San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Progressives, pandemic push Biden to left on some issues, but not crime
California progressives are not letting up on Joe Biden after he released a cleanenergy plan last week that is more leftleaning than what he campaigned on during the primaries.
They want him to go further left on that and other issues — and they aren’t going to stop pushing him even if he defeats
President Trump in November and winds up in the White House.
Progressives don’t expect Biden to shift course anytime soon and embrace their top priorities, including a Medicare for All health care plan and the Green New Deal environmental outline. But while many are pleased with some of the policy compromises that came out of a recent unity commission composed of Biden and Sanders supporters, they aren’t satisfied with everything in the 110page document. Biden is reviewing the proposals that will shape the Democratic Party platform.
“It’s better than what Biden
campaigned on,” said Amar Shergill, chairman of the progressive caucus of the California Democratic Party, the largest affinity group in the nation’s largest Democratic state organization. “We don’t reject progress when we get it. This represents progress.”
But Shergill added that progressives will keep pressuring Biden even if he wins the presidency.
“We’re going to get the best possible deal we can now, make it the new normal for Democrats, and then get up the next day and keep trying to get more. Even after he’s elected.”
In addition to pressure from his left flank, the coronavirus pandemic is reshaping Biden’s platform. Lately, he has been talking about increasing the scale of his plans to the New Dealera proportions of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. Biden predicted that the economic fallout from the pandemic might “eclipse what FDR faced.”
“Because of this COVID crisis, I think people are realizing, ‘My Lord, look at what is possible,’ ” Biden said at a recent fundraiser. “‘Look at the institutional changes we can make.’ ”
The reference to FDR resonates with Sanders’ supporters. The Vermont senator often namechecked Roosevelt during his campaign when pressed about what being a democratic socialist meant.
Here is a look at areas where Biden has shifted since all but wrapping up the nomination in March:
Health care: Biden hasn’t embraced Medicare for All, saying it would be too costly. He continues to prefer a public option, which would allow people to buy into the governmentrun Medicare program. Those who don’t want to do so would still have their private insurance.
However, the unity commission did propose to “strengthen the public option significantly,” said Michael Lighty, an Oakland resident who advocated for Medicare for All across the country as the Sanders campaign’s health care constituency director.
It is now a “nopremium, nodeductible plan” for families making roughly $52,000 or less annually, he said. In terms of benefits, “it’s a platinumlevel plan” that would be run by the government, not a private insurer.
“It’s a recognition that because of COVID, the benefits need to be expansive,” Lighty said.
National Nurses United, the 155,000member union that is a longtime backer of Sanders and Medicare for All, endorsed Biden this month. But union president Zenei Cortez said the nurses “will be on his doorstep 24/7 to get Medicare for All.”
Environment: Biden isn’t close to supporting the Green New Deal, which calls for the U.S. to run on 100% renewable energy within 10 years. Unlike Sanders, Biden hasn’t totally disavowed fracking, which is key to his support in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, where the industry accounts for many jobs.
However, Biden’s $2 trillion clean energy proposal drew guarded praise from Varshini Prakash, a member of the unity commission and cofounder of the Sunrise Movement, a youthled environmental organization. Biden called for the U.S. to be fully powered by renewable energy by 2035, which is 15 years sooner than he suggested during the primaries.
“Our movement,” Prakash said in a statement, “taught Joe Biden to talk the talk. Now, let’s defeat Trump and mobilize in mass after the election to get Biden to walk the walk.”
But R.L. Miller, who chairs the environmental caucus of the California Democratic Party and supported Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren during the primaries, said the unity commission does not mention “phasing out fossil fuels in any way, shape or form.” The commission called for “following science and the law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts from fossil fuel production, transportation and use.”
Still, Miller said, the commission’s proposals “are not a bad plan, and it’s a lot better than anything that the Democratic Party has put forward before.”
Immigration: Some immigration rights advocates still link Biden with former President Barack Obama, whom National Council of La Raza President Janet Murguía once called “the deporterinchief ” for overseeing more than 3 million deportations.
The unity commission didn’t propose eliminating or cutting funding for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, nor did it suggest that Biden support ending criminal penalties for people who illegally cross the U.S. border, as some Democratic candidates did during the primaries. Biden opposed both.
The unity group suggested focusing on “righting the wrongs of the Trump administration” first. It proposed rescinding the administration’s travel ban, cutting funding for the southern border wall and reinstating protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. when they were young.
For years, Biden and other Democrats have called for “comprehensive immigration reform,” hoping to package their priorities with goals backed by Republicans. It hasn’t worked, as few Republicans have joined them.
Instead, the unity team proposed a number of smaller, more specific goals. They include fasttracking the citizenship process for “those workers who have been essential to the pandemic response and recovery efforts, including health care workers, farmworkers and others.”
Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center Immigrant Justice Fund who cochairs the unity team’s immigration group, said she saw Biden’s team evolve over the course of their discussions.
“Joe Biden probably started off feeling that comprehensive immigration reform was the silver bullet that solves all the immigration problems. That’s the default of most Democrats,” she said. “But Joe Biden has shown that he can listen to the community. This is a different political moment.”
Criminal justice: During the primaries, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker called Biden the “architect of mass incarceration” for his support of a 1994 crime bill toughening sentences for many federal crimes.
Biden’s policies on criminal justice have softened since the 1990s, but he disagrees with progressives in several areas. He does not support the federal legalization of cannabis, for example. He would allow states to make their own decisions regarding recreational weed and wants to expunge prior convictions for marijuana.
Los Angeles Rep. Karen Bass, one of the women on Biden’s short list of possible running mates, told the Sacramento Press Club last week that she didn’t “necessarily think that he should” support federal legalization. “I think you can have problems with marijuana, and I don’t like the way it is just put out there as though there’s no problems at all,” Bass said.
Biden also doesn’t side with progressives who want to end the legal concept of qualified immunity, which protects police officers from being sued for misconduct. The unity commission leaned toward Biden, suggesting “reining in” qualified immunity.
Shergill, the California Democratic progressive caucus chair, was frustrated that progressives haven’t budged Biden on either issue.
“Criminal justice reforms,” he said, “are probably the most disappointing area to me.”