"recent analysis found that 40% of the United States’ COVID deaths were the result of Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic."
I am far from being a Trump supporter, but this is a bit disingenuous. The problems that arose and made evident at the outset of the pandemic, however badly mitigation was handled, are inherent in a system that puts corporate interests ahead of those of the public.
We have been hostage to such interests since '80 and neither party saw the danger in "just in time" supply chains that are dependent on foreign sources. Your new couch arriving a week late is not life-threatening, but the same cannot be said for ventilators and PPE. It is only a matter of time until this perversion of the free market bites us in the ass again as we have allowed the production offshoring of vital medications to countries that are not known for quality or responsibility in the name of corporate healthcare and insurance profits.
"While the trickle-down philosophy centers corporations and the wealthy as the job-creating, wealth-producing engines of the economy, Biden offered a new understanding of where American prosperity is created."
Biden did little to move such centers. All he did was verbalize his desire to expand the economy via higher taxation of the wealthy and corporations. This, as he knows very well, will only solidify the best-funded and organized opposition to his plans and cause a proliferation of "economists" and corporate leaders against them. It is also a zero-sum game that cannot be won.
We should tax the wealthy considerably more, but taxation cannot be the source of "funding" for anything at the federal level. If we collectively want more and improved infrastructure we only have to write legislation to fund it, no taxing or borrowing is necessary unless such funding would stress the resource and labor availability beyond its potential.
"“When you help the broad population — the middle — become secure and prosperous, you not only have much faster rates of overall economic growth, but also a much more stable and secure democracy.”"
It should be evident, especially after the election of Trump and the Jan 6 debacle, that there is a large contingency of Americans that are totally anti-democratic. The Republican party has openly adopted a fascist platform with Trump as the unwitting dictator and the largely misinformed base of the party is quite comfortable with relinquishing their right to a representative government.
That is an achievement that is remarkable in its own right but wasn't possible without the collusion of the "opposition" party, and Biden has shown an obvious affinity to privatization and trickle-down econ over his entire career. I will be doubtful of the tiger's professed change of stripes until proven wrong.
He's already negotiated the amount of spending down by half to gain the approval of his own party's usual suspects and then by half again in a predictably failed attempt at "bipartisanship". This has been the pattern of Democratic administrations with congressional majorities since Clinton, so forgive me if I view your accolades comparing him with FDR with disbelief. He doesn't even measure up to Eisenhower in my estimation.
