Progressives want in on potential Biden presidency
In the interest of truth in advertising, Joe Biden needs to change his campaign signs from “Biden Harris” to “Biden, Harris & Co.”
The Democratic presidential nominee’s platform, already kibbitzed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, is again the target of reshaping by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and other progressives trying to muscle their agenda onto the country.
House members including AOC, Katie Porter, Ayanna Pressley, Raúl Grijalva and candidate Jamaal Bowman along with 39 progressive groups signed a letter, obtained by Politico, arguing that no C-suite level corporate executives or corporate lobbyists should have Senate-confirmed positions in a Biden administration.
“One of the most important lessons of the Trump administration is the need to stop putting corporate officers and lobbyists in charge of our government,” they wrote. “As elected leaders, we should stop trying to make unsupportable distinctions between which corporate affiliations are acceptable for government service and which are not.”
The letter called on both parties to adopt this standard, but organizers told Politico it was also intended to send a message to Joe Biden’s transition team as it vets potential candidates.
Should Biden win the election, there will be a host of opinions over who he should pick to fill cabinet positions, and the battle between the centrist and progressive factions of the Democratic Party will undoubtedly flare up even more than it has during the campaign.
But one thing many of those in the far left camp seem to have missed is this: Just because you have grabbed the spotlight, doesn’t mean your ideas are any more relevant than those who are not in the media’s “cool kids” clique. Progressives don’t speak for the whole party.
Corporate affiliations are verboten, according to progressives, because it means the White House could make moves that are favorable to businesses. That’s bad because capitalism is bad, a rallying cry of the far left. Never mind that businesses keep American running and growing and provide the fuel for the country’s economic engine.
As America claws out of the rubble caused by the coronavirus pandemic, one would think that advisers and officials with business experience would be an asset as the government tries to right the ship and get folks back to work and making good wages. If you want to help the private sector, it pays to have people with experience in it.
But that doesn’t jibe with progressive doctrine, and the letter serves as notice, not just to Biden, but to the country at large, that the far left believes it should be giving the marching orders.
Other pols, like our own Sen. Ed Markey, figured out that by aligning with AOC, they got a booster shot of hype and positive association with younger voters. For Markey, that meant co-sponsoring AOC’s Green New Deal, a sweeping plan to fight climate change, poverty, income inequality and racial discrimination. By AOC’s own admission, the Green New Deal would cost at least $10 trillion.
Biden courted Sanders’ supporters, and he and the Vermont Independent fleshed out a Progressive Unity Platform earlier in the campaign.
Yes, it takes a village to get elected, and allies are always valuable. But this latest move by progressives should make voters wonder — if Biden is elected, just who will be running the show?