Biden in Minnesota: A phony “pro-worker” spin on a right-wing campaign
world socialist website spin
In a televised town hall on CNN Thursday night and a speech Friday in Minnesota, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden sought to put a “pro-worker” spin on his right-wing election campaign.
Many polls are showing Biden’s lead in Midwestern battleground states slipping and there are mounting statements of concern from within the Democratic Party over the lack of enthusiasm among workers and young people for the decades-long senator and former vice president. Under these conditions, Biden is doubling down on his ludicrous self-promotion as a “working stiff” from “hard-scrabble” Scranton, Pennsylvania, in contrast to the billionaire Donald Trump.
Biden is proposing no significant social reforms to go along with his pseudo-populist demagogy, refraining even from demanding the restoration of the $600 per week federal unemployment benefit in the midst of the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression. The Democrats and Republicans in Congress allowed the benefit to expire at the end of July, threatening millions of workers with destitution, hunger and homelessness. Nor does Biden oppose the deadly back-to-work and back-to-school campaign in the midst of a rampaging pandemic being led by Trump at the behest of Wall Street.
The actual content of Biden’s supposed defense of working people is economic nationalism, promotion of the pro-corporate trade unions, anti-Chinese and anti-Russian agitation and the glorification of the US military. All of these themes were on display in his campaign events this week.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/19/bide-s19.html