The Wall St.Journal 28Feb2020

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Friday, February 28, 2020 |A

Charleston, S.C.

P

astor Jeannette Harley, a
small, bespectacled
woman wearing a bright-
green dress, began the
function by leading the
crowd in a praise chorus based on
Exodus 15:26: “I am the God that
healeth thee.” As the mostly Afri-
can-American crowd took over the
chorus, Ms. Harley punctuated the
lines by pointing upward and
shouting names of diseases God can
heal: “High blood pressure! Acid re-
flux! Ulcer in the stomach!”
About a minute in, she looked to
the side and asked, “Is he ready?”
She meant Tom Steyer, the billion-
aire former hedge-fund manager
running for the Democratic presi-
dential nomination. He had arrived
late to the Family Worship Center
in the tiny town of Yemassee, S.C.

When he appeared at last—black
jeans with multicolored belt, wrin-
kled button-down shirt with cus-
tomary red tartan tie—Mr. Steyer
took the microphone and launched
into a recitation of his humble ori-
gins. “I know people in the press
describe me as a rich person,” he
said, but that doesn’t tell the story.
“My mom was a teacher in the pub-
lic schools of New York....She
was not a fancy person.”
Mr. Steyer cultivates the image
of a righteous bruiser. He speaks
quickly, with a determined tone and
gravelly voice, as if impatient to
batter an opponent. “I had no idea
Tom Steyer was so mean,” he

He shouts his way through

thestate,asTomSteyer

challenges him for the

African-American vote.

Can Biden Recover in South Carolina?

proudly recalls an opponent saying. He speaks often of the need to “break” corporations. In Yemassee he expressed disbelief that anybody wants to compromise with the GOP. “When people say they know how to get along with Republicans, I’m like, ‘How?’ When was the last time someone got along with a Republi- can in a positive way?” The main thrust of Mr. Steyer’s message in South Carolina is that he will fight for black Americans. Until recently, the state’s first-in- the-South primary was expected to be an easy win for Joe Biden, thanks to his longstanding ties with the state’s black Democratic lead- ers. The latest polls still have him ahead in the state, but Sen. Bernie Sanders has robbed Mr. Biden of some support—and Mr. Steyer has waged a relentless campaign to per- suade the state’s black voters to abandon the faltering former vice president. Much of Mr. Steyer’s stump speech relates to race in one way or another. “We have unbearable injus- tice in this country,” he told the crowd in Yemassee, to hums of agreement, “and we’re sitting in a church close to every single one of those injustices at a very deep level.” He mentioned a burning landfill in Lockhart, S.C., and con- taminated water in Denmark, S.C., suggesting that these failures were the results of white racism. Mr. Steyer favors budgeting $ billion to historically black colleges and universities. To the Family Worship Center audience, he pointed out that he is the only person in the race who supports reparations for slavery. “Why do I favor reparations? Because something bad happened, and we have to re- pair it.” He went on to explain that he wants to start a “formal com- mission on race” to “retell the story of the last 400-plus years.” There’s more than talk to Mr.

Steyer’s aggressive bid for black support. Early in February, the State, a Columbia newspaper, re- ported that state Rep. Jerry Govan, a Democratic member of the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus, was paid more than $43,000 by the Steyer campaign over a few months for “community building services.” When the former state Democratic Party chairman Dick Harpootlian, a vocal Biden ally, called attention to the story in a tweet—“Is [Mr. Go- van] pocketing the dough or redis- tributing the wealth?”—some mem- bers of the Legislative Black Caucus, not coincidentally Steyer supporters, denounced the com- ment as “wrong.” That gave Mr. Steyer the opportunity in the New Hampshire debate to harangue Mr. Biden for associating himself with a guy who makes “openly racist” remarks, though it’s unclear what Mr. Harpootlian’s quip had to do with race. In pitching those same black voters, Mr. Biden appears docile by comparison. Partly the difference is physical. Whereas Mr. Steyer

conveys a kind of hyperactive wrath, Mr. Biden gives the impres- sion that he would like the whole thing to be over. On Monday, Mr. Biden announced his housing plan at a North Charleston community center. Only a few local African- Americans, perhaps 10, showed up. Mr. Biden appeared visibly slug- gish. He was smartly dressed as al- ways—blue checked shirt, well-fit- ting navy blazer—but his voice was muted, his words slurred. More than once he said “North Carolina” when he meant North Charleston, and the plan’s details were clearly a mystery to him. That night he spoke at a rally at the College of Charleston and appeared to get himself through it by force of will. His campaign had set up a teleprompter—unusual for a routine stump speech—but Mr. Bi- den chose not to use it. Instead he hobbled around the stage, stiff- kneed. He ran his sentences to- gether and shouted his remarks at an unnaturally high pitch without pausing for applause. “Here’s the deal!” he kept bellowing, as if

someone were interrupting him. At a campaign stop in George- town on Wednesday, Mr. Biden seemed to have recovered his strength. He charmed the audience. At one point a baby cooed, prompt- ing him to quip, with perfect tim- ing: “If he’s getting bored, you probably are, too, so let me get to the point.” One problem with Mr. Biden’s Georgetown fans, though—they were almost all white. An hour before, four blocks away, Mr. Steyer had given a talk at the Bethel Afri- can Methodist Episcopal Church. That audience was smaller than Mr. Biden’s but mostly black. Mr. Steyer laid even more emphasis on Donald Trump’s supposed racism, using the word repeatedly. “We’re in church,” he remarked. “Let’s tell the truth!” As the Biden event ended, I spoke to a black minister of an AME church in nearby Santee, S.C. He wore a clerical collar and a blue “Joe” button on his lapel. I asked if he had any reason to think Mr. Steyer could nab the state’s primary from Mr. Biden. “I don’t think so,” he said. “In my church, ain’t nobody heard of no Tom Steyer. But they know Joe Biden.” Is Mr. Biden taking black support for granted? “Maybe,” he said, motion- ing back to the building. “You saw who was in there? Whole lot of white people.” If Mr. Biden manages to pull it off here, it will be the result of old loyalties and happy memories of the Obama years, not because the vice president wowed crowds with his oratory. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, the state’s senior elected Democrat, endorsed Mr. Bi- den on Wednesday. That may be enough to give him a win, but re- storing his campaign will require the God that healeth.

Mr. Swaim is an editorial page writer at the Journal.

By Barton Swaim

BARTON SWAIM Joe Biden with supporters in North Charleston, S.C., Monday.

OPINION

Bernie Sanders’s Biggest Problem Isn’t Socialism

London
With America’s
Democrats on the
cusp of nominat-
ing Bernie Sand-
ers, they have one
last chance to look
across the Atlantic
for a glimpse of
how this could end
up.
The warning
comes via the British Labour Party’s
historic defeat in December’s gen-
eral election. Under Jeremy Corbyn,
a leader uncannily similar to Mr.
Sanders in ideology, affect and ca-
reer trajectory, Labour suffered its
worst drubbing since 1935. This de-
spite Mr. Corbyn’s adroitness at ral-
lying a youthful and fervent-to-the-
point-of-derangement base, the likes
of which British politics has rarely if
ever witnessed. Ahem.
The conventional interpretation
is that it’s Mr. Corbyn’s socialism
what done it. He promised a whole-
sale re-nationalization of the British
economy—utilities, transportation,
even the internet. He promised an
outsize expansion of the state, and
outsize tax hikes to pay for it. Those
taxes, voters soon noticed, would

fall heavily on the middle class, not only the rich. All that played a role in Labour’s drubbing, but economics may not have been decisive. Polling by You- Gov before the election found voters trusting Labour more than the Con- servatives on health policy and education, less on taxation, and roughly the same on unemployment. This angle needn’t worry Mr. Sanders much. Unlike Americans, British voters had labored under the yoke of democratic socialism within living memory. It wasn’t a positive experience for them, and it prompted their turn to Margaret Thatcher and free-market reform in

Mr. Corbyn pledged to take
the U.K. back to a past Britons
would rather forget.
Mr. Sanders has the luxury of
campaigning for socialism in a
country that has never tried it. He
can present his program as a door
to a fabulous new future. U.S. voters
still frustrated with the economy for
various reasons might be tempted
to knock on that door, not under-
standing what lurks on the other
side.
The Corbyn warning for Demo-
crats takes a different form. What

British voters really, really didn’t like about Mr. Corbyn wasn’t his economics. It was his culture. To a remarkable extent the De- cember election wasn’t a vote on Brexit or socialism or Prime Minis- ter Boris Johnson’s economic “level- ing up” of poorer regions. It was a referendum on Mr. Corbyn’s British- ness: Does he have enough of it, yea or nay?

Nay, said voters in Labour’s tradi- tional heartlands. Michael Ashcroft, a former Conservative deputy chairman and veteran pollster, this month released a postmortem on Labour’s campaign. His surveys and focus groups with former Labour voters who defected in 2019 are devastating. “He is not patriotic,” one participant said of Mr. Corbyn. “He meets all those terrorist par- ties. You want someone with good

old values.” Quoth another: “He said he would never press the [nuclear] button. We need protection. He should have said he would, even if he didn’t mean it.” Among those who voted Labour in 2017 but not in 2019, the most common reason for switching alle- giance, cited by 53%, was that they didn’t want Mr. Corbyn to be prime minister. That sentiment outranked Brexit as a motivation even among voters who defected to Mr. John- son’s get-Brexit-done Conservatives by 75% to 73% (respondents could choose more than one option). These voters decided the election. Mr. Corbyn had given them ample reason for doubt: There was his ten- dency to pal around with terrorists who killed Britons or their allies. His indulgence of anti-Semitism in Labour’s ranks, which offended working-class Britons’ sense of de- cency. His disdain for alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organi- zation and military programs such as the Trident nuclear deterrent, which give the U.K. its esteemed place in the world. Mr. Sanders faces the same problem. No one who shares Middle America’s core values of freedom,

democracy and entrepreneurship would choose to honeymoon in the Soviet Union. No one who values American achievements in science, the arts or education would heap praise on Cuba’s schools. Every other Democratic candidate on a debate stage with Mr. Sanders has been able to communi- cate even the most fantastical policy ideas with an undertone of patriotism. Mr. Sanders alone sounds as if he wants to replace America rather than transform it. And if he wins the Democratic nomination he’ll be running against Donald Trump, whoseonlyconsis- tent mode is American greatness. Mr. Corbyn ran aground against a candidate in Boris Johnson and a policy in Brexit that spoke directly to British patriotism. British voters concluded that the danger of a leader who didn’t share their values was greater than the risk even of Brexit. Labour now faces years in the political wilder- ness as it tries to rebuild the trust of those who came to doubt whether it’s truly a British party. Democrats still have a chance, barely, to spare themselves that misery.

It’s his disdain for his country. That’s the lesson Democrats should draw from Corbyn’s catastrophe.

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It’s a Mistake for Democrats to Deny Good Economic News

I

t’s now clear that the 2020 elec-
tion will be between Donald
Trumpand...well, some Demo-
crat. It’s also clear that the presi-
dent’s campaign will emphasize the
strong real economy—notwithstand-
ing the recent market drop. Good
news on jobs and wages has propped
him up.
So what’s the counterargument?
So far, Democrats’ main retort has
been that the allegedly strong econ-
omy is strong mainly for upper-in-
come groups. The past three years of
expansion actually have produced lit-
tle in the way of gains for the middle

class. Yes, lots of jobs have been cre- ated, but the pace is slower than that of Obama’s second term. Wage in- creases have been meager, progress against inequality nil. All true. But I doubt these gripes will gain political traction against ro- bust job creation and low unemployment rates, including for minorities. That’s the bad news for Democrats. The good news, politicos assure us, is that elections are about the future, not the past. And thinking about what four more years of Donald Trump might bring is frightening. The noneconomic questions are far worse (e.g., will our democracy sur- vive?). But I’ll stick to the economics.

For openers, voters tell pollsters they are deeply concerned about their health-care coverage. If Mr. Trump gets re-elected, they’ll have a lot more to worry about. After all, this is the president who repeatedly tried to kill ObamaCare during his first year in office—even though Re- publicans had nothing ready to replace it. To this day, he denigrates John McCain, who prevented that incipient tragedy. And lately Mr. Trump is posing, preposterously, as a defender of coverage for pre-ex- isting conditions while his own Jus- tice Department has been in court trying to get ObamaCare declared unconstitutional. On the Democratic side, Medicare for All divides the candidates. But there is no doubt that any new Dem- ocratic president would try to ex- pand health-care coverage, not re- duce it. Next on the worry list is the fate of the environment. The president’s dangerously irresponsible actions and rhetoric on climate change gar- ner most of the attention—and rightly so, because cooking the planet poses an existential threat. But the Trump administration is also waging war against protected wetlands, national parklands and more. Four more years of this is a frightening prospect—and not just for glaciers. The Democratic candidates differ on environmental policy, too. But every one of them recognizes the dan- gers posed by climate change, knows it isn’t a hoax, and wants to do something about it. Third comes immigration policy,

which is a humanitarian issue but also an economic one. Like tens of millions of Americans, Mr. Trump is a grandson of immigrants. Yet his administration mocks Emma Lazarus and shames the Statue of Liberty. His big new ideas on immigration seem to be terrorizing mothers and chil- dren at the southern border and building walls that get blown down by the wind. Is this really what America wants?

The Democratic Party doesn’t favor open borders—no matter how many times Republicans say so. Someone should inform the president that border controls existed under President Obama and before. But every one of the Democratic candidates would reverse the inhumane Trump policies that have disgraced our nation. Fourth, there is good reason to worry about what might happen to the independence of the Federal Re- serve in a second Trump term. While he appointed a fine Fed chairman in Jerome Powell, Mr. Trump has been trying to undermine him ever since. And he has recently nominated economist Judy Shelton for a seat on the Fed board. Among other problems, Ms. Shelton disputes the important idea “that the Fed should

stand aloof as an independent agency.” Instead, she argued in these pages last September that the Fed should “pursue a more coordinated relationship with both Congress and the president.” Oh my. Last—and apparently least, in to- day’s politics—comes the federal budget deficit. The Trump team claimed that tax cuts would shrink the deficit. In fact, they have pushed it into the trillion-dollar range, and there is no reason to be- lieve it would shrink in a second Trump term. Who knows? If em- boldened by re-election, the president might even call for another round of tax cuts for the wealthy. After all, they still pay higher taxes than the poor, don’t they? The Democrats have starkly different priorities when it comes to the budget. For example, they favor pre- serving the safety net over tax cuts for the rich. That said, one or two of the candidates are no more fiscally responsible than is Mr. Trump. I’m not a deficit-ophobe; we don’t need to balance the budget. But adding a trillion dollars to the national debt each year means rocketing it into the stratosphere. Maybe we should at least slow the pace. In short, the Democrats should stop arguing that the economy isn’t really strong and start painting the grim picture of what is likely to happen under four more years of Donald Trump. It’s quite a nightmare.

Mr. Blinder is a professor of economics and public affairs at Prince- ton University and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve.

By Alan S. Blinder

Instead, tell how Trump’s policies on health, climate, immigration and more will erase recent gains.

The Wall St.Journal 28Feb2020

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