Biden May Lose the Moderates

When Barack Obama and Joe Biden took over the White House in 2008, they had run on an ambitious agenda that included many of the same policies that Vice President Biden now advocates. President Obama threatened to withdraw from NAFTA, repeal the Bush tax cuts at the top, opposed secret-ballot union elections (favoring so-called card check), and supported sweeping climate change legislation. Armed with a supermajority in the Senate, anything was possible.

But when President Obama looked at the reeling economy that he inherited, he (thank goodness) thought twice. Big disruptive policies would have likely hurled us from recession into depression, and whether he intended to pursue them or not, he dropped his agenda when given the chance to enact it. The Obama administration enthusiastically embraced free trade, and even the Bush tax cuts were extended for a time. When climate activists fret that policy action in the United States has been in denial, they should think back to 2009, when Henry Waxman and Edward Markey developed a bill that would address climate change with a cap-and-trade system. The bill passed the House, but only because it won eight Republican votes, and then it died in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

This history raises two important thoughts as we debate American policy going forward. First of all, if there is a policy that we should now be following, one should ask why Democrats didn’t introduce it when they had the chance, possessing a supermajority in the Senate? The second thought is the answer to the question; big changes are constitutionally very difficult in our system because of the Senate and the filibuster. Even with a supermajority, a few moderates in the controlling party can stifle a vote.