New York Times Columnist Jamelle Bouie Apologizes For Underestimating Joe Biden's Courage, Determination And Commitment To Undo Trumpism While Fighting For General Welfare And The Common Good

 

March 13, 2021

By Jamelle Bouie Opinion Columnist

I think it’s a good exercise to return to your past predictions and analyses and take stock of what you got right and what you got wrong. In my case, looking back at what I wrote during the Democratic presidential primaries, I got one big thing wrong.

Joe Biden.

In 2019, I wrote that “the possibility of defeating Trump without defeating Trumpism looms over Joe Biden’s possible run for the 2020 Democratic nomination.” That a campaign centered on Biden’s appeal to white, blue-collar workers was a campaign that would recapitulate the conceit of “Make America Great Again” under the guise of rejecting it. And I worried, throughout the campaign, that Biden was simply not inclined to make the changes and force the confrontations necessary to de-Trumpify the government, much less push the country away from its austerity mind-set.

Looking at Biden’s nominations, appointments and executive actions thus far — looking at the size and scope of the relief bill and the extent to which he outright ignored Republican demands to make it smaller and less generous — it turns out I was wrong! I greatly underestimated Biden’s inclination and ability to do these things.

It is clear that Biden sees the presidency not as a capstone to a long career, but as a final opportunity to make his mark on the country, and he intends to do so. If these first 50 days are a sign of what’s to come, then his mark will be a much greater one than I could have ever anticipated.

What I Wrote

My Tuesday column was a dialogue of sorts with my friend Jelani Cobb, who wrote an essay for The New Yorker on the future of the Republican Party. I disagreed with a few of his analogies and wrote about it.

There are ways in which I think this comparison works. Like the Federalists then, the Republican Party now is struggling to reorient itself to a new era of mass politics, its reinvention held back by its aging white base. Rather than broaden their appeal, many Republicans are fighting to suppress the vote out of fear of the electorate itself. And just as the Whigs struggled internally and failed to forge a cross-sectional compromise over slavery, the Republican Party does risk fracturing over its commitment to democracy itself.

Jelani responded to my column on Twitter, and you should read his thread as well.

My Friday column was on the American Rescue Plan, President Biden’s Covid relief bill, which does much more than just address the panic.

I would even say that the American Rescue Plan compares favorably with the signature legislation of Roosevelt’s first 100 days, in that its $1.9 trillion price tag dwarfs the mere tens of billions (in inflation-adjusted dollars) spent by Congress during the earliest period of the New Deal. The challenge is very different — a Great Depression and its attendant unemployment and immiseration versus a health crisis and its economic impact — but the ambition is of similar scope.

I also did a Twitter live chat, which you can watch here.