The Roberts Court Adjourns With a Bang: Biden Embraces ‘Bidenomics’

The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON WEEK IN REVIEW –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Thank Lady Justice that the Supreme Court has adjourned for the summer — before they do any further damage to American Democracy.

No doubt Justice Sam Alito is off on an all expenses paid fishing trip somewhere, maybe Alaska, while Clarence and Ginny Thomas are off on some new luxury trip with their right-wing billionaire friend, Harlan Crow.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and A Cozy Friendship With Billionaire Harlan Crow

Chief Justice John Roberts must be developing worry lines about the reputation of the high court, and probably wishes the Senate had confirmed Merrick Garland as an Obama appointee so the court would at least appear more balanced. Besides, Garland has been a less than popular or effective Attorney General.

There are two quotes worth remembering from one of the final decisions of this summer term of the court, one far more memorable than the other.

“It has become a disturbing feature of some recent opinions to criticize the decisions with which they disagree as going beyond the proper role of the judiciary,” Roberts wrote in striking down the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program.

He was no doubt talking about the dissent from Justice Elena Kagan, who was appointed by President Obama. She was joined in dissent by Sonia Sotomayor, also an Obama appointee, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s only appointee on the court.

Without exactly using the language of current political talking points, they collectively lodged a complaint about the court that usually comes from politicians on the right: That is — and this always seems to come up in Senate hearings when judges are up for confirmation — a veiled reference to the debate over “activist judges” who are allegedly not supposed to “legislate from the bench.”

“In every respect, the Court today exceeds its proper, limited role in our Nation’s governance,” Kagan wrote, a broadside aimed at the Roberts court for in fact being an “activist” court, not so interested after all in the “original intent” of the Constitution or just “interpreting the law” and “not making law from the bench.”

But that is NOT the story most people are seeing in online newspapers, magazines or even Substack newsletters, or hearing on liberal or conservative talk radio, and certainly not on network news or cable TV talk.

And maybe that’s a big part of the problem.

Conservative Supreme Court Strikes Down Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan

Bidenomics

President Biden delivers remarks on the economy, June 28, 2023, at the Old Post Office in Chicago: NAJ screen shot

One story that seems to come up time and time again, however, is this mystery about why it seems liberals and Democrats are not as effective at selling their programs, policies and points of view as the conservative Republicans seem to be?

Now I have a problem with this framing, and I’ve commented on it before, even in The New York Times when it pops up in commentary.

Do we so soon forget how President Obama won the presidency, twice? He was certainly a much better salesman than Mitt Romney or Sarah Palin, although Palin was pretty savvy in the propaganda department.

It may be true that Republicans are better at practicing propaganda on their voter base than Democrats are.

But that’s sort of the point, isn’t it? The idea is to tell the truth the best you can so an educated populace can make up its own mind on how to vote. Propaganda only works on lesser educated people who can’t tell the difference. Can you say Trump’s base?

As I’ve said before, it’s not a “selling problem” the liberals and Democrats have. It’s a channel problem. Something less than half “the people” are paying attention to the right-wing media channels, while the mainstream media is still trying to appeal to both sides — for the money.

Even in a national journal of liberal thought, this seems to come up all the time.

With all the liberal blogs out there these days, and the constant distraction of social media, it’s obvious that people are not paying attention to these publications like we once did. But if a liberal or a Democrat were to search out such a voice, one might stumble up on The American Prospect, which bills itself as, “An independent voice for liberal thought.”

“The American Prospect is devoted to promoting informed discussion on public policy from a progressive perspective,” they say in the online pitch. “In print and online, the Prospect brings a narrative, journalistic approach to complex issues, addressing the policy alternatives and the politics necessary to create good legislation. We help to dispel myths, challenge conventional wisdom, and expand the dialogue.”

So I was doing some online research to see how “Bidenomics” is being covered, and ran across this from Ryan Cooper.

Can Democrats Sell ‘Bidenomics’?

Surely you have heard by now that the White House and Biden campaign have decided to embrace the term “Bidenomics,” which started out as an attack meme like “Voodoo Economics” was for George H.W. Bush against Ronald Reagan in 1980.

But don’t forget how Obama managed to turn around the Karl Rove critical term “Obamacare” into a positive, endearing term for millions of Americans who came to depend on the Affordable Care Act to get health care they had long been denied by the corporate class of Republicans, long before the party went all MAGA with Trump.

The subhead to the American Prospect piece?

“The substance is there. But the sales apparatus isn’t yet.”

Cooper wonders (like many other commentators) why Biden’s public opinion numbers are still so low, when he says Biden has “the best job creation record at this point in his presidency since either Franklin Roosevelt (by raw numbers) or Ronald Reagan in his first term (by percentage growth).” He points out that unemployment has remained steadily below 4 percent under Biden, and inflation keeps falling, while “real wage growth (is) turning positive,” so “there is a lot to boast about.”

“Given the trends, and the broadly positive macroeconomic indicators, it is rather mysterious why Biden gets such atrocious marks on the economy,” Cooper says.

It’s no longer “the economy, stupid” as it was in Bill Clinton’s day. It’s the channels, stupid. Close to have the people are not hearing the good news on the economic front. All they hear is gloom and doom about “liberals” and Democrats.

Biden’s approach to economics is now being developed even by the White House staff, so maybe the sales pitch will get better over the course of the presidential campaign. (For the record it is way too early to talk about this far in advance, 14 months to be exact. And the polls don’t mean much yet. But like football fans in Alabama who can’t wait until September to talk about football, some pundits can’t wait to talk about the next presidential election).

Let’s talk about Bidenomics

According to Biden and the campaign and White House, “It is rooted in the recognition that the best way to grow the economy is from the middle out and the bottom up.”

But in reality, Bidenomics is simply old fashioned Keynesian economics, which was used to point out to policymakers and the public during the Great Depression that the way out of an economic calamity is for the federal government to be “the spender and lender of last resort.”

That’s how Franklin Roosevelt got America out of the Great Depression, by spending federal money to hire people to build national parks and roads, for example, through the Civilian Conservation Corps and other government programs.

These programs resonate with a sizable contingent of the public, and it’s just too bad that it was a Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who managed to kill Biden’s very good idea to create and fund a “Civilian Climate Corps.”

If there was indeed some organized, intellectual, bona fide “Deep State” running things around here, surely we could figure out a better way to sell these kinds of programs to the public. But first it would have to appear on EVERY channel, and ALL OVER social media before it would catch on.

So that’s why I recently felt compelled to launch something online to act as the official education authority for the so-called Deep State @ DeepStateU.Net.

Do you ever wonder what Trump, Steve Bannon, Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gaetz are talking about when they blather on about the Deep State? We have the answers for you right here.

Is There A Deep State? What Is It?

For my money I would bring back Barack and Michelle Obama in a big way, along with the people who ran “the show” in their time. The Democratic conventions were a marvel, compared to the Republicans in those days. Who can forget Clint Eastwood talking all alone to his chair?

Trump just turned everything into a redneck, Confederate circus. Clearly a majority of “the people” were having no more of that in 2020. Then he turned it violent on Jan. 6, 2021. There is no way we are going back there again. Not a majority of the American people. I don’t care how old Joe Biden happens to be.