Rather than debate which should take precedence, Democrats must understand that their political success depends both on delivering widespread economic prosperity and defending our democratic system against the frightful authoritarian nationalism that has replaced “conservatism” as the Republican Party’s ideology.
Biden ran on quelling the pandemic, restoring the economy and “building back better” — that is, helping the working and middle classes by aligning tax and spending policies with the needs of the non-rich (e.g., the child tax credit, subsidized child care, free community college, paid sick leave, promotion of blue-collar jobs). Despite the anxiety-producing blip in inflation, the delta variant scourge and Republican obstruction, Biden is delivering on those promises to an extent few thought possible.
Last week’s job numbers were a critical reaffirmation that his agenda is helping to jump-start the economy. Biden seized on the impressive gains to underscore that message: “We learned that the economy created 943,000 new jobs in July — 943,000. And the unemployment rate fell by a half a percent to 5.4 percent,” he said Friday. “Now, while our economy is far from complete and while we have — doubtlessly we’ll have ups and downs along the way as we continue to battle the delta surge of covid, what is indisputable now is this: The Biden plan is working, the Biden plan produces results, and the Biden plan is moving the country forward.” Notice how many times “Biden” is linked to a strong economy.
Just as the disgraced former president tried to use the economy (which crashed and burned by the end of his term) to keep himself in office despite scandals, a botched pandemic response, corruption, racial unrest and international embarrassment, Biden knows that the failure to best his predecessor’s record would be fatal to his and his fellow Democrats’ political prospects. “We’re now the first administration in history to add jobs every single month in our first six months in office, and the only one in history to add more than 4 million jobs during the first six months. Economic growth is the fastest in 40 years,” Biden crowed.
What Republicans denounced as “socialism,” Biden used to revive the economy. The president said:
We passed the American Rescue Plan shortly after I was sworn in. That gave us the tools to fight the pandemic and rebuild our economy, and it produced results. …The American Rescue Plan has given us the economic tools we need to protect our recovery against the worst impacts of the delta virus: ... $1,400 checks into the pockets of millions of Americans; help to keep folks in their homes; help to put food on the table. Remember those long lines we used to talk about? People lined up in their cars for hours just to get a box of food put in their trunk. Help to small businesses so they could keep the lights on, their doors open, and their employees on the job. Because states were losing revenue. They were having to lay off essential workers. Well, the aid to states and cities and counties and tribes, it kept essential workers going — police officers, firefighters, educators on the job.
Moreover, Biden appears poised to beat expectations again and deliver on a huge bipartisan infrastructure package followed by a reconciliation bill with a long list of items on the progressive wish-list. No one will confuse Biden’s agenda with the GOP’s supply-side tax cuts and rejection of social spending (including its attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act). If the economy blossoms, Biden will have made his case: A Democratic-led government is better for the economy than Republicans’ plutocratic economic policies.
Without a growing economy, Democrats would have no hope of holding on to House and Senate majorities. But economics alone may not be enough to keep Republicans at bay. Democrats must pound away at Republicans for their anti-American, anti-democratic embrace of lawlessness and authoritarianism. Quite plainly, with a House majority in hand, the GOP in 2024 could run a more sophisticated rerun of Jan. 6 to install a MAGA president — regardless of the voting outcome.
In that regard, recent revelations tell us about the deliberate, serious plot to overthrow the election. The blockbuster report from the New York Times’s Katie Benner on former president Donald Trump’s attempt to draw the Justice Department into his efforts to discredit the results should remove any doubt that there was an organized coup underway. If not for a small group of honorable state Republicans and federal lawyers, we would have plunged into a constitutional crisis.
Trump’s last acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, has spent hours with the Senate Judiciary Committee and with the Justice Department’s inspector general detailing five interactions with presidential crony Jeffrey Clark, acting head of the civil division. According to Benner’s reporting, Clark continued to have unauthorized conversations with the president, attempted to urge his colleagues to declare the election result fraudulent and even “drafted a letter that he asked Mr. Rosen to send to Georgia state legislators, wrongly asserting that they should void Mr. Biden’s victory because the Justice Department was investigating accusations of voter fraud in the state.” Clark apparently was prepared to send such a letter to every swing state Biden won. Only by threatening to resign en masse did Rosen and aides stop the coup attempt. Frustrated by these obstacles, Trump attempted to strong-arm his vice president to reverse the electoral college outcome and, finally, to incite the mob to “stop the steal.”
Democrats must continually remind voters that the GOP, still under the thumb of the former president, is the party of economic ruin and political chaos and violence. Republicans’ willingness to entertain mob rule undermines the rule of law that is the foundation of our democracy and our economy.
GOP proposals to let state legislatures overturn the voters’ decisions are really about codifying a process so that Republicans don’t need a Jeffrey Clark to send letters to reverse election results. (State Republicans would put the coup in motion themselves.) And the attempt to dissuade just enough Democrats from turning out is really about installing a GOP House majority that can try to block a Democratic president from holding office in 2024, even if he legitimately wins the electoral college.
No doubt, economic success is necessary for Democrats’ victory in 2022, but unless Americans understand the stakes in returning Republicans to power, our democracy — and, in turn, our economy — will be in grave danger.
Opinion | Democrats can't neglect either democracy or the economy - The Washington Post
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