BETTIN' ON BIDEN

"You are a lost generation."

In the original French: "Vous etes une generation perdue", attributed to Gertrude Stein during the inter-war years, who got it from an auto-mechanic in Lyon, France.  It was then popularized by Ernest Hemingway, who made it the epigraph in 1926 to The Sun Also Rises.

The auto-mechanic was not trying to be profound.  He was just frustrated that a young employee wasn't fixing Stein's car fast enough. 

Not enough focus.  

When Stein returned to Paris, however, she had something deeper in mind. The carnage of World War I had both destroyed a young generation and disillusioned its survivors.  Old values like patriotism or courage seemed pointless because they had been. Ennui took over, an aimlessness born of the notion that nothing really mattered, and decadence often followed.  It's easy to live in a bottle, or a loveless hook-up, when there is no future.  

The problem was that, Stein's young mechanic and passel of young writers having been sidelined by psychological torpor, the fools who created the initial crisis lived on, free to create the next one. 

Which they did.

You do not get Hitler's fascism without the draconian peace imposed under the Versailles Treaty that ended World War I.  The treaty itself was never accepted by Germans, who thought the "war guilt clause" an utterly unfair re-writing of history and for whom the treaty's required reparation payments were among the principal causes of the hyper-inflation in the 1920s that destroyed what little was left of the German economy and helped pave the way to Nazism. 

French conservatives, however, were hell-bent on insuring against the re-emergence of a powerful Germany, and American conservatives were hell-bent on killing the League of Nations, where diplomatic efforts backed by America might have empowered the more progressive views of Keynes and others who knew that austerity for Germany (or anyone else for that matter) could only end badly.

In the wake of the war, each nation's old guard -- Clemenceau in France and Robert LaFollette in the United States -- soldiered on, having learned the wrong lesson in Clemenceau's case (that Germany could or should be returned to a pre-1871 dis-united and dis-empowered state) and having failed to learn the new one in LaFollette's (that the hard and frustrating work of diplomacy was the only path to peace in what would be an increasingly inter-dependent world).

Even the old guard in Britain soldiered on.  When he was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1924-1929, none other than the later-to-be acclaimed Winston Churchill insisted on yoking Britain to the gold standard of tight money that would ultimately help to unleash the Great Depression.

From this unhealthy stew of nostalgia for a past that could not exist and unwillingness to think anew either economically or politically, fascism was born.

America today is not in the same position as Europe in the inter-war years.

But there are disturbing parallels.

The first is that, as a matter of policy, there are no longer two political parties in America.  On policy, the Republican party has pretty much ceased to exist.  Although you hear occasional bursts of old complaints -- spending too high, deficit too large, border crisis -- the energy in the party is focused elsewhere.  In Congress, it is on preserving the filibuster and voting in block against any legislation proposed by the Democrats or the Biden administration. In the states, thirty of which have Republican controlled legislatures, it is on proposing laws (more than 250 at last count) that would restrict voting among Democratic constituencies.  

Toward that end, Georgia yesterday signed into law a measure reducing early voting from three weeks to one, banning mobile polling places, prohibiting third-parties from collecting absentee ballots, eliminating drop boxes outside early voting locations (and entirely in the four day period before election day), requiring driver’s license or equivalent identification (in lieu of matching signatures), reducing the number of Sundays for early voting, criminalizing the distribution of food or drinks by non-poll workers to those waiting on line to vote, cutting the period by which counties must certify their votes from ten to six days, reducing the period for runoff elections to four weeks, and requiring election workers to count the final vote in one sitting, however long.  

All of these measures disproportionately affect large counties, Democratic voters in those counties and large cities, and minority voters.  Some are ridiculous to the point of absurdity.  For example, one of the purported reasons for the changes was to ensure accuracy but at least two of them -- limiting the certification period and forcing counters to work all night -- make errors more, not less, likely.

As to minorities, "Pews to the Polls" has become a standard in black churches, where congregants were taken to the polls to vote after Sunday services; the days to do that have been reduced.   In majority non-white Fulton County, home to Atlanta, half of the 146,000 submitted ballots in 2020 were deposited in drop boxes. Throughout the state, wait times to vote were six minutes on average in precincts where 90% of the voters were white and 51 minutes in precincts where 90% of the voters were non-white.  In those non-white precincts, organizers often distributed free food and water and voting hours were extended to accommodate the long wait times.

The only provision removed from the legislation before it went to the Governor for his signature was a proposed ban on no-excuse absentee voting.  But that was done because absentee voting is used largely by those over the age of 65, and that group has been trending Republican.

Republican legislators claim the new statutes were needed to combat election fraud.  Though there is no evidence of such fraud on any widespread basis (and very little on even any basis), more than two-thirds of self-identified Republicans now think the 2020 Presidential election was stolen.  They think this, moreover, despite the fact that the claim has been rejected by both the courts which reviewed the election and the state officials -- including Republicans themselves -- who certified it.

The reason they do so is . . . 

Donald Trump.

Trump has been proclaiming and pushing the election fraud lie since the day he started running for the Presidency in 2015.  In the run-up to the 2016 election, he said he could lose only if there was fraud. After he won, he (falsely) claimed he lost the popular vote only because more than 3 million "illegals" voted.  That never happened.  In the run-up to the 2020 election, he recycled his claim that he could lose only by virtue of fraud.  And then when he lost, by seven million popular votes and 303-232 in the electoral college, he spent the entire period from Election to Inauguration Day claiming he had won.  On account of that lie, rioters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, delaying certification of the electoral college vote in Biden's favor, ransacking portions of the building (including the Speaker's offices), and resulting in five deaths.

Trump and the GOP legislators in thrall to his big lie are the closest America has come to actual fascism -- authoritarian diktat cloaked in a statutory garb that gives it faux legitimacy.  Though the party could have been rid of him once he lost, the fact that his lie has taken root within its base has frozen elected GOP officials throughout the country.  

Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy excoriated Trump on the evening of January 6 in the wake of the attack on the US Capitol, but neither of them was willing to impeach him. McCarthy has since visited and praised Trump, and McConnell has said he would again vote for him.  Their not-so-subtle about-faces were the product of fear that Trump's voters would beat them in primaries.  That fear, moreover, is rational.  All ten of the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after January 6, including Wyoming's Liz Cheney, now have Trumpist primary opponents in their next elections.  For the same reason, GOP state legislators are all-in on the vote fraud lie.

The GOP base did not get this way overnight.  

It did not wake up one morning in the last five or so months, or five or so years, and say "Voila.  It's election fraud causing us all our angst."  The lie took root for the same reason the lost generation led to Hitler.  They did not think they had much else to live for.  And the elites, including those in the Democratic Party, were not convincing them otherwise.  

I remember the '90s.  I ran for Congress twice then, once in 1992 as the Democratic Party nominee in New York's 19th Congressional district and two years later in the Democratic primary when the seat became open.  I lost both times and have one particularly searing memory of the '94 campaign. I ran as an unabashed New Deal Democrat. I believed Clinton needed to be the next FDR and the Democrats had to make life better for the falling-behind middle class.  I did not want "the era of big Government" to be over. Taking it all in, one of my opponents said "You're good on your feet but I'm not hearing any new ideas."

He was right.

I thought the old ideas would work just fine.

Fast forward to 2008.  After a near Depression, America elected Obama and his "audacity of hope", a mind-bending act of racial progress pregnant with unlimited apparent potential. Somewhere between Election and Inauguration Day, however, hope became less audacious.  It wasn't Barack Obama's fault. Ditto for Bill Clinton.  They both wanted to do big things. They both tried.  They were both stymied. 

By mid-term losses.

And the filibuster.

And the holy grail of bi-partisanship.

Meanwhile, the middle class, and especially those in ex-urban and rural areas removed from the computer-productivity growth taking hold in big cities and their suburbs, were either running in place or falling behind. Many if not most of them were one job loss or illness away from foreclosure or worse. And when worse arrived, opioids were not far behind.  

Poverty sucks.  So does forever falling behind.  And worrying about either for your kids sucks even more.  It's easy to get depressed.  I know very few who haven't (one is a cousin, and if his personality could be bottled and marketed, I'd patent and distribute it).  You look for answers.  And are tired enough to accept the bad ones.

So one Reagan, two Bushes, a Clinton, an Obama and a really bad Trump later, it's Joe Biden's time.  

Will it be better?  

Will Biden do what the others wouldn't or couldn't?  

Can he revitalize the middle and lance the fascist boil?

I'm betting on him.  

For two reasons.

One is psychological, the other political.

In the inter-war years of the 20th century, one politician stood out as different from all others.  That politician was Franklin Roosevelt.  In the 1920s, he was different for reasons that had nothing to do with politics. He was different because he was paralyzed, the victim of polio in 1921 at the age of 39. 

In the years that followed, he couldn't walk and could barely work.  The glide path to political power that his name and aristocratic upbringing had greased was suddenly closed.  But he willed himself -- catacombed in steel braces -- to stand up and then carry on, and in doing so, the dispossessed realized -- in the words of that famous worker crying years later as his funeral train passed by -- that he knew them even if they didn't know him.

That's Joe Biden's gift today.  

And accounts for his current purchase on the American soul.  

His father for a time was unemployed.  The family had to live with in laws and in crowded apartments. In the pre-financial aid era, he could only go to schools he could afford. His first wife and one year old daughter were killed in a car accident.  His oldest son died from cancer at 46.  Another is a recovering addict.  For thirty-six years, he commuted to work.  In 1988 he almost died from a brain aneurysm. Every time he is knocked down, he tries to get up.  And if you're down, he doesn't walk by, he picks you up.   

Not since Ronald Reagan has an American president so perfectly mirrored the current American psyche. The two Bushes were keepers of Reagan's flame, even as it sputtered and then burned out.  Clinton felt pain in an America where too many still did not.  Obama was a gift, proof that Jefferson's claims were not just empty rhetoric, and Trump was a tragedy, proof that hopelessness and fear can be turned into organized hate.

More than the others in their time, Biden is one of us in this time.  

He gets it because he's been there.

There literally is not one trial visited today upon America's struggling middle -- whether they are located on the middle of the economic ladder or in the middle of the country -- that he has not personally experienced one way or the other.

Unemployment, insecurity, illness, addiction, death and despair.

He’s seen it all.

So far, he has been pitch-perfect.  

His American Rescue Plan (ARP) has put money in pockets and Covid vaccines in arms. State and local governments will receive needed assistance to regain the revenue lost to the pandemic and schools will have the money to retrofit and re-open.  Obamacare will be enhanced and preserved. By all accounts, child poverty will be cut in half.  

70% of Americans support this.  

All of it.

In a world where, as he said yesterday, "politics is the art of the possible," infrastructure is the next agenda item to be then followed by voting rights.  The infrastructure bill -- which will have a "green" hue as the administration attempts to combat climate change -- is priced at $3 trillion and will have to be paid for in part with some high end and corporate tax increases, and voting rights will inevitably fail unless a Senate filibuster can be avoided (unlikely) or repealed (possible).  Without it, however, the GOP's voter suppression campaign will continue and succeed.  

At the border, humanity has been restored even as challenges remain, and abroad, China and Russia loom large.  The latter is an annoyance, a lifeless, commodified economy whose government consists of a corrupt oligarchy that poisons its opponents.  The former is a growing obstacle.  Both require allied efforts in a world where America cannot go it alone.  

China is a particular problem.  

Its version of capitalism is mercantile and whatever market freedom prevails within its borders will always be subservient to party loyalty.  This means that China will respect neither human rights nor intellectual property rights unless it has to.  This also means that, short of war, a unified western approach will be the only way to change Chinese behavior.  Trump's tariffs got China's attention and his trade czar, Robert Lighthizer, was delivering a consistent message.  But Trump's opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty and his go-it-alone approach with Europe made it impossible for him to apply long-term, non-tariff leverage or even close a short-term deal.  Biden will not be able to change this until our erstwhile allies are back on board. 

And that will take time.

If Biden succeeds domestically, he may get that time, avoiding the fate of lost mid-terms that plagued his predecessors.  If he doesn't, China will still be a problem. 

But not our biggest one.

FDR became president in 1932.  With his New Deal -- a pragmatic amalgam that regulated corrupt stock dealers, offered the aged some semblance of security, and created jobs -- America avoided both fascism and communism.  

In 2021, the challenges are different but as daunting.  

A brewing fascism exists within.  It was seeded by Trump and is now being institutionalized by GOP voter suppression. In the hinterlands, its supporters in the GOP base have grown weary of government that does not work for them.  ARP, however, does. So will a big infrastructure bill.  Together, they can represent real progress delivered to real people by the realist of guys.

That’s why I'm . . .

Bettin' on Biden.