The Optimistic View of a Joe Biden Presidency
Seeing Past The Hyperbole
There exists a line of thinking among the right wing commentariat that suggests Joe Biden will commence a crackdown on political dissidents the likes of which has never been seen in America. Glenn Greenwald went so far as to claim that the Biden Administration, with the help of a Democrat-controlled legislative branch, will launch a new “War on Terror” aimed at Republicans. Mike Cernovich advised his readers to “Brace for another PATRIOT ACT. On steroids.”, adding that “Conservatives are going to be treated like Muslims were post-9/11. There’s a karmic irony to this.”
Democrats have provided ample reason for conservatives to believe that they will be targeted under a Biden Administration. Tech companies have engaged in a draconian crackdown against conservatives, including the President himself. Chase Bank began unceremoniously banning high profile Republican activists from using their banking services in early 2019. Dozens of reports have shown instances of Republicans losing their jobs for simply attending President Trump’s speech on January 6th.
Political pundits have claimed that the Biden Administration will enter office with absolutely no opposition from the House, Senate or media. The Biden agenda will however face serious resistance from conservative lawfair groups who will sue to stop every significant policy hatched by Biden. Thanks to President Trump’s efforts to reshape the judiciary, those conservative lawsuits will likely succeed in hamstringing Biden’s agenda.
There is also the matter of believing that Biden will be able to set his Presidential agenda at all. The COVID-19 pandemic which he used so effectively, with the help of the media, to hammer President Trump, will become his cross to bear very quickly after he is sworn-in as President. During the campaign, Biden was allowed to live purely in the world of the hypothetical as he hammered Trump’s response to the pandemic, always saying what he would do, but never being in a position to actually take any action. When Biden has a chance to implement his COVID-19 response, which is virtually indistinguishable from that of liberal California’s course action, the American people will be given their first chance to evaluate Biden’s actions in the retrospective, rather than the purely hypothetical. If Biden’s results are anything like that of Gavin Newsom’s, the public will be left unimpressed.
Then there is the issue of the economy. In some ways, President Trump is leaving Biden with a decent American economy. Household incomes surged under Trump’s presidency to their highest levels of all time, rising for the first time since the late 1990’s and the stock market is at an all-time high. President Trump passed monumental spending bills which have injected $8 Trillion into the economy over the past 12 months and he has managed to keep unemployment and underemployment rates under 25% despite draconian shutdowns wrought by Democrat governors during the pandemic.
In other ways, Biden is inheriting a deeply troubled economy. Countless businesses shut down during the pandemic will not re-open. The commercial mortgage backed securities market is being entirely propped up by specialized grants, loans and purchasing programs from the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Perhaps most presciently, as many of 40 million evictions are pending against American renters, only prevented by a national moratorium which expires in a few weeks.
To prevent a global economic depression of cataclysmic proportions, the Biden Administration will invariably be forced to hand out trillions of dollars to Wall Street. These actions will be ardently opposed for the far-left wing of the Democrat Party. Biden will need to pursue a strategy to gut the far-left wing within his own party in order to prevent utter economic ruin. That strategy will likely be developed and carried out by Biden confidante and former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
Biden will also face a sleuth of tests from foreign adversaries which will come early and often in his Presidency. North Korea has already announced that they are moving full speed ahead in the area of nuclear development, Iran is preparing challenges to free navigation in the Persian Gulf and Russia and China are sure to go after their interests in Eastern Europe and the South China Sea respectively.
The question is not whether the Democrats would like to take torturous measures against political dissidents. Adam Schiff is pushing for the passage of H.R.4192, the “Confronting the Threat of Domestic Terrorism Act”, in the wake of the events of January 6th at the US Capitol. This bill represents measures against right wing political dissidents along the lines of the Patriot Act which are so authoritarian that they’ve even been opposed by the ACLU, which almost never rebukes Democrat policies.
Indeed, Biden might want to pursue retribution against Trump Supporters, but the bigger question is whether he’ll be able to find the time. With days of reckoning coming in the areas of pandemic response, economic crisis and foreign policy, the Biden Administration will be afforded minimal latitude to set its own political course. Biden won’t set an agenda, he’ll inherit one.