Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo
Donald Trump may not opt to debate his Republican primary opponents at the first scheduled GOP presidential candidate debate, which has been set for next month in Milwaukee, but his line of attacks on them, whether in debate or just on the stump, is clear. Besides whatever personal calumnies he’ll surely deliver, the Republican field has opened itself to attack—and not just from Trump—for going after American politics’ third-rail issue: Social Security.
Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Mike Pence have all said that Social Security needs to be shored up, by which they don’t mean funding projected shortfalls by taxing the rich, but rather reducing benefits for Americans who are not yet in or approaching old age—say, Americans now in their forties or younger. In his 2016 campaign, Trump vowed not to alter Social Security or Medicare benefits, and that’s one vow he largely stuck to when in office. Given his commanding lead over all his Republican rivals, he may not even need to levy this particular attack, but it’s there for him if he chooses.
But conventional Republicans aren’t the only presidential hopefuls who cling to the spare-the-rich-and-screw-the-non-rich policies of the Simpson-Bowles Commission, which called for gutting Social Security benefits for future recipients in 2011. The demand is one of the few actual positions that pops up in the 72-page platform of No Labels, which was released earlier this month.
The vast majority of that platform’s planks are so “balanced” that they can’t even be characterized as stating a position. (Consider, for instance, this gem: “America must strike a balance between protecting women’s rights to control their own reproductive health and our society’s responsibility to protect human life.”) But on Social Security, an actual position does peek through the cracks. “[T]he longer Washington waits to fix Social Security,” the platform states, “the harder it will be to do so, and the more likely it becomes that Americans will get hit with punishing tax increases, significant benefit cuts, or both.” Like DeSantis, Haley, and Pence, the platform goes on to pledge that elders and near-elders will be held harmless. Also like the Republicans, it makes no mention of increasing the progressivity of Social Security taxes and other taxes on our wealthier-than-ever rich as the way to keep the system solvent—though it does raise the specter of tax increases being “punishing.”
So whether or not Trump opts to go after his Republican opponents, I think the No Labels platform opens the door for President Biden to go after the No Labels nominee, should there be one. For that matter, on a general-election debate stage that featured, say, Biden, Trump, and Joe Manchin, Biden could not only attack Manchin for this plank, but point out that he (Biden) is the only one there who’s pro-choice, pro-sick leave, pro-affordable child care, pro-tuition-free community college (all the particulars in Build Back Better that Manchin shot down)—the list goes on and on.
At a time when most Americans believe the United States has become a plutocracy, a candidate like Manchin and a “party” like No Labels can justly be attacked as plutocracy’s friends, just as Trump can be attacked as an autocrat-in-waiting. If, as appears likely, No Labels goes ahead with its plans to wage a presidential campaign, it will be open to well-grounded attacks on two distinct fronts: not only that it will help Trump regain the White House, but also that its own policies preserve and promote the very plutocracy that Americans despise.
