Commentary

I wasn’t surprised last week when I saw the Pew Research Center’s assessment of Joe Biden, in which it stated “liberal Democrats are more likely than moderate Democrats to say they approve of Biden, 66 percent to 57 percent.”

The handwriting was on the wall six months before he was elected when he agreed to team up with the progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders to create joint “unity task forces” that were given a direct hand in shaping the party’s policy and agenda.

Sanders viewed it as a way to guarantee his progressive vision would have an impact on policy in the Biden administration.

I recall my skepticism when I read that Sanders’ former campaign manager Faiz Shakir, who was leading negotiations with the Biden campaign team, comment how Biden’s team had been “amenable and open.” 

The teams selected representatives among Congress, labor, economists, academics and activists to serve on six policy-specific committees: climate change, criminal justice reform, education, the economy, health care, and immigration.

Speaking of the plan for the task forces to meet prior to the Democrat National Convention, Sanders said, “I commend Joe Biden for working together with my campaign to assemble this group of leading thinkers and activists who can and will unify our party in a transformational and progressive direction.”

Clearly, Sanders saw how he could influence the direction of the Biden administration.

It wasn’t difficult to see the role that climate change task force would demand as John Kerry, Biden’s choice, and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Sander’s choice, would serve as co-chairs.  Kerry has been attached to climate change at the hip for years, an Ocasio-Cortez saw this as a means to introduce her Green New Deal.

What good could be expected from the education task force co-chaired by Heather Gautney, Sanders’ policy advisor, and Biden’s choice Rep. Marcia Fudge, former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, with Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, of the National Education Association (Biden’s selections) meeting with professors Alejandro Adler of Columbia and Hirokazu Yoshikawa of New York Universities (Sanders’ choices)

Progressives on each of the other four task forces were there to mold Biden’s policy.

During a September 2021 meeting with progressives in the Oval Office, Biden joked about how much had changed in his long career, saying “I used to be called a moderate.” He was faced with the task of mediating with left-wing lawmakers sitting before him and moderates he had hosted hours earlier.

It was recognized that in the battle for ideological supremacy in the Democrat Party, the progressives had already won.  “Biden, once a proud moderate with three and a half decades as a senator, had fallen in firmly with the progressives as president,” wrote Russell Berman in his piece, “The Progressives Have Already Won,” in The Atlantic.

Sanders’ plan was to create a policy agenda with working-class people in mind, and Biden tried to persuade unions that he is the most pro-union president in American history, but polls show that the Democrat Party is no longer the party of  middle-class America.

May God continue to bless the United States of America.