President Biden’s State of the Union speech was an overdue act of transparency. When Mr. Biden finally announces his re-election bid, he will be running as a democratic socialist. That is the clear takeaway from the more than 70 minutes Mr. Biden spent describing his plans to push federal spending and mandates into every nook of American life.
What a welcome departure this is from the misrepresentation Rep.
Jim Clyburn
perpetrated on voters to get Mr. Biden elected as a centrist in 2020. Recall how the South Carolina congressman endorsed Mr. Biden before his state’s primary, explicitly warning on ABC’s “This Week” against the insurgent campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders: “I do believe it will be an extra burden for us to have to carry. This is South Carolina, and South Carolinians are pretty leery about that title ‘socialist.’ ”
Mr. Clyburn shrewdly calculated that neither Mr. Sanders nor Sen.
Elizabeth Warren
could win in the general election. He sold centrist and independent voters a bill of goods. The reality back then was, and remains today, that the ideological goals of Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren permeate the Democratic Party. There is no alternative, and they don’t intend to compromise. On Tuesday evening, when Mr. Biden resurrected a billionaires’ minimum tax, cameras caught Sen. Warren virtually levitating from the floor.
The State of the Union is supposed to be a general pitch to the American public. With Mr. Biden’s poll numbers uniformly underwater on his handling of the economy and inflation, it is difficult to see how his unstinting apologia for limitless federal spending will help with independent voters. But the presidential election is more than a year off. Mr. Biden’s speech is best understood as internal Democratic housekeeping. It was Biden base management.
He conclusively buried the policy moderation that
Bill Clinton
represented. The era of big government is back. He forestalled any conceivable primary challenge from the party’s left. California Gov.
Gavin Newsom
and Illinois’s
J.B. Pritzker
can forget their presidential ambitions. Union interests were well-sopped. The president’s endless slow-walk from the House chamber after the speech, glad-handing Democrats, was meant to send…
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