"Nothing Would Fundamentally Change"
W.J. Astore
Joe Biden is keeping one campaign promise: that nothing would fundamentally change in his administration. So, for example, Americans are not getting single-payer (and much more affordable) health care for all. (Biden, one must admit, promised nothing more than Obamacare with perhaps more funding for those struggling to afford it.) American workers are not getting a $15 minimum wage, despite Biden's (broken) promise of supporting the same. And Biden is not cutting defense spending -- at all. Instead, the Pentagon budget is to be "flatlined" at the near-record high levels reached under the Trump administration. So much for forcing the military to cut wonky wasteful weapons. It's business as usual at the Pentagon, with an emphasis on business and profit at the expense of the American taxpayer.
What is to be done? Many Democrats argue that Joe Biden has to be the sensible centrist, constrained as he allegedly is by conservative Democrats like Joe Manchin. But of course Joe Biden himself is a conservative pro-business president who sees Manchin as a sympathetic senator and supporter. Meanwhile, Republicans, still in thrall to Trump, refuse to play along with bipartisan malarkey, except when it comes to maintaining massive military budgets. Again, under these conditions, nothing will fundamentally change.
The American people want affordable health care and support a single-payer system run by the federal government. They also support a $15 minimum wage for full-time workers. They're getting neither. And this is by design. Not to rehash the 2020 Democratic primaries, but Joe Biden didn't win by appealing to voters; he won because party heavyweights like Obama threw their support to him. Biden didn't win the nomination; it was handed to him. Because the owners and donors know Joe, and they know Joe hasn't a liberal bone in his body, let alone a progressive one. The same is true of Kamala Harris, his vice president, a thoroughly conventional and predictable conservative.
As my Uncle Gino would have said, Biden and Harris are spineless jellyfish. (No offense to jellyfish.) They float around in the swamp of DC assuming any shape and form they need to take to conform to the pressures and interests around them. And their lack of spine leaves open the possibility of Trump or some other wannabe demagogue emerging in 2024. Because more than a few people prefer an incompetent ass like Trump to insincere hacks like Biden and Harris, if only because Trump shows some spine, even if his policies are often even worse for America than those of the spineless Democrats.
Democracy, real democracy, isn't about a "choice" between two parties, each of which refuses to listen to workers or to serve the interests of sanity and peace. Americans need real choice, including a party that would truly fight for health care for all, truly fight for a $15 minimum wage, and truly fight for peace and against colossal military spending. Only then will America have a semblance of real democracy. Right now, we have a sham democracy, a sham that is well on its way to leaving most of America in shambles.