Jonathan Freedland
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/26/joe-biden-left-parties-power-radical-winning He ran as a moderate but is governing as a transforming radical. That’s not a paradox – it’s a winning method
Joe Biden hosts first presidential press conference, 25 March 2021
‘In his debut White House press conference on Thursday, Joe Biden showed his political instincts remain sharply intact.’ Photograph: Oliver Contreras/EPA
Fri 26 Mar 2021 12.10 EDT
You may not have noticed, because he is not nearly as in-your-face as his predecessor, but Joe Biden is currently teaching a lesson to left and centre-left parties around the world. True, it’s one they should have learned long ago, but still they should be paying the closest attention. Because Biden is delivering a masterclass.
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I’m not referring to his debut White House press conference on Thursday, in which he showed that, for all the tripping up on the steps to Air Force One or the supposed senior moments, his political instincts remain sharply intact. To cite just one illustrative moment, Biden was asked whether he would be running for re-election in 2024 and whether his opponent would be Donald Trump. He replied with a half-joke, saying he had no idea whether he’d face Trump, and indeed “no idea whether there’ll be a Republican partyâ€, adding that he was “a respecter of fate†who had learned not to make plans for several years ahead. In that answer, he managed simultaneously to punch the bruise of his opponents’ current identity crisis, as Republicans ask themselves if they are anything more than the Donald Trump fan club, and to remind Americans of the sudden and cruel losses that have marred his life, and have given him an emotional gravitas unusual in politics.
It was a deft response for a man easily mocked as clumsy on his feet. But it’s not Biden’s words – which, incidentally, have been counted along with his on-camera appearances and total one-third of those notched up by the previous president at the equivalent stage – so much as his actions that would-be progressives should be studying.
Recall how Biden campaigned. He presented himself as a reassuring grandfather of the nation who would restore calm and decency to the US government, a steadying presence who believed in the old-fashioned virtue of quiet competence. He would not be exciting; he would not light up social media. When the right claimed he was a radical socialist, the charge did not stick – because Biden had been around for 50 years and people could see with their own eyes that he was a traditional moderate. That view was helpfully reinforced by those leftists who had long written Biden off as a dull, decrepit centrist, barely fit to shine the shoes of progressive favourites such as Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
But look at him now. Two-thirds into its first 100 days, and the Biden presidency has easily secured the right to be described as radical. Usually sober observers of the White House are going further: just two months after Biden took the oath, they are branding him a transformational president. The comparisons to Franklin D Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson have already begun. And Biden is encouraging them. Earlier this month, .....
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