Whether Biden lifted from Trump and his back-filling ideologists or whether the populist right has just learned from the trad-left the electoral joys of industrial policy and demagoguing Social Security is a question for historians, or at least those handy with Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man memes.
But the effects of this ecstatic-if-tumultuous policy embrace on the rest of us will now stretch out indefinitely into the future, more likely to be halted only by external shock rather than by any major-party spade-work to prepare for utterly predictable, self-inflicted policy failure. Our long (and global) populist moment now looks more like an era.
On the governance front, we should expect not just status-quo extensions of Social Security and Medicare but attempts to expand them. Until a decade or so from now, when either taxes will have to be increased, or benefits will be hit with an automatic 20 percent haircut, because we were too busy “protecting” Social Security to actually fix its cruel demographic arithmetic.
[The uniparty keeps expanding, in many ways. There are still some important differences between Republicans and Democrats, but the center line seems to have shifted leftward in the populist era. At this rate, it doesn’t seem likely to correct back to the right. — Ed]
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