When recent Cuban protests broke out, White House officials did everything they could to avoid mentioning either “socialism” or “communism.” After some blowback on the matter, Joe Biden finally came out and said, “Communism is a failed system — a universally failed system. And I don’t see socialism as a very useful substitute. But that’s another story.”
What story is that? Biden has done more than any president in memory — perhaps ever — to normalize socialism in American political life. The “crucial framework” of his climate plan for “environmental justice,” the Green New Deal, which effectively hands transportation and energy to the state and intrudes on nearly every aspect of economic life, was written by Cuban regime apologist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Ocasio-Cortez is perhaps the second most well-known socialist in the country. Biden’s joint 110-page policy wish list for the Democratic Party was co-written with the nation’s most famous collectivist, Castro apologist Bernie Sanders. The document is jammed with policies that a moderate Senator Biden would never have embraced. “The goals of the task force were to move the Biden campaign into as progressive a direction as possible, and I think we did that,” Sanders told NPR at the time. “On issue after issue, whether it was education, the economy, health care, climate, immigration, criminal justice, I think there was significant movement on the part of the Biden campaign.”
Mission accomplished. “If I’m the nominee I can tell you one thing — I would very
much want Bernie Sanders to be part of the journey,” Biden had noted. “Not as a vice presidential nominee, but just in engaging in all the things that he’s worked so hard to do, many of which I agree with.”
Oh, he’s part of the journey. Not long ago, Sanders was little more than a radical oddity that Vermonters sent to D.C. Today, he’s the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, guiding a reported $3.5 trillion budget resolution that Democrats plan to cram through using reconciliation. Yes, it’s less than the $6 trillion Sanders first proposed — everything looks “moderate” in comparison to Bernie’s proposals — but larger than any spending bill in American history. If voters want an octogenarian collectivist running the budget, that’s their choice, of course. But if socialism really isn’t a “very useful substitute” why is the president leaning on socialists to drive his agenda?
