I get it. There are genuine reasons for liberals to be afraid that Biden is going to throw too many bones to the Republicans and let the MAGA caucus chop down even more of our government services. In 2011, we really did come disastrously close to the passage of the so-called "Grand Bargain" that would have sold out seniors and the poor through draconian cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in exchange for tax increases that would have served no other purpose than to shave off a couple of digits in the national debt. Biden was a part of that process, and the fears are understandable. Although it was a very different time, Biden does have a history of leaning a bit too far to the right on welfare. In 1996, back when he actually had a bald spot on his head, Biden voted to establish strict work requirements for food stamps; and in 2012, he offered Republicans such an unpalatable series of concessions that Harry Reid literally threw the bill into his fireplace and barred Biden from future negotiations.
But the Joe Biden of 2023 is not the Joe Biden of the Obama years, and almost unrecognizable from who he was in the 1990s. I suspect that Biden is up to something that hasn't met the eye of the press.
It's All About the Optics - and the Press
In this type of political battle, especially one that takes place in an off-year, the way that the political press covers the story can make or break a party's political leverage. While people like you and me pay close attention to politics, most voters are simply not tuned in at the moment, which means that their perception of this political fight will be determined by what they see on the television, the headlines, and the 3 paragraph twitter posts. Most voters simply do not have the time to research the true meaning of the debt ceiling. Who can blame them? Who actually wants to try and be a well-informed citizen? Losers like us, I guess. In reality, the only voters who will pay attention to the details are voters who have long decided who they are voting for a long, long time ago. The people who read anywhere past paragraph 1 of another intellectually deficient David Brooks Op-Ed are not still waiting to pick sides after 8 years of this circus. For voters without those crucial details, the narratives created by the headlines and the media spin are paramount to driving public opinion.
For the first four months of this fight, Democrats had the upper hand in the fight because the 5-seat Republican majority was in a state of complete disarray. Even without the weight of countless headlines about their team mascot, George Santos, and McCarthy's 15-vote embarrassment, Republicans had no idea what the hell they wanted. They all agreed that they wanted to force cuts to the budget by holding the debt ceiling hostage, but they didn't know what they wanted to cut. If it couldn't get worse, they got rolled by an 80-year old in the State of the Union speech when President Biden single-handedly negotiated away cuts to Medicare and Social Security by making republicans stand up in support of entitlements.
Any person with a brain knows how a hostage situation works. It doesn't require a degree in physics to figure this stuff out. There are three basic rules:
1. Take a hostage.
2. Make a clear set of demands that will result in the release of said hostage.
3. Threaten to kill said hostage if your demands are not met.
The problem for Republicans in the opening act of this fight, other than the fact that the average IQ of a Republican member of Congress is on par with that of Biff from Back to the Future, was that they had never quite figured out Rule 2. They had taken the hostage, the economy, and threatened to kill it, by defaulting, but they had no demands. Thus, the resulting media narrative was that republicans were threatening default and had no real plan. To the average viewer, the republicans were nakedly displaying their insanity to the American people, and had no substance to counteract their craziness.
The Republican Bill
Democrats' strategic advantage all but vanished when Republicans managed to pass, by only ONE vote, their budget plan, named in Orwellian fashion - the Limit, Save, and Grow Act. The bill is a Republican wet dream of economic delusion, cutting discretionary federal spending in areas that are helping our economy recover from the COVID pandemic, and forcing poor families and disabled Americans into draconian work requirements for basic welfare like Medicaid.
The Republicans' played a very dirty trick with this bill. The problem with the Limit, Save, and Grow Act is that it doesn't actually specify which government programs it would cut. And there's a reason for this: Polls consistently show that a narrow majority of Americans believe that the government is spending too much money. Every time a Republican politician stands up at a podium and vaguely advocates reining in our so-called "out of control" spending, it resonates with an unfortunately large number of Americans. But any time those same voters are asked whether they believe the government should cut a SPECIFIC program, voters oppose them, on just about every single program. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Defense (ugh), Veterans, Education, Infrastructure, you name it. So if that same republican were to stand up and say "We must rein in government spending on...Social Security," it would be the political equivalent of taking a bottle of rubbing alcohol, emptying the whole bottle on your head, and proceeding to stick your head into the fireplace.
If the press actually did its job, they would be calling out the Republican house for this absolute con-job. Republicans cannot claim that "we raised the debt ceiling, and Democrats haven't" when your bill couldn't even specify which programs you want to destroy. But the media, in its futile quest for "neutrality," has been acting like this fight is an equal-sided negotiation.
So now, the media presents the fight like this: Republicans passed their bill, they raised the debt ceiling (in reality, all they did was suspend it until around March 2024), and now it's Democrats' responsibility to negotiate. This narrative is simply delusional. Republicans control one-third of elected government, and yes, they were elected by a narrow majority of the American public in the 2022 midterm elections. The 222 republicans in the House do represent an American public that chose them to solve real problems that concern them: The cost of living, high inflation, and rising wealth inequality. But that doesn't mean they have the right to everything they want, and threaten to blow up the world economy if they don't get it. Imagine if after the 2018 midterms, when Democrats controlled one-third of elected government, they suddenly demanded that Donald Trump repeal his 2017 tax cut, or else they would threaten to blow up the world economy. The media would lose its MIND. The media's double standard for Republican insanity is jarring, and it really shows how they will cater to any conservative demand whenever they feel their ratings are threatened by Americans leaving their show for being too "liberal." It's ridiculous.
Biden Has To Woo the Media
If Biden wants the media to flip back to his side, unfortunately, it can't come from the "no negotiations" stance. While the White House is on the correct side of the moral argument that the debt ceiling should not be a political football to be tossed around like a live grenade, CNN will never buy it. CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, all have this insatiable desire for the "big deal." They stand from their ivory towers and insult the so-called "hyper-partisanship in Washington" and blame "both sides" for not being able to come together. These media outlets like CNN essentially cater to the interests of hyper-centrists who desire nothing other than ratings, attention, and to be constantly pampered with a feeling of being holier-than-thou. Even when one side of this fight, the republicans, are completely delusional and out-of-control, the media will never pick this obvious fact up by themselves. We have to show it and tell it to their faces.
If Biden can throw a couple of bones to the Republicans, like he just did recently with his offers of work requirements and permit reform, the media will laud him for coming to the negotiating table. And then the media will turn to the Republicans and demand them to come to the table. Suddenly, CNN won't be asking "Why is Joe Biden refusing to negotiate?" Instead, they will be asking, "Why are Republicans not willing to strike a deal with Biden?" But here's the problem for McCarthy: Biden's deal isn't good enough for the members of the insane asylum within his caucus. He can only afford to lose five members of the House republicans, or else his career is literally over. McCarthy might be the figurehead showing up to the meetings at the White House and taking all the phone calls, but he is completely owned by people like MTG and Boebert. In addition, Biden's deal is probably toxic to about half of the Senate Democratic caucus, which means the bill won't even make its way through the Senate. But the media will be pressuring McCarthy to cut the deal.
Eventually, I would predict within a week of the deadline, the right-wing caucus will settle on a counter-offer for Biden, and they will immediately demand that McCarthy take it to the White House. The offer will, of course, have provisions that are completely toxic to Democrats, and more importantly, toxic with the vast majority of American voters. One example of a provision that Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert might add would be Medicaid work requirements and cuts to Meals-on-Wheels. Oh yeah. Really popular one...
Invoking the 14th
When the republicans make their insane counter-offer, that will give Biden the perfect political space to invoke the 14th amendment. He can tell the media, "Look, I gave republicans some of things they wanted. I offered food stamp work requirements, permitting reform, and deficit reduction. But no. They were too insane that they were willing to crash the world economy if I didn't meet their demands. So I have no choice to invoke the 14th amendment." The media will have a much easier time accepting a choice by President Biden to essentially bypass all of Congress if the choice was done after all other options had failed.
Look, maybe Biden really is about to cave. I seriously hope he doesn't, because I don't believe that any statistically significant number of voters in 2024 will suddenly vote for Trump because Biden invoked a constitutional amendment to stave off economic armageddon. Hell, Trump literally declared a national emergency to build a wall. Nobody changed their mind about Trump because of that. Voters are not going to care, or much less even remember Biden invoking the 14th amendment. Sure, it'll create a stir in the already-not-watched news media. They'll call it a "constitutional crisis." They'll say it's an "unprecedented power grab." Oh, the horror. CNN will have constitutional experts from the Clinton administration and the Bush administration debating each other over this "grave constitutional question." It'll be like Crossfire all over again, except that it will have the same educational value as stimulating one's brain cells with spray paint. And then when people turn off the television, everybody will forget it all happened. But I can guarantee that lower-income voters will have a hard time showing up to vote for Biden again if he makes it harder for their unemployed grandmother, or a single mother to have food stamps because they have to work 20 hours a week. Wanna win those rural voters in North Carolina this time, Joe? Don't cut food stamps.
But I don't think Biden is about to cave. Everyone in the political world has underestimated the power of Joe Biden to pull himself out the worst situations imaginable for a human being in politics. And he does it. Time and time again. I think this ploy of talking about negotiations on food stamps is a ploy to bring the media back to his side, so that he can later invoke the 14th amendment.
Biden is playing 4-D chess, and McCarthy is playing kiddie checkers.
Comments
Post a Comment