Real and imaginary populisms
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Biden had a clever tweet pointing out the difference between Trump’s completely empty feints toward economic populism and actually doing something about it:
The difference between talking and delivering. pic.twitter.com/mb6bp65eKV— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 31, 2023
One thing this makes me think of is how little discussion Biden’s infrastructure bill generated in the political media. When Trump was in office, the media was obsessed with the idea of Trump upending politics by passing a bipartisan infrastructure bill. There was never any reason to think that Trump wouldn’t govern as an orthodox Republican, but the hope always remained because reality was too simple and boring. But then under Biden bipartisan infrastructure week actually happened, and you would have to follow politics very closely to have any idea that it happened. Nor was this some trivial political accomplishment — I, for one, certainly didn’t think it would be possible to get Senate Republicans to support any legislation Biden wanted. But it’s largely gone down the memory hole because Republican presidents are always graded on a much more generous curve.