A post by The Amereican Prospect, beginning:
First 100: Growing Pains Between Biden and the Left -- On education finance, immigration, and the minimum wage, the strains of governing begin to show. by David Dayen - February 19, 2021[...]
The left has viewed Joe Biden with skepticism throughout his presidential campaign and the transition to the White House. But a popular story in recent weeks has been this idea that Biden has tamed the left, through outreach and hiring of certain personnel and adoption of certain agenda items. I think the transition was relatively smooth, and the large relief package has kind of overshadowed everything else going on.
But this marriage, if you could even call it that, was never going to last. Progressives simply want more than Biden is willing to give. Yes, Biden positions himself in the center of the party, and that center has shifted left. But that’s not going to be good enough for a lot of people, and there’s still decades of reflexive recoiling from aggressive policy to cut through.
We have seen this most directly in the debate over student debt cancellation, which I think we can say that Biden really doesn’t want to do. He obviously is unwilling to cancel up to $50,000 of an individual’s debt, which has been set up as the left pole in the debate since Elizabeth Warren got Chuck Schumer to come aboard with it. But when Biden talked about this at the Milwaukee town hall, you could see from his arguments that he isn’t interested. He opposes the idea of cancelling debt from people “who have gone to Harvard or Yale or Penn,” who would be eligible whether the threshold is $10,000 or $50,000. (By the way only 2 percent of Harvard students have federal student loans; they have need-based scholarships.) He’d do the $10,000 if Congress gave him a bill but he knows that Congress won’t; even if the filibuster is abolished it’d be dicey in the current Senate.
I think there’s a fear that the broad public would get mad about special breaks for elite college students, but the kind of people who take out student debt are children of middle-class families. The left is pretty invested in this issue, and there’s been a lot of pushback. The latest is that Biden will ask his Justice Department to review the legality of executive action. But that will take many months, and kicking things to a review traditionally is how politicians make them go away.
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You can’t talk about a split between Biden and the left without making room for the $1.9 trillion rescue package about to move through Congress. That includes a great deal of long-sought progressive policies like a child allowance (though it could be better structured), robust funding to support child care and expanded broadband infrastructure, and bigger subsidies for Affordable Care Act exchanges. Administration officials have been pushing for the biggest bill possible.
But even here, a couple moves are concerning. Biden keeps saying, in public and now in private, that the $15 an hour minimum wage will be taken out of the bill. He always couches this by saying that he really wants the increase, but it’s completely unclear how things will proceed. (Admittedly, to set up a parallel process for passage would amount to pulling it from the rescue bill.) Biden’s also floating a smaller number like $12 or $13. In addition, with $1.9 trillion a cap in the reconciliation instructions, you’re starting to see bargaining that would cut programs like paid federal sick leave or health insurance subsidies for laid-off workers out of the bill.
How chicken-shit can the man be against those who suffer? He will show us. More and more, he will show us. One term, with disasterous midterm election results is the guess here.
Who really likes Joe Biden? Besides Hunter and Jill, (who out of yearning emotion wants us to call her "Dr. Jill.)" Pretentious? Worse? A symbol of something else? Simply, as it is? "Dr." can prove to be a usage with much elasticity. Per that last link, we await some promising grower to introduce a "Dr. Jill" strain.