Whether he wants it or not, his election will move the country quite far to the left.
Whether he wants it or not, his election will move the country quite far to the left.
I f you have decided that another four years of Donald Trump would be intolerable, and the prospect of four more years of the dysfunctional Trump circus in the White House fills you with dread, fine. But approach the prospects of a Joe Biden presidency with clear eyes and no illusions. Electing Biden would move the country pretty dramatically to the left in all but the most optimistic scenarios.
The first question is how much of a Joe Biden presidency we get. The former vice president turns 78 shortly after the election. Hopefully, he lives to be 100 and is capable of handling the duties of the presidency every day that he is in office. But there is no way to get around the concerns about Biden’s age and health. Biden’s campaign schedule is particularly light, even accounting for his lead and the complications of the coronavirus pandemic. A recent poll of swing-state voters found 52 percent think Biden is not mentally fit to be president. The same poll of the same sample found Biden led Trump 49 percent to 45 percent — meaning some voters think he is mentally unfit and intend to vote for him anyway. A vote for Biden may well turn out to be a vote for Kamala Harris to assume the office of the presidency sometime in the next four years.
If you think of yourself as being on the right and can’t abide another four years of Trump, you have to be pulling out all the stops for the continuation of a Republican-controlled Senate, and hope for victories by Cory Gardner, Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Martha McSally, David Purdue, Joni Ernst, Steve Daines, Kelly Loeffler, Roger Marshall, Tommy Tuberville, and other key state GOP candidates in November.
Democrats have not controlled the House, the Senate, and the presidency since January 2011. There is a decade’s worth of pent-up legislative ambitions among liberals and progressives. A President Biden and a Democrat-controlled Senate will create a two-year window for the Left to push through every bill they possibly can before the midterm elections.
And note that if Biden wins the presidency, Democrats just need to pick up three more seats, as Vice President Kamala Harris would be breaking any ties. A Democratic Senate is certain to see a serious push to wipe away the filibuster entirely. Chuck Schumer is open to the move. Barack Obama called for the move at John Lewis’s funeral. Biden’s past opposition to eliminating the filibuster is immaterial — the president doesn’t control the rules of the Senate — and when asked about eliminating the filibuster, Biden told the New York Times in July, “I think you’re going to just have to take a look at it.”
A handful of Democratic senators are currently openly opposed — Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and Jon Tester of Montana — but most Democratic senators are indicating they could support eliminating it, depending upon circumstances, such as Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware is a useful measuring stick — once an ardent opponent of eliminating the filibuster, he’s now not ruling that move out.
Democratic senators such as Manchin, Sinema, and Tester will come under enormous pressure from their colleagues, liberal interest groups, and some corners of the Biden administration, whether or not Biden himself ends up endorsing the move. It’s one thing to oppose ending the filibuster when the idea is theoretical; it’s another when you and perhaps one or two colleagues are the holdouts protecting the last obstacle to the Biden agenda.
Assuming Democrats keep control of the House — Republicans would need to pick up 20 seats, a tall order — and the Democrats control the Senate, a lot of sweeping, left-leaning legislation would be headed to the president’s desk. The Green New Deal. Taxpayer funding for late-term abortions. A shift away from school choice and charter schools. Certainly, an end to fracking on public lands, and perhaps a more sweeping set of restrictions, if not an outright nationwide ban.
A Biden presidency and a Democratic Congress would undoubtedly enact tax hikes of some sort. Biden keeps insisting he won’t raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000, but if Congress sends him a tax bill that raises taxes on incomes lower than that, would he veto that legislation? Unlikely. Bill Clinton campaigned on a middle-class tax cut and then raised income taxes, Medicare taxes, corporate taxes, the gasoline tax, Social Security benefits taxes, and the alternative minimum tax, and limited the use of itemized deductions. Barack Obama promised a middle-class tax cut and went on to raise taxes on tobacco products, medical devices, indoor tanning services, also imposing a new surtax on investment income, the individual-mandate tax, the tax on “Cadillac” health-care plans, and a new tax on charitable hospitals, health-insurance companies, and certain biofuels. Democratic presidents almost inevitably end up relenting on some tax increases that Congress sends to them.
The Democratic Congress and the Biden White House will have a similar dynamic on hot-button issues such as guns and immigration. A President Biden might say he wants a unifying, bipartisan bill, but the consequential question will be how much he’s willing to say “no” to his own party. Biden told Beto O’Rourke during his endorsement ceremony, “You’re going to take care of the gun problem with me. You’re going to be the one who leads this effort” — which certainly suggests Biden has no serious qualms about gun confiscation.
Biden has pledged to expand asylum claims and restore the “catch and release” system during reviews of asylum claims, to “create a roadmap to citizenship for the nearly 11 million people who have been living in and strengthening our country for years,” reinstate DACA, and cease all construction of border fencing — and the considerable authority of the president in immigration matters means he will not need approval from Congress. It is likely that migrants in Mexico and Central America would perceive Biden’s moves as a de facto amnesty policy.
If Biden is elected, you will see a serious push for statehood for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. Biden supports both. Biden does not support expanding the size of the Supreme Court or eliminating the Electoral College, but many members of his party do, and it is fair to wonder how much political capital Biden will want to spend in fights against his own party.
It is safe to assume that if Biden is elected, Ruth Bader Ginsburg will retire and possibly Stephen Breyer as well. Clarence Thomas turned 72 this year. Samuel Alito turned 70 this year. President Trump and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell have done much to shape the federal judiciary over the past four years, but the Biden administration would begin its own efforts to promote young, bright judges who believe in an ever-changing “living Constitution.” A Republican-controlled Senate would force the Biden administration to compromise; in a Democratic-controlled Senate, it would be full speed ahead.
We have a few vague ideas about what a Biden cabinet would look like. Susan Rice would likely be back in some foreign-policy post, perhaps secretary of state or secretary of defense — meaning that much of the Obama foreign policy, particularly the Iran deal and tougher line with Israel, would be back. Elizabeth Warren is reportedly in the running for Treasury secretary, a scenario described as “Wall Street’s nightmare” that would almost certainly guarantee continued hostility between the new administration and the business community. Sally Yates is a strong possibility to be Biden’s attorney general — and she may well follow the recommendation of Kamala Harris to pursue criminal charges against Donald Trump for obstruction of justice after he leaves office.
Finally, as the Trump administration has largely ignored the deficit and the debt for the past four years, Democrats have concluded that they won’t need to worry about them, either. But America is running out of “later” when it comes to entitlement programs. The Congressional Budget Office released a report projecting that Medicare’s federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, which helps pay for Medicare beneficiaries’ hospital bills, will be insolvent by fiscal year 2024 — two years earlier than past projections, because of how the pandemic is spending money from the trust fund faster. The Bipartisan Policy Center calculates that if the current spike in unemployment doesn’t come down quickly, the Social Security Disability Insurance trust fund’s reserves could be depleted by 2024 as well.
Joe Biden may not be on the left wing of his party, but Biden’s election would strengthen and galvanize the left wing of his party and give them some control over some levers of real power in the federal government. Biden may well wish to bring America “a return to normalcy” but many of his allies don’t want normalcy. The former vice president is ideologically, temperamentally, and politically not inclined to be a bulwark against his party’s left wing and those who openly embrace an overhaul of American life more in line with the socialism envisioned by Karl Marx. A President Biden might be a speed bump if conservatives are lucky.
Maybe a Republican Senate will be able to apply the brakes to the Biden’s worst proposals. The traditional rebuke to a president in the midterm elections — seen in 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018 — might further limit Biden and Harris’s ability to move federal policy to the left. But even in these relatively optimistic scenarios, the next time a Republican is running for the White House in 2024, the U.S. will have moved considerably to the left, in matters of economics, taxes, regulation, national security and foreign policy, immigration, and social issues — and there’s a not-so-small chance that a President Kamala Harris will be running for a full term of her own.