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SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

On the Prospect website

* David Dayen on the tasks confronting Congress this month
<[link removed]>,
and the odds on whether they'll actually do them

* Robert Kuttner on the down-ticket causes (e.g., abortion rights) and
candidates (e.g., Sherrod Brown) that will motivate voters next year
<[link removed]>
even if Biden doesn't

* Harold Meyerson on why new changes in labor law and record-high
public support for unions should compel unions to go all in
<[link removed]> on
organizing campaigns

In case you missed it, all of the

**Prospect**'s Labor Day coverage can be found here
<[link removed]>.

Meyerson on TAP

It's Time for Biden to Start Naming Names

As Republicans run against corporate 'wokeness,' he should run
against corporate (CEOs', big-time investors') greed.

Since Joe Biden can't catch a break, as the latest
<[link removed]>
in a seemingly unending series of alarming polls makes clear, he'd
better start making some himself.

The

**Wall Street Journal**poll today not only shows Biden tied with Donald
Trump in a hypothetical general election (

**not**factoring in whatever damage he may receive from a No Labels or
Cornel West candidacy), but shows him saddled with an anemic 39 percent
approval rating. Much of this is tied to his age, but the polling on his
economic policies reveals a disconnect between Biden and the public that
is much more vexing.

Consider, for instance, that, by a very slim margin, more Americans
disapprove of his performance in improving the nation's infrastructure
than approve it. Or that more Americans believe Trump "has a vision for
the future" than Biden does.

(Trump does have such a vision, of course: It's wreaking vengeance on
his enemies, both real and imagined.)

So, what's an octogenarian president to do? As I've noted before,
the time it requires for many of Biden's landmark economic initiatives
to take effect in a way that benefits the broad public is a problem.
Reindustrialization is a long-term project that's of limited help in
the short-term world of impending elections. The elements of Bidenomics
that went down in a heap when the Build Back Better bill failed to
pass-paid sick leave, affordable child care, an expanded Child Tax
Credit, free community college-had very robust levels of support in
the polls and would have impacted that broad public quicker and more
directly than the reconstruction of the formerly industrial Midwest. Had
they been enacted, they would have given at least a portion of that
public an understanding of Bidenomics and what lies behind it rather
than the impression that many currently hold.

For which reason, a number of pols and pundits (myself included) have
argued for some time that the case Biden should take to the public must
feature his commitment not just to the nation's industrial
resurrection but also to reviving and enacting those BBB provisions, and
others like them. Writing on

**The New Republic**'s website today, my buddy Michael Tomasky makes a
good case
<[link removed]>
that Biden should resurrect FDR's Economic Bill of Rights for the 21st
century-and for the 2024 campaign. He says that Biden also might
resurrect FDR's attacks on "economist royalists," updated to today's
versions, singling out the pharmaceutical industry as a target-rich
environment.

I'd encourage Biden to go further than that. With aides like Jared
Bernstein and Heather Boushey ensconced at his Council of Economic
Advisers, he has at his elbow the very economists who first documented
the declining share of corporate revenues and the nation's wealth
going to workers, and the exponentially rising share going to CEOs and
major investors. Biden needs to run against that-the systemic
denigration of labor, the diminution of the middle class at the expense
of the wealthy. He should name names, banks, companies, "activist"
investors, CEOs, those who have profited at American workers' expense.

As Republicans go against corporate "wokeness," Biden should go against
corporate greed. He'd have the better of the argument, and a better
way to shift much of the public's perception of the Democrats as a
party obsessed by cultural issues to a party obsessed by economic
fairness, by the need to rebuild a vibrant middle class and a plausible
plan to do that.

And the sooner he gets about that, the better.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter <[link removed]>

[link removed]

Congress's Post-Vacation Blahs
<[link removed]>
A passel of program authorizations and funding expire in September.
There isn't really a path yet to deal with them all. BY DAVID DAYEN

Can Reverse Coattails Save the Democrats in 2024?
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Biden may be a drag on the Democratic ticket, but there are plenty of
other sources of energy and mobilization. BY ROBERT KUTTNER

A Labor Day Like No Other
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With public support for unions at near-record highs and new federal
rules that actually enable organizing, unions need to mount massive
campaigns. BY HAROLD MEYERSON

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