Matt Stoller, who long-time political readers might recall as the co-founder of the OpenLeft blog, now writes a regular Substack column about monopoly power and efforts to take it down.
Today’s column is titled “Why Does the Biden White House Hate Its Own Agenda?” and describes how Biden’s communications team appears to be sabotaging core messages that would help Biden to win the election.
Stoller reviewed dozens, if not hundreds, of White House Press transcripts and found a consistent pattern of deferring to giant-corporate power and refusing to talk about the Biden’s administration’s efforts to reign it in.
Readable here:
www.thebignewsletter.com/…
A few extracts below, inline boldface by me.
- Bruce
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Why Does the Biden White House Hate Its Own Agenda?
It's not a mystery why voters don't know what Biden has done. The White House communications team systematically refuses to talk about the Biden agenda to reorient big business.
“… One question in Democratic politics is why, with Biden’s policy actions, most Americans feel like the government has done nothing for them. Poll after poll shows that no one has heard of anything Biden has done, or if they have, they don’t connect it to the Biden administration.
… The White House communications team routinely tells voters the government doesn’t do anything for them. That is, it’s not that Biden doesn’t have a message. He does. That message is “we don’t do anything for you.” And Americans hear that message loud and clear.
… How does the White House press secretary actually communicate its policies vis-a-vis big business? I went over some transcripts, to understand what they actually say. And what I found is that Psaki, and now Jean-Pierre, convey a philosophy that the President has no role in structuring how large corporations operate, except to offer praise to big business and give them credit for what the administration does. Basically, the White House communications team acts as if the President is the national camp counselor, and the boss is big business...”