I realize the comments Joe Biden made at a Wall Street fundraiser a week and a half ago are the very definition of yesterday’s news, but their unsettling nature, and the insights they provide into the presidential candidate’s thinking at a point early in the race before he’s had a chance to react to criticisms and potentially change course, are worth a little more time. Paul Waldman at The Plum Line (which, with Waldman and Greg Sargent tag-teaming the site, has been absolutely on fire lately) does a whiz-bang job of explicating Biden’s remarks and what they say about the former vice president’s political philosophy; re-reading Walden’s post today, I’m still almost shocked by how sharp (though necessary) a scalpel he’s taken to what Biden said.
Biden’s remarks about working with segregationist senators have received the severest working over by Waldman and others, but I agree with Waldman that what Biden said about economic inequality and how the rich have nothing to fear from a Biden administration is also “startling.” First, here’s what Biden said that got people talking:
You know, what I’ve found is rich people are just as patriotic as poor people. Not a joke. I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money. The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done. We can disagree in the margins but the truth of the matter is it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change. Because when we have income inequality as large as we have in the United States today, it brews and ferments political discord and basic revolution. [...] It allows demagogues to step in and say the reason where we are is because of the other, the other. You’re not the other. I need you very badly. I hope if I win this nomination, I won’t let you down.
Biden’s comments that “nothing would fundamentally change” have been criticized the most, as a sign that he doesn’t believe the American economy needs any significant rejiggering in terms of a remedy for inequality or the distribution of economic power. They also remind me of President Obama’s remarks during his first administration, when he told a group of bankers that he was the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks. I think the same accommodating spirit is at play in Biden’s remarks: the people are mad at you, but if you trust me, I’ll find a middle way where both sides can win. In both Obama’s and Biden’s cases, the message is similar; as Waldman puts it, it’s that we have to take economic action not because it’s the right thing to do, “but because if we don’t, the masses will rise up in anger and you never know what might happen then.” Along with his attempts to flatter (“rich people are just as patriotic as poor people”) and cajole (“you all know in your gut what has to be done”), it sounds like Biden is telling his wealthy listeners that they are reasonable people who are smart enough to let him help them protect their basic place at the top of the American pyramid.
It’s not just that Waldman’s correct when he points out that the GOP and corporate interests have shown no indication of wanting to accommodate workers’ interests, dooming Biden’s approach to failure, or that Biden’s interest in having good relations with billionaires means he lacks interest in changing the status quo, although I think these are the basic problems with Biden’s remarks. There are actually multiple instances in just this one paragraph of Biden’s speech where his patented earnestness obscures further dubious assumptions and flawed conclusions.
Flattering rich people that they are “just as patriotic as poor people” is, by itself, gratuitous and ingratiating, yet the following line reveals why they’re patriotic, as Biden continues, “we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money.” The rich are patriotic because they’re rich; what is left unsaid, but implied, is that being rich is patriotic because they help provide jobs and make the economy run. In other words, Biden sails awfully close to the Romney-Ryan “makers and takers” rhetoric which Democrats have opposed, and opens Biden up to various ripostes: Is it really the fate of the majority to view the rich with gratitude at their job-creating beneficence, and to forever downplay the fact that there is no economy without the great numbers of people who work hard, innovate business in a million creative ways, and yet never receive fair compensation for their labors?
Biden’s comment that “no one’s standard of living will change, nothing will fundamentally change” has rightly been criticized as a sign that he won’t push for fundamental change in the economy, as his words seem meant to reassure his rich and powerful listeners that they have nothing to fear from a Biden presidency, such as not being taxed into the poorhouse (or even into having less yachts). But it’s worth calling out how dependent on audience his remarks are, since the hope of the great majority of Americans is indeed that their “standard of living” will indeed change — for the better. The lived reality of most Americans is a stagnant or declining standard of living, which is a big fucking deal, to use a Biden-ism, and his concern to reassure those with an enviable standard of living is disheartening.
After his disquieting standard of living comment, though, Biden said something’s that received less attention: “Because when we have income inequality as large as we have in the United States today, it brews and ferments political discord and basic revolution [. . .] It allows demagogues to step in and say the reason where we are is because of the other, the other. You’re not the other. I need you very badly. I hope if I win this nomination, I won’t let you down.” Something quite odd is going on here, and it’s of a piece with Biden’s preceding mumble-jumble rhetoric that uses ambiguity to allow its listeners to draw flattering conclusions. Refering to “demagogues” who blame “the other” for the country’s problems, Biden reassures his audience of worthies that they are in fact not this despised other. These comments are bizarre for at least two reasons. First, it’s quite possible to interpret Biden as saying that fellow Democratic candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are “demagogues” who vilify the wealthy for the nation’s problems; this would be supported by his preceding remarks reassuring his wealthy audience that they are patriots who contribute to the U.S. Second, because “othering” is the undisguised strategy of Donald Trump and the right-wing GOP, which identifies immigrants, racial minorities, and women as to blame for America’s ill and undeserving of a range of rights. However, to draw any equivalence between the left’s condemnations of an upper class that has siphoned off so much of the country’s wealth to itself, and the right’s attempts to criminalize, brutalize, and denigrate various groups of immigrants and Americans, is grotesque. The number of Americans who are calling for interning the rich in concentration camps is passingly small, while millions support the president’s catastrophic and abusive treatment of immigrants.
I’m sure that, if confronted with this reading of his remarks, Biden would vociferously deny that he was drawing such an equivalence, just as he argued that his remarks about working with segregationists were in no way an endorsement of those men’s racist ideology. Yet I don’t see how you can read Biden’s words as a whole and not conclude that he’s basically telling rich people that he wants to be president in order to protect them against ravening masses who seek to take their wealth and send them to the guillotine. That he made these remarks at an event in which he aimed to get as much money as possible from the wealthy attendees is no excuse, and in fact heightens the sense that he’s missing the truth of our historical moment: do we really need another president who thinks he needs to fight for the rights of millionaires and billionaires? Those guys have plenty of power on their side, lobbyists and lawyers and bought politicians. It seems to me that Americans need a president who’s on their side. Indeed, as I argued recently, the idea of fighting for left-behind Americans is a big part of Trump’s appeal, even as his actions undercut any truth to it. For the Democrats to oppose him by nominating someone who’s literally telling the rich he’s going to fight for them would be totally mad.