Biden Asks the Best Question: “What Are Republicans For?”

He couldn’t win, but he might have fought to the point of a draw.

President Biden gave his ninth press conference in a year on Wednesday afternoon — as journalists keep reminding us, that’s less than the records of his recent predecessors in the first year. They also predicted the harsh, even hostile questions they would ask him; Politically some rounded up. I don’t want to pick on MSNBC’s Chuck Todd since he had so much company when he criticized Biden, but he said something remarkable just before Biden took the podium. He asked why Biden is not heralding the “green shoots” of the post-Trump economic recovery.

Where had I heard this sentence before? Oh, right: This is how the media taunted the Obama administration in 2009 after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke claimed, “green shoots” the recovery from the Great Recession, although unemployment remained high, homeowners faced foreclosures and the stock market faltered. One of the critics was actually Chuck Todd, hospitality hard ball in July 2009. In an interview with Austan Goolsbee, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, about record unemployment, he got a little caustic: “All right, are those really green shoots? It’s another rise in the unemployment rate, more job losses. Can we still classify green shoots?”

No wonder Biden isn’t promoting “green shoots.”

At the longest presidential press conference in American history (an hour and 52 minutes), Biden vacillated between announcing what he had done to help Americans and acknowledging their pain, particularly over inflation and the continued spread of Covid. He could have, and probably should, have touted more: Notably, he didn’t mention falling jobless claims, a soaring stock market, or record GDP growth, or noting that the inflation rate has actually slowed in recent months.

But Biden cited first-year successes that were underplayed by the media. “We have created 6 million new jobs. More jobs in a year than ever before. Unemployment went down. The unemployment rate fell to 3.9 percent. Child poverty has fallen by almost 40 percent.” More than 210 million Americans have been vaccinated against Covid, he noted, although more should be. When a reporter claimed he hadn’t been able to get his “big” bill passed, he chuckled. “I’ve done two really big ones,” he said, citing America’s $1.9 trillion bailout and the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. “Bigger than any president has ever done.” When another suggested that the Omicron leadership is enforcing massive school closures, Biden countered, “Very few schools are closing. Over 95 percent are still open.”

Progressives have had to blame one of his explanations for rising inflation and supply chain problems, at least in part: corporate consolidation. “A handful of giant companies dominate the market in sectors like meat processing, railways, shipping and other areas,” he said. “Over time it has reduced competition, squeezed out small businesses and farmers and ranchers, and pushed up prices for consumers. Look, I’m a capitalist. But capitalism without competition is not capitalism. It’s exploitation.” He vowed to take unspecified executive branch action to deal with it.

Still, while it accurately reflects political reality, progressives had to be disappointed when he said only “chunks” of his pivotal Build Back Better bill were likely to get through Congress. He appeared to concede that the Child Tax Credit — responsible for the 40 percent drop in child poverty — will not be renewed, but hoped $500 billion in climate spending and universal pre-kindergartens could pass the Senate. These happen to be the two priorities West Virginia obstructionist Joe Manchin backed in December. (As if to underscore what Biden is up against, Manchin entered the Senate while Biden spoke to the press lying about the filibuster’s history and explaining why he wouldn’t vote to change Senate rules abused by Republicans.)

But Biden’s overarching strategy seemed to be to get the media to investigate the authoritarian cowards in the congressional GOP instead of endlessly focusing on Democratic infighting and inadequacies. “I didn’t expect that there would be such a stubborn person [GOP] Efforts to make sure President Biden didn’t do anything,” he said. On this point he’s either posing politically or he’s hopelessly naive. He pounded on Republicans’ continued deference to Donald Trump.

“Have you ever thought that one man out of office could intimidate an entire party if they were unwilling to cast a vote that he thought should be cast for fear of being defeated in the primary?” Biden asked. Slyly he quoted at length from one interview New Hampshire GOP Gov. Chris Sununu explained why he chose not to run for the Senate. “[GOP senators] were all mostly happy with the speed at which they were doing nothing,” Sununu said Washington Examiner. “It was very clear that we simply had to hold the line for two years. OK, so I’m only going to be a roadblock for two years…”I said, ‘Okay, so if we’re going to get stuff done if we win back the White House, why didn’t you do it in 2017? and 2018?’” Sununu said the answer was “Crickets. Yes, crickets.” Biden liked that.

And he kept asking, “What are Republicans for? what are they for Tell me one thing they’re here for.” While saying he “likes” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (again, a statement I’d like to lie detector test for), he asked, “What’s Mitch for? What is he for about immigration? what is he for What does he suggest? What does he have to do with Russia? … What is he in these things for? What are they for?”

I’m not sure if he made it through. He faced some unbearable questions. In one brief sequence, NBC’s Kristen Welker went from channeling criticism that he was not paying enough attention to black voters to channeling criticism that he had gone too far by allegedly comparing opponents of the Voting Rights Act as well as those who support the Not wanting to change Senate rules, pass it on (Kirsten Sinema of Manchin and Arizona) to 1960s segregationists like Birmingham Sheriff Bull Connor and Alabama Gov. George Wallace. He got at least three questions about his citing of Wallace and Connor in his fiery voting rights speech last week, and he kind of snapped at the last one.

“Here’s the thing, there are certain things that are so momentous that you have to speak from both your heart and your head,” he told Phillip Wegmann RealClearPolitics. “I have spoken out strongly about what I believe is at stake. That’s it. And by the way, nobody, nobody forgets who sided with King against Bull Connor. No one. The history books will record it. I’ve argued: don’t think this is a giveaway. You can’t vote like that and then it kind of goes away again. It will stay with you for the rest of your career and long after you’re gone.”

That was good.

Will Biden’s performance on Wednesday — lasting almost two hours, alternately friendly, coaxing, thoughtful and combative — make a difference in his media coverage? Probably not. The big headline was the President’s apparent implication that Washington would not respond vigorously to what Biden described as a “minor Russian invasion” of Ukraine. Press secretary Jen Psaki was quick to clarify: “President Biden has made it clear to the Russian President: If any Russian forces move across the Ukrainian border, it is a renewed invasion and it will be met with a swift, stern, and unified response from the United States and our allies.” I agreed with Biden’s original response; it suggested more stages of response to Russia’s moves than immediate military action, but hawks found it unacceptable, and many journalists pounced largely because it was so close to a “slip” in nearly two hours.

He quickly dropped two stupid questions. Fox’s Peter Doocy asked why he went so far to the ‘left’ and he replied: ‘I’m not Bernie Sanders; I like him, but I’m not a socialist,” noting that priorities such as lower prescription drug prices, infrastructure spending and expanded Covid vaccines and testing are mainstream. A Newsmax moron asked why he thought some people had suggested something rude about Biden’s mental abilities in a poll. “I don’t know,” he said shortly and walked on.

I have no idea what it would take to get the mainstream media to pay more attention to the GOP’s insidious authoritarianism than to Biden’s real or imagined shortcomings. He did a good job on Wednesday but it won’t be enough. A few hours later, as expected, the Democratic Voting Rights Act failed to get the 60 votes it ridiculously needed to pass the Senate. So expect your mainstream media to return to its most ridiculous portrayal ever: Why did Biden spend so much time on this? Voting rights when “Americans” care more about inflation and the economy? Obviously, if you must ask, you’ve never had a problem with voting, and that tells you all you need to know about the make-up of the American press corps.

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