Politics

Manchin throws Biden a lifeline Less than two weeks ago, Joe Manchin told a West Virginia radio host that he couldn’t even contemplate a deal on a reconciliation package until he had seen July’s inflation numbers (which are published in mid-August). Now, to the genuine surprise of most of Washington, the Democrats have unveiled a package of tax hikes and spending on energy, climate change and healthcare. It even has a shiny new name: America, meet the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The package is light on proposals that would actually live up to that name, but it does at least have the advantage of containing no immediate deficit increases and would reduce deficits by more than $300 billion over a decade.

Since the latest growth numbers have come out, much ink has been spilled over the question of whether the economy is in a recession. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Biden administration tried to get out ahead of Thursday’s release with a press statement noting that back-to-back quarters of negative growth doesn't necessarily mean a recession. Also predictably, Republicans strongly rebuked the idea, saying, “You can’t change reality by arguing over definitions.” Both sides of the debate will continue to play out, and both sides will continue to miss the point. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter very much whether growth goes up or down by 0.2 percent. What matters is the general trajectory of the economy. And on that front, the Biden track record is mixed at best.

Cast your mind back to the 1990s for a moment. The left, dispirited at their generation-long rout at the hands of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and enraged by the ratification of limited-government trends at the hands of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, were looking for a new rallying point. By the end of the decade, the intellectual left had settled upon a new epithet: “neoliberalism.” Although the term was not brand new, it exploded in popularity in left academic journals and soon in left media too. Simply put, “neoliberalism” means “democratic capitalism.

We don't really negotiate much in the US and so we're bad at it. The American style of negotiating is to demand everything and settle for nothing less. We ask for an outrageously large amount and "bargain down" after the other side offers an equally outrageous small amount. Starting anywhere near your actual number is considered a sign of weakness. We don't like gray areas and we don't like to feel like we've lost out on something. So being asked to support something that on its face seems reasonable, like allowing two people in love living together in a home they co-own to marry, means buying into a whole LGBTQIA2+ agenda that somehow includes forcing kids to listen to drag queens read stories aloud about sexually ambitious caterpillars and their same-sex tadpole pals.

Recession? What recession? Magical thinking has long dominated the Biden White House’s approach to economics. Egregious examples include the president’s insistence that there is no relationship between public spending and inflation, or the related nonsensical notion that a massive multi-trillion-dollar spending package will actually help bring prices down. The third, and perhaps the most notorious, inflation-related mistruth: that it would only be a short-term blemish on an otherwise booming economy. Then there’s the especially risible idea that, by virtue of the fact that most emergency pandemic spending automatically expired on Biden’s watch, he deserves to viewed as one of the toughest book-balancing budget hawks in US history. These arguments all share two crucial traits.

My brothers, my sisters, hold it right there. Thank you. We’re missing a major point, howsoever understandably. All this media chitchat coupling Joe Biden’s political incapacities to his undoubtedly advanced age and slowing gait requires, in my estimation, some context. Nor do I suggest the president’s recently acquired case of Covid — from which we all pray he recovers speedily and fully — lends point and pith to the discussion. I suggest that the problem with Joe Biden isn’t age as such, nor the infirmities that go with having lived back when Cokes cost a nickel and Ed Sullivan was king of TV.

On Thursday, a man jumped onstage and tried to kill one of the two candidates running for New York governor. Fortunately, he failed. Even so, the incident was terrifying, not only because it endangered Representative Lee Zeldin but because it underscores two grave problems facing America. One is the failure of our law enforcement system to treat serious crimes seriously, both to deter them and punish the offenders. This failure makes it a misnomer to speak of our “criminal justice” system. It’s not providing justice, and it's not deterring crime, especially violent crime. The second is the danger violence poses to our established constitutional order, beyond its danger to any individual.

Joe Biden and Bennie Thompson may be laid up with Covid, but the January 6 committee, to borrow a phrase from Donald Trump, was ready to fight like hell on Thursday. “Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued, the dam has begun to break,” declared Representative Liz Cheney at the outset. “He chose not to act,” added Representative Adam Kinzinger, slamming “Trump’s dishonor and dereliction of duty.” Speaking of slamming, it was the footage of Trump smacking the lectern on January 7, as he stumbled through a video intended to display his displeasure with the violence that he fomented, that displayed the real Trump. Vexed, exasperated, distressed. “Yesterday’s a hard word for me,” he announced. “I don’t want to say the election is over.

The coming energy storm Europe may be grappling with record-breaking heat, but it’s what happens when temperatures drop this winter that has policymakers worried. This morning, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen urged the continent to be “proactive” when she announced a plan to cut gas consumption by 15 percent between now and next spring. “Putin is blackmailing us,” she said in a blunt assessment of the messy confluence of geopolitics and energy policy that has left some of the world’s most advanced economies in such a vulnerable position. Europe’s energy worst-case scenario is not some remote nightmare but an imminent possibility.