care advisories and tried to quash mask requirements. Here Biden might cite Leon County Circuit Court Judge John C. Cooper’s decision on Wednesday allowing Florida schools to enforce mask mandates despite Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s extraordinary efforts to endanger children. "We’re not in normal times — we’re in a pandemic,” Cooper said. “We have children who can’t be protected by a vaccination.”
In sum, Biden needs to identify why we have a pandemic of the unvaccinated: We also have a pandemic of destructive, anti-science MAGA politicians and their handmaidens in right-wing media.
It would also serve Biden to reset the debate over the infrastructure and reconciliation bills. Neither has passed yet, because Republicans en masse insist that big corporations should continue to pay little or no taxes, oppose reducing prescription drug costs and expanding Medicare coverage (which both garner around 60 percent or more support in polling), and resist other popular programs such as free community college and subsidized child care.
On this front, Biden can attack their phony populism just by ripping from the headlines. “The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans are the nation’s most egregious tax evaders, failing to pay as much as $163 billion in owed taxes per year, according to a Treasury Department report,” the New York Times reported Wednesday.
Biden needs to remind voters that this grievously unfair system is what Republicans want. He has allowed the debate to descend into a battle of top-line numbers ($1 trillion vs. $3.5 trillion for the reconciliation deal) rather than a debate about values and where we should direct our tax dollars. Biden would be smart to make clear this is a stark case between a party that favors the rich and its donors and one that actually tries to aid the working and middle classes. With such unappealing positions, Republicans should be on defense — but they will not be put there unless Biden goes for the jugular.
Finally, Biden has yet to launch a full-throated attack on Republicans, including their House leadership, for pitting Americans against one another, speaking fondly about political violence, and embracing anti-democratic tactics such as voter suppression and the refusal to investigate Jan. 6.
This week provides yet another example. Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott responded to the avalanche of criticism over his party’s abortion bounty bill with a disgustingly insensitive comment about victims of rape who cannot get access to abortion services within the short window set by the new law; according to Abbott, he’ll just “eliminate” rape. Biden needs to hold him and Texas lawmakers up as the poster boys for a party fostering distrust, vigilantism and plain cruelty. He should not shy away from calling out their nutty “policy” ideas and denouncing their descent into authoritarianism.
It is well and good for a president to be high-minded. But when his opponents’ lies and hateful rhetoric threaten to occupy the entire information environment, he must respond. No one else has Biden’s bully pulpit, and allowing it to fall into disuse will leave Democrats perpetually on defense.
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