Situation ‘Ripe’ for Biden but is that a good thing for people?
Biden is as conservative a democrat as one can be. There is no progressive policy he has backed, and he is honest about it.
‘Déjà vu!!!’… As soon as it came out of Neo’s mouth, it pushed the panic button on the group walking with him (‘The Matrix’ for the kids who haven’t seen it yet). A single word, gave the idea of the dangers that might follow. Situation in the US can also be described as ‘Déjà vu’, and the same feeling will haunt the millennials who have seen it before.
Different ghost same dream
An era, where oligarchs of this country are behind every problem of the masses, who would have thought, the next big one will come from nature this time. A once in a lifetime pandemic hit the world hard. Around 830 thousand people lost their lives worldwide and the US accounts for 20% of those deaths. People are locked in their houses. Schools, cities, and states are shut down. Millions lost their jobs; lost their health insurance in a pandemic and majority of small businesses are closed permanently. 30–40 million residents are fearing eviction coming September, fueling the homelessness problems furthermore. There is no other option, than to drain savings and retirements, to survive in this lockdown.
Why does this aftermath sound familiar? Why is there a feeling of healing wounds getting scratched again? Yes, millennials were just coming out of the same situation. Democratic party elites’ new heart-throb, George Bush and old sweetheart, Bill Clinton, partnered with Wall street oligarchs have shown the same days to the Americans before too.
The 2008 recession saw over 15 million people losing their jobs and more than 9 million families losing their homes. People lost $2.4 trillion of their retirement money in 2008–2009. Income equality grew such a way that 90% of the population had less than 50% of the wealth. Recession put the middle class into poverty and poor class into hunger.
Even systemic racism didn’t miss its mark. In 2008, black families lost more wealth and assets than white families. Unemployment rate for black men was more than double compared to white men. White families had a better recovery than black families.
In 2020, black workers find themselves tagged as heroes (without much power to show) as most of them are employed in minimum or low wage but “essential” jobs. It increases the risk of them getting infected and carrying that infection to their community and loved ones. Their neighborhoods lack the infrastructure and facilities, desperately needed for this kind of pandemic causing nearly double the death rate compared to their population share.
Best friend and neoliberal buddy — Obama
If Biden wins, he will take the office in a similar situation as Obama in 2009. Economy will be in doldrums. Pandemic lockdown might still be going on. Unemployment, hunger, and homelessness might be the new normal by the time Trump steps down. In the international arena, Trump might follow Bush’s footsteps of being labelled as one of the most unfavorable US presidents in recent history.
Obama, during his campaign, was touted as the progressive agent of change. He ran on universal healthcare, regulating the big banks, taxing the oil companies, increasing renewable energy jobs, reforming immigration, reversing the Bush tax cuts, banning Guantanamo bay, reducing the US war footprint from the world etc. His agenda would have given a serious run for the money to the Sanders platform.
But ‘campaign Obama’ turned out to be the figment of the imagination of president Obama. He did little to prosecute any bankers or create a robust regulation framework to keep banks in check. Banks have gone back to their risky investment strategies and have become bigger than what they were in 2008. The list of staff members sent by big banks executives to Obama, must have worked very well for them as they were reaping the benefits of the campaign investment they did in Obama. He also, like Bush, put bailout money in banks instead of giving it directly to the regular citizens who needed them badly.
Big banks, companies like General Motors got bailed out but people still lost their jobs and homes. Banks even created a permanent government bailout plan for themselves and people were kept in dark. In the meantime, Obama failed to protect citizens from losing their houses and properties.
He continued this path of being centrist politician favoring business and military friendly policies over public good. The US is now in 7 countries, doing war compared to 2 in 2008 and the military ran out of bombs in Iraq during the government of a Nobel peace prize winner. He never pulled the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Those wars are set to go in their 20s. Drone program championed by Obama killed civilians 90 percent of the time. He never shut down Guantanamo bay or punished the war criminals who ‘tortured some folks’.
On the homefront too, he backtracked on his promise of universal healthcare. A watered down “Affordable Care Act ‘’ AKA Obamacare still left 30 million people uninsured, 50 million people underinsured and an increase in premiums for people. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies have soared in profits and citizens are facing the worst opioid overdose crisis in recent times in many towns in the USA. He made Bush tax cuts permanent, deported more immigrants than any other president before him, built cages on borders for Trump to use them, backed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which was more corporate friendly then NAFTA, charged and punished more whistleblowers than any other government, continued the surveillance state. The list of disappointments (I still didn’t mention DAPL) can go on and on. People were so disillusioned that 50% of eligible voters stayed home in 2016 and a reality TV host with an objectionable leaked audio tapes and multiple bankruptcy records, came in power.
Towards the end of his presidency Obama admitted that his policy implementation was of the 80s moderate republican. The façade of “the progressive agent of change” was officially over.
The conservative case of Joe Biden
Old uncle Joe is not looking to promise people with high hopes. His only pitch seems to be ‘let’s go back to normal’. ‘Trump bad’, get scared and vote for me. Let me give you a symbolic gesture of nominating african-american woman for VP with a shady record as an Attorney General. Joe doesn’t seem to find any interest to invigorate any of the progressive voters. Rather he seems to ignore them. He has not offered a single policy that will entice left leaning voters. Instead, he has rejected proposals like Medicare for all, Green New deal and getting money out of politics. He doesn’t want to defund the police. He has conveyed his loyalty to his donors by telling them that nothing will fundamentally change.
It backs his history. He has offered to prostitute himself to the donors. He was known as democratic senator of MBNA for the longest of times. He has tried to defund programs like social security multiple times. He has written the Crime Bill, which resulted in getting black people behind the bars with the famous 3 strike policy, affecting that community deeply. He doesn’t regret that decision neither does he accept the proposal to legalize marijuana. He was hand in hand with Clinton for NAFTA and was also backing TPP with Obama.
Biden is as conservative a democrat as one can be. There is no progressive policy he has backed, and he is honest about it.
Trump might lose to Biden, then what?
Obama became president of a struggling country. Biden might as well have the same predicament to answer to. Obama greeted Bush with a goodbye and Joe might do the same to Trump. Biden has vowed to follow the footsteps of Obama and come back to normalcy that everybody who is doing well with jobs and money, was comfortable with. During the Obama years, the poor class of the country still suffered. Their voices were still not heard. They came back to the job market with less paying jobs and then had to find a second or in many cases a third job to get through the month. Obama’s politics ended with Trump’s election. There is every possibility that Biden’s presidency might end up with a smarter version of Trump. Citizens should know, no matter which of the 2 big parties come into power, oligarchs of this country do not let it affect them. Corporates call their representatives in the Congress and the Senate and order whatever they want. Write and pass whichever policy they want. Neo — liberal and conservative Déjà vu has always followed by the troubling times for everyone in the bottom 99 percent.
Originally Published in Medium on September 2nd 2020