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MARCH 3, 2022
Meyerson on TAP
What Biden Should Do Now
With his domestic agenda still bottled up, it's time for some
unconventional moves.
President Biden's State of the Union address didn't do much, I'm
afraid, to boost his standings in the polls, to which, I'm also
afraid, Democrats' prospects in November's midterm elections are
inevitably linked. With Joe Manchin still consigning
most of the Democrats' domestic agenda to his own fetid dustbin, the
party's ability to meet the needs of its core constituents, much less
the broader nation, has been eviscerated.
And it's those core constituents, not just those feckless
middle-of-the-roaders, who've been driving the drop in Biden's
support. In his
**Washington Post** column
today, E.J. Dionne has provided a deeper dive into the
**Post**'s recent poll, which showed Biden's overall approval rating
to be an anemic 37 percent. Among the non-Republicans in the survey,
support for Biden has fallen from 65 percent in April 2021 to 47 percent
late last month. Among those non-Republicans, Biden's support fell by
25 points in two crucial groups: non-whites and respondents under 40. It
fell by 24 percent among those with household incomes under $50,000.
In other words, Biden needs to do something truly substantial to address
the needs of those groups, and it likely can't be something that
requires congressional approval, other than reducing drug prices.
Herewith, two suggestions, aimed primarily at boosting his support among
the young:
First, retire a chunk of student debt. It's clear he can't get
another round of the expanded Child Tax Credits or a higher minimum wage
through the Manchinized Senate, but he can at least put more money in
young people's pockets, or more precisely, let them keep more money
there, by reducing their student debt. As the pandemic moratorium on the
monthly payments of student debt is set to expire at the start of May,
this would be best done quickly.
Second, go to Buffalo and make a speech backing the Starbucks
baristas' campaign to unionize, which has now spread to roughly 100
Starbucks outlets across the land. Moreover, the speech should really be
directed at the entire millennial generation, which, when Gallup polled
them last year, approved of unions at a stratospheric 77 percent rate.
In his speech, Biden should acknowledge their frustrations-that many
of them are compelled by employers to work short and irregular hours,
that they're underpaid at a time of record profits, that they have no
voice at work and had no power to negotiate safety provisions when COVID
struck-and spell out why unionizing is the one option available to
them that can address these problems. He can pledge that his
administration will have their backs as they go forward. Biden already
delivered a milder version of this pitch to the workers at Amazon's
Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse during the unionization campaign there last
year; now-with the overall union approval rating at 68 percent, its
highest in half a century-it's time for him to go bigger and bolder.
Sens. Manchin and Sinema having slammed shut the box of badly needed
legislative initiatives, Biden has no place to go except outside the
box. That necessity both compels and frees him to walk some untrod
paths.
~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter
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