The $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill amounts to the largest government social program since the New Deal. And Democrats are crowing that its broad provisions that have nothing to do with the pandemic represent the dawn of Social Democracy–that is, the all-encompassing European-style welfare state–in America.
They are further crowing that these steps will also have radical political implications, with the potential to bring the working class back to the Democratic party and prevent Republicans from ever getting back into power.
That’s the gist of an article by Jeff Greenfield entitled The Political Weapon Biden Didn’t Deploy. Greenfield, himself a liberal Democrat, is almost giddy with excitement. Like the Obamacare bill, few people realized what was in it until it passed. As a result, Republican lawmakers and the conservative public had no idea how radical it was:
It was after the bill’s approval by the Senate that we learned the full dimensions of the most audaciously ambitious social welfare legislation since the New Deal. Most tellingly, the congressional Republicans, who had voted unanimously against it out of force of habit, never bothered to train the full fury of their fire at a series of provisions that took the nation several steps down the road to social democracy.
It isn’t just the $1,400 paid to most Americans. The American Rescue Plan will pay families $300 every month for each child they have (as we
posted about). It greatly expands subsidies for health care, a big step towards the equivalent of Medicare for All. There are big bailouts for private pensions. There are major subsidies for small businesses, as well as quite a few big businesses. Money to pay off student loans. And much more.
The genius of this bill is that while there used to be a stigma against people who are on welfare, by giving welfare to just about everyone, the stigma is removed! That’s not quite how Greenfield describes it, but it’s close. He points out that other ambitious social programs–one thinks of LBJ’s War on Poverty–floundered because they pitted different groups in America against each other. This one, though, is free of identity politics, though it greatly helps minorities, and everyone is getting in on the action.
The scope is broad enough to encompass both the poor and large elements of the middle class, which is why it now enjoys a level of support almost unimaginable for a law passed along such partisan lines. There is a hint that an outbreak of public happiness may be about to begin.
Furthermore, these programs may be as difficult to dislodge as those of FDR’s New Deal, such as Social Security. Politically, they could create an enduring Democratic majority. Imagine, he says, a Republican candidate who comes out in opposition to the $300 per child monthly subsidy. Who would vote for him? I would think even many homeschooling Christian families would want to keep that money coming in.
These political implications tie in to the article by Zack Stanton entitled
The Rise of the Reagan Republicans. He draws on the work of pollster Stanley Greenberg, who back in the 1980s coined the term “Reagan Democrats.” His research now leads him to see the rise of “Biden Republicans.” The former were working class folks who switched their allegiance from the Democratic party that used to represent them to the Republican party, which had the virtue of cultural conservatism. The latter are from the affluent, college-educated middle class, who now feel alienated from the Republican party that is now dominated by the lower class and oppose its cultural conservatism. So they are voting for Biden and other Democrats.
Meanwhile, according to Stanton’s article, Biden is seeking to win back the Reagan Democrats back into the fold, to make the party more hospitable to the working class, like it used to be. He quotes Greenberg: “Trump voters, a large portion of them, want a welfare state that is dependable for working people.” And he cites the American Rescue Act as filling that bill.
So what do you think? Many working class conservatives I know don’t approve of this huge bailout, but they sure aren’t going to turn down the $1400 or the $300 per child every month for their large families. In fact, they are glad to have it, even though they disagree with it on principle.
What can the Republican Party or the conservative movement do about all this? Come to accept it, as it did the New Deal? Change its orientation so that such programs can be part of its “family values” agenda? Or assume that the house of cards will collapse, whereupon they can move in set things right again?
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