Political necessity doesn’t explain moderate opposition to the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act. So what does? EricLevitz writes
The mod squad. Photo: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag Joe Biden didn’t ask moderate Democrats to do anything he wouldn’t.
On one level, this is unsurprising. Democrats barely control Congress; the party’s Senate majority rests on the whims of a coal magnate from a deep-red state. If Joe Manchin unilaterally derailed Biden’s agenda — or else, did so with the aid of Kyrsten Sinema and a couple pseudo-Democrats in the House — there would be little to explain.
I think that structural factors are part of the answer. In a capitalist democracy, the political playing field is always tilted in the wealthy’s direction. Effective electoral campaigns and lobbying drives require time and money. Hedge-fund managers can shoulder those costs more easily than home health-care aides.
All this said, attributing congressional Democrats’ timidity to structural factors alone would be excessively deterministic. Organized labor’s weakness surely constrains progressive reform. But, as already noted, the $3.5 trillion version of Biden’s program is not very radical! Many of the bill’s provisions will redound to capital’s benefit. The Democrats’ dependence on affluent voters may limit the party’s interest in redistribution.
What separates Democratic opponents and supporters of the Biden agenda is not the partisan tilt or median income of their constituencies. It’s their own ideological convictions and political intuitions. Some moderate Democrats just believe that the national debt is a crisis and that federal spending is dangerously high. Some don’t.
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