Leftward, ho

Politics never quarantines

SOMEBODY ought to tell Joe Biden’s team that successful primary candidates usually move toward the center after they’ve won the nomination.

You’d be forgiven if you haven’t paid much attention to national Democratic Party politics lately. That is, we hope we are forgiven. Apparently partisan politics isn’t the priority that most American commentators assumed. A pandemic certainly concentrates the mind

— and a fear for family and finances shuffles what we think of as essential.

However, Joe Biden has made his way back into the news again. He’s received a couple of high-profile endorsements lately. Including Barack Obama’s and Elizabeth Warren’s. But when Bernie Sanders endorsed him the other day, some of the details of the story gave pause. As in pause, rewind, and read that again.

Apparently, between wrapping up the nomination and wrapping up the video shots of his endorsements, Joe Biden, or at least his campaign, has lurched port. All this while his campaign, his people, his supporters — and not just his supporters — have been calling him the Moderate Alternative to more leftist types like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Note this paragraph from the Associated Press’ story earlier this week:

“Biden, 77, has already made some overtures to progressives by embracing aspects of Sanders’ and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s policies. The day after Sanders exited the race, Biden came out in support of lowering the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 60 while pledging to cancel student debt for many lowand middle-income borrowers . . . . ”

The Washington Post also sniffed out the story. Its version of the news peg said Joe Biden’s plan would now favor “forgiving student loan debt for people who attended public colleges and universities and some private schools and make up to $125,000 a year.”

Which would mean, in effect, forgiving all student loans. Do you know a recent college graduate making more than $125,000 a year? And how many college graduates are claimed as dependents by wealthy parents?

Pledging to add to the national debt at a time of real crisis — the virus crisis and the coming debt crisis — isn’t responsible. There is no telling how much added debt Americans will have to take on to get us safely out of the covid-19 pandemic. There are already talks for another stimulus package. Which is good news, don’t get us wrong. The government must act in these situations to make sure people don’t go cold and hungry and bankrupt during national emergencies. But adding billions more, maybe trillions more, to entitlement programs? Which would continue to pile onto the books long after the virus emergency is over?

How much would lowering the Medicare age cost? The articles don’t say. One estimate during the late primary campaign said Elizabeth Warren’s plan to cancel student loans would cost $955 billion. Oh heck, just round it up to a trillion.

Then you have all the arguments that paying off student loans is a regressive scheme to switch promised payments from middle-income young people to poor folks of all ages.

But what, Joe Biden worry? “Sen. Sanders and his supporters can take pride in their work in laying the groundwork for these ideas, and I’m proud to adopt them as part of my campaign at this critical moment in responding to the coronavirus crisis,” Biden said. He said he would provide more details later.

Some of us are curious about those details. You-know-who lives there.

FOR HIS PART, Bernie Sanders endorsed not just Joe Biden this week but a more leftist approach, too. He told MSNBC that Joe Biden’s recent pivot on health care, at least, was “a step in the right direction.”

Coming from a guy who more often than not makes steps in the wrong direction, at least politically, this assurance did not assure.

When this pandemic is behind us all, instead of on top of us all, We the People may be surprised how much it has cost us: in terms of jobs lost, bankruptcies caused, and debt assumed. Why assume more debt at this particular point is the question.

The answer is probably “good politics.” But right now it’s also bad policy.