Democrats are getting the ‘law and order’ Biden they voted for — whether they like it or not

The day that the 2020 presidential election was called for Joe Biden, I mosied on over to Pennsylvania Avenue to catch liberals and progressives celebrating. In the midst of the jubilation, I caught a young man who wore a Covid mask saying “Green New Deal.”

That puzzled me. Unlike Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris or even more middle-ground Democrats like Amy Klobuchar, Biden did not support a Green New Deal. The environmental plan drawn up by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts had not been seen anywhere in his campaign materials.

But the young progressive man celebrating that day in November told me that Franklin D Roosevelt did not initially support many parts of the New Deal, either — and that Lyndon Johnson initially opposed civil rights before he became their biggest champion of them as president.

At the time I thought the young man was a little delusional. Biden won not because he had promised bold, progressive policy. The most consistent bloc of Democratic primary voters — which is to say: Black voters in the South — picked him because they believed he would be the most palatable candidate for white voters to vote for instead of Donald Trump. The suburbs of Arizona, Atlanta and Philadelphia swung to Biden in the general election because they were tired of the chaos of the Trump years.

While some Democratic candidates sought to appeal to the loudest progressive voices, Biden banked that most people wanted to return to “normal”. His rhetoric leaned heavily on nostalgia. Frankly, the results in 2020 proved him right and proved left-wing activists wrong.

At the same time, Biden proved himself to be a malleable party leader. He passed a massive government