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**MARCH 6, 2024**
On the Prospect website
Biden Is Losing Not With a Bang but a Whimper
Where's Dark Brandon when you need him? BY MAX MORAN
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Between You and Your Doctor: How Medicare Advantage Care Denials Affect
Patients
As UnitedHealth racks up unprecedented profits, the people it
insures battle for care. BY MATTHEW CUNNINGHAM-COOK
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The Spectacle of Policing
'Swatting' innocent people is the latest incarnation of the
decades-long gestation of an infrastructure of fear. BY RICK
PERLSTEIN
Kuttner on TAP
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**** What Super Tuesday Portends
Biden has opportunities to make real gains. Will he maximize them?
The presidential election is now a race between the lesser of two
vulnerabilities-Trump's accelerating dementia and the risk that he
will be convicted of a felony prior to Election Day, and the perception
of Biden as frail and ineffectual. Of these handicaps, Biden has far
more capacity to make changes for the better.
Nikki Haley has suspended her campaign, but she did what she needed to
do. Haley demonstrated that a nontrivial fraction of Republicans will
not vote for Trump. She also consistently beat polls, suggesting that
there is a stronger never-Trump vote among GOP voters than pollsters
detect.
Should Trump falter between now and the Republican convention in July,
despite having been the last Republican challenger standing and the only
other one with delegates, Haley will not be the nominee. Rather, there
will be a MAGA free-for-all for the role of the true heir to Trump.
Haley's relative success in moderate states especially among
women-she won Vermont and carried about 35 percent of the vote in
Massachusetts, Virginia, and Colorado-underscores Biden's
opportunity with Republican moderates and especially with women, and not
just on the issue of reproductive rights. So the takeaway from Super
Tuesday is that it's Biden's to lose.
But what does he need to do to win? It goes without saying that he needs
to project more strength and vigor. On the issues, the State of the
Union will signal whether he is willing to go big.
Leaks suggest that populist, anti-corporate themes will be a major part
of the speech, such as the order capping credit card late fees and an
attack on corporate price-gouging as anti-inflation medicine. We need to
hear a lot more of this. Though Trump stands for chaos and Biden
represents competent government, this is not the season for centrist
moderation. It's a moment for populism, and progressive populism is
needed to defeat neofascist populism.
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Biden also needs to demonstrate his leadership, toughness, and humanity
by standing up to Netanyahu. Not only must there be a cease-fire and an
end to the brutalization of civilians in Gaza. Biden needs to define
Bibi's proposed invasion of Rafah as a red line that the United States
will not allow Israel to cross.
Rather than bragging about how good the economy is, which is not the way
most Americans experience it, we need to hear more about what Biden will
do in a second term if the voters re-elect him and a Democratic
Congress.
The limited student debt relief, the modest increase in child care
outlays, the abbreviated child allowance that was in effect for just a
year, the partial outlays on job-creating infrastructure-these are
previews and down payments on what can be done in a progressive second
term. Merely the act of going bigger signals greater vigor.
The media has a role to play in this. The press needs to cease pouncing
on every minor Biden slip and stop writing off Trump's far more
incoherent and dangerous raves as just Trump being Trump. With the
election now down to two candidates, maybe the press will start doing
its job.
One other piece of hopeful news: Trump is a unique specimen, and his
movement is personalist. If Trump can be beaten in 2024, either by his
own collapse or in the November election, there is no obvious successor
and MAGA will likely fragment.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter
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