Ridin' With Biden, Con't

House Democrats correctly saw that liberalism has its limits among voters, and embracing the more moderate Biden plan kept them control of the House, albeit narrowly. But even the Blue Dogs are lining up now behind Biden's big spending bills, as they see the key to expanding their House lead in 2022.

 

Ohio Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan could be forgiven if he wanted to break with early parts of President Joe Biden’s agenda.

Ryan’s Youngstown-centric district went through a political transformation over the course of the last decade, going from safely Democratic to a place where Biden defeated Republican Donald Trump by just 4 percentage points in 2020. Furthermore, Ryan is “looking very, very closely” at entering the race for Ohio’s open Senate seat, putting himself in front of a solidly pro-Trump electorate in 2022.

But Ryan didn’t hesitate when asked what Democrats should do next after the passage of a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package.

“Double down,” he told HuffPost in an interview last week. “Double down on working families.”

Across the country, Democrats are uniformly lining up behind the most essential parts of Biden’s policy program, aggressively trying to sell the already-passed American Rescue Plan ― which sent $1,400 checks to most Americans and which Democrats say will help crush the coronavirus pandemic and reopen schools ― with Biden himself embracing a prediction of 6% economic growth at his press conference last week.

They are eagerly anticipating his next legislative proposal, which Biden is expected to lay out in a speech in Pittsburgh this week. Early reports indicate the more than $3 trillion package will contain hundreds of billions in infrastructure spending, a permanent expansion of the child tax credit, free community college, aid for caregivers, and a package of tax increases on wealthy Americans and corporations.

Driving this party-wide political bet is a conviction that robust economic liberalism can renew Americans’ faith in their government, give them a political advantage on economic issues and stem continued defections among working-class voters of all races to a GOP almost exclusively focused on culture war issues.

“We’re going to keep building until every American has that peace of mind and to show that our government can fulfill its most essential purpose: to care for and protect the American people,” Biden said Tuesday during an event at Ohio State University in Columbus, with Ryan in attendance. “When we work together, we can do big things, important things, necessary things.”

Ryan said the relief package amounted to a “huge sigh of collective relief” in his district ― not only because of the checks but also because of rental assistance and aid to restaurants and music venues.

“I think people are starting to get confidence in the government again,” Ryan said. “You can already feel a lot of voters saying, ‘I didn’t vote for Biden, but I appreciate what he’s doing.’ And if we keep going down this road, a lot of these people are going to approve of it.”

 

Democrats have a short window to make legislation that allows them to prove that the federal government works for the 99% and not just the 1%. Blue Dogs finally understand this, because the alternative is fascist Trumpism. But in order to do that, they will have to be willing to kill the filibuster completely.

We'll see what they are willing to do.