OPINION:
Coronavirus is giving the Democrats — and their presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden — an excuse to radically shift the course of this country to socialism.
Michelle Obama said the quiet part out-loud in a podcast last week. While talking to journalist Michele Norris, Mrs. Obama said that the coronavirus pandemic was actually an opportunity to think about “how wealth is distributed” in America.
Scanning left-leaning websites, it’s also clear the most progressive, radical elements in the Democratic Party see coronavirus as an opportunity to pull Joe Biden leftward, and indeed, with his recent policy announcements, he’s moved away from the more moderate platform he once championed to a radically socialist one.
After laying out his “Build Back Better” economic recovery package, crafted in part with now informal policy advier Elizabeth Warren, Mr. Biden admitted, “if I’m elected and this passes I’m going to be good to go down as one of the most progressive presidents in America’s history.”
And he’s right.
The policies he’s laid out post-coronavirus represent “the largest mobilization of public investment since World War II,” as his campaign has stated. The New York Magazine summed it up best with the headline “Biden is planning an FDR-Size Presidency.”
First, there’s the Biden-Sanders Unity Plan, which will set the agenda for the Democratic Party Platform next week. The radical-leftist plan includes support for a House bill that would study the issue of reparations to Black Americans, supports investments in non-traditional “community policing,” suspends all deportations of illegal immigrants, bans for-profit private charter schools, makes public college and university tuition free, and forgives all undergraduate debt for those making under $125,000.
Separately, Mr. Biden’s climate change task force — co-chaired by progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York — calls for an expediated timeline to achieve net-zero carbon emissions that Mr. Biden had previously advocated for.
Other Biden proposals demand insurers cover “gender confirmation surgery.” He supports free health care to illegal immigrants and has adopted Ms. Warren’s plans on bankruptcy protections and expanded Social Security benefits.
Mr. Biden’s Health Care Task Force was packed with Bernie Sanders’ allies. With their influence, Mr. Biden’s health care plan now includes a government-run public option.
“This is a very different plan than the one he came in [with],” Abdul El-Sayed, a physician and liberal activist from Michigan told The Washington Post. “It’s not Medicare-for-all, but the issue had been litigated over and over. So we said, ‘Okay, if we can’t win the frame, let’s win the contents of the frame.’ And that’s what we got.”
Mr. Biden’s new policies also address racial inequality, requiring “publicly traded companies to disclose data on the racial and gender composition of their corporate boards,” and “establish an Equity Commission.”
Mr. Biden has also charged the Federal Reserve to take up a third mandate — to “aggressively enhance its surveillance and targeting of persistent racial gaps in jobs, wages, and wealth.” As the National Review points out a “government that puts ‘racial’ and ‘surveillance’ in the same job description for an unelected body should be viewed with alarm.”
Needless to say, these proposals have energized the progressive, radical-left, who like Mr. Obama, view coronavirus as a way to radically transform our society, and Mr. Biden as the Trojan-horse candidate.
“He recognizes he’s in a moment that is a big moment, and it’s a moment of great possibility,” activist Rev. William J. Barber told The Washington Post. “There’s a mourning and a hurting in this country. If he connects and builds policy around that, it will be a powerful reconstruction, if you will, of the American society that is long overdue.”
Faiz Shakir, who managed Mr. Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, agrees that Mr. Biden “envisions a massive public sector role for job creation,” and credits Mr. Biden with “understanding that in Covid times there needs to be thinking about bold practical measures.”
It’s “the most progressive platform of any Democratic nominee in the modern history of the party,” Waleed Shahid, communications director for Justice Democrats, a group that pushes progressive Democrats to challenge more moderate ones, told Vox.
Mr. Sanders himself agrees. On the Biden-Sanders Unity Plan he commented to MSNBC: “I think the compromise that they came up with, if implemented, will make Biden the most progressive president since FDR.”
Don’t be fooled. Mr. Biden is quietly changing course, and the socialists within the Democratic Party are cheering him on every step of the way, utilizing his middle-of-the-road persona as a way to palatably pass through their most radical agendas.
• Kelly Sadler is the communications director for America First Policies, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting policy initiatives that put America First and a former special assistant to President Trump.
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