And yet the media in the way it focuses on inflation and fuels, if not endorses, the blaming of Biden, plays the dangerous game of validating Americans’ possibility of voting out of mere reaction for Republicans, who persistently not only disregard America’s working families but actually enact policies hostile to them, as we saw under Trump and as we see in their refusal to support Biden’s Build Back Better agenda.

The Build Back Better legislation was a bone thrown to progressives to keep them in the Democratic corral. It was never intended to be made a reality any more than Obama intended to advocate for single-payer or even a public option that would have controlled healthcare spending in the US and prevent literally thousands of deaths. There will always be an outlier spoiler to thwart any progressive gains in Congress.

Obama had Sen. Ben Nelson and Biden had Sen. Manchin, but the simple truth is that there is no political representation of progressive values in our government, and hasn't been since the Powell memo when Democratic politicians decided to get "their share" of the corporate corruption. The use of these outliers within the party to prevent anything but the neoliberal agenda from advancing is too blatant to deny any longer.

Biden himself served as one of those over his much too long career in the Senate, writing the crime bill that devastated minority families and advocating for every neoliberal concession Dems made to Republicans. Even recently he announced the appointment of a well-known advocate of privatizing Social Security, Andrew Biggs, to head up the very agency he wants to destroy. How many times does this enemy of the American working class need to thumb his nose at Democrats and progressives alike before they admit he is their arch enemy and an advocate for the very inequality you rail against?