Mainstream media cheerleading for Dems reaches fever pitch
Suddenly Joe Biden is "a bit of a superhero"
It must be difficult even for mainstream media stalwarts to lead cheers for someone as uninspiring as Joe Biden. Indeed, Perry Bacon recently bemoaned the lack of media cheerleading for Biden. But with control of Congress on the line, the mainstream media has now roused itself for the task — and then some.
Thus, the Washington Post serves up headlines like “Inside Biden’s hot streak” and “Jubilant Senate Democrats head home with momentum.” NPR chimes in with “Biden's recent wins could give Democrats a boost heading into the midterms.” The New York Times’ version of the party line comes under this headline, following passage of the Dems’ half a trillion dollar spending bill: “A Victory for Biden, and a Bet on America’s Future.”
But the prize for shameless shilling for the Dems goes to the Boston Globe and this busy headline: “‘A bit of a superhero.’ Biden turns around presidency with recent successes that buoy Democrats ahead of midterms.”
What’s the pretext for the cheering? Primarily, it’s the supposed string of successes of the Democrat-controlled Congress — the overriding success being the passage of that spending bill.
I want to be clear. Given that Democrats held only 50 seats and had but a slender margin in the House, the Dems punched at about their weight in Congress during the past two years.
But to claim that their legislative accomplishments are cause for jubilation or that they have turned around Biden’s presidency is nonsense. It’s pure cheerleading.
A spending bill of half a trillion dollars is nothing to sneeze at. But it amounts to only one-seventh of the bill Biden pushed for — and more like one-tenth of what he and his fellow left-liberals wanted.
Are Democrats really jubilant that Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Simema were able to dictate the terms of what was to be the party’s signature legislative accomplishment. If this makes Joe Biden “a bit of a superhero,” what does it make Joe Manchin — Superman?
Other than the spending bill, what did the congressional Dems accomplish? A little bit of this and a little bit of that: extending veterans benefits, the CHIPS Act, minor gun safety legislation — all passed with bipartisan support.
This isn’t nothing, but it’s not likely to make anyone forget FDR, LBJ, or even BHO.
Think back to the heady days when the Democrats, already running the House, gained control of the presidency and the Senate, and you will realize how relatively paltry the Dems legislative accomplishment are. Ramesh Ponnuru reminds us:
Among the items on the progressive to-do list were an expansion of the Supreme Court, statehood for places expected to vote for Democrats, a higher minimum wage, higher income-tax rates on high earners, a federal overhaul of election law, an amnesty for illegal immigrants, a ban on assault weapons, federal Medicaid funding for abortion, and measures to increase union membership. None of it has happened.
Moreover:
When the New York Times endorsed Biden in 2020, the first two policies it mentioned in praising his “bold agenda” were his plans to create a government-run insurance option for middle-class Americans of working age and to lower the age of eligibility for Medicare to 60. Both, the Times cheered, would move us toward “universal health care.”
Neither even made it to a vote.
Passing legislation that spends only a small fraction of what Biden called for isn’t much of a consolation. And having to call it, absurdly, the “Inflation Reduction Act” is a concession to the reality that, under Biden, the inflation rate reached a 40-year high.
Is there any reason to believe the Dems’ legislative accomplishments will cause them to hold the Senate and the House, or at least minimize the extent of the GOP’s House success? I don’t think so.
Trump’s legislative successes didn’t help the GOP in 2018. Obama’s successes didn’t help the Dems in 2010. The incumbent president’s party normally suffers substantial losses in the first midterm regardless of what that party did or did not pass in Congress.
I’m not saying it will happen this year. It might not.
But if it doesn’t, the cause on the Senate side is likely to be poor GOP candidates in key races. On the House side, if renewed enthusiasm for Democrats holds that party’s losses down, it will probably have more to do with the Dobbs decision and falling gas prices than any legislation Congress passed.
And if the Democrats take a beating in November, it won’t be due to any lack of effort on their behalf by their mainstream media cheerleaders.