It’s Up To Biden To Protect The Nation And Avert The Chaos Trump Is Aiming For

Do you recall that Ezra Klein was a big booster of Obama’s horrible “Grand Bargain” as far back as 2009? If you do, it should come as no surprise that he used his NY Times column yesterday to throw cold water on the idea of Biden using the 14th Amendment to end the Republican hostage-taking and blackmail once and for all... a very heroic action for a centrist.

And he does so after admitting that “The debt ceiling might be the single dumbest feature of American law. Congress decides to spend money and later schedules a separate vote on whether the government will pay its bills. If the government doesn’t pay its bills, calamity ensues.” And after acknowledging that defaulting could be economically catastrophic: “The stock market falls 45 percent, unemployment rises by five points, and America’s long-term borrowing costs are much, much higher. All of this to pay money we already owe and can easily borrow. Madness.”

But, but, but… John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, who, he wrote, “are the closest the Supreme Court now comes to having swing justices.” So let’s not save the economy becauseRoberts, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch (and presumably Alito and Coney Barrett) might decide to undermine the country’s economic system?

Centrism, Klein’s religion, is always about doing nothing because extremists might react badly. “The Supreme Court,” he wrote, “does what it wants to do. Does it want to let the Biden administration dissolve the debt ceiling using a novel legal theory? And then her wanders off into the pathetic Centrism that got him hired by The Times in the first place. “The strength of the Biden administration’s political position,” he imagines, “is that it stands for normalcy. The debt ceiling has always been raised before, and it must be raised now. But if the administration declares the debt ceiling unconstitutional, only to have the Supreme Court declare the maneuver unconstitutional, then Biden owns the market chaos that would follow. Who will voters blame in that scenario? Republicans, who say they just wanted to negotiate over the budget, as is tradition? Or Biden, who did something no other president had done and failed? [See Daniel Drasin for a more perceptive look at the same point Klein is trying to make.]

He ended his column with the kind of centrism that has killed the Democratic Party as a vehicle for the working class, which has chased millions of blue collar workers right into the arms often MAGA movement. “Right now, at last, the positions are clear. The White House is open to budget negotiations but opposed to debt ceiling brinkmanship. Republicans are the ones threatening default if their demands are not met. They are pulling the pin on this grenade, in full view of the American people. Biden should think carefully before taking the risk of snatching it out of their hands and holding it himself.”

At the same time the liberal NY Times was making the case for surrender to the Freedom Caucus, the conservative Republican Bulwark’s Dennis Aftergut took it upon himself to explain why Trump is urging congressional Republicans to force a default.

And it isn’t just Trump’s love of chaos, “He also has a purely self-serving reason to seek an economic catastrophe,” wrote Aftergut. “You don’t need to be a stable genius to know that a bad economy typically hurts the incumbent in a presidential race. And Trump is desperate to get the immunity from prosecution that being elected president would provide him. He’s terrified of what’s coming from Special Counsel Jack Smith. So he’ll apparently nuke the world economy to protect himself. His MAGA minions in the House of Representatives also understand that voters’ first instinct for an economic crisis is to blame the incumbent president. But just in case that point was missed by the few GOP representatives who still worry a bit about what’s best for the country, Trump’s Truth Social post on Friday was sending them a message. He might as well have written, I’ll come after you if you vote to raise the debt ceiling. The dynamics of the House Republican Conference— with a small number of the most Trumpy members able to disrupt or end McCarthy’s speakership— make it difficult for McCarthy to give an inch in negotiations, especially now with Trump himself piping in. Which means that the risk that no agreement will be reached is very real. The American people would be nothing but collateral damage to Trump.”

A former Assistant U.S. Attorney and Supreme Court Advocate, Aftergut, unlike Mr. Centrism, notes that “Invoking the Fourteenth would not completely avoid uncertainty because the outcome of litigation would be unknown for months— but that uncertainty is far less grave than immediate default. And while not every academic agrees, leading legal scholars are clear that the president has good constitutional arguments to make. By invoking the Fourteenth, Biden could avert the immediate crisis and tell the American people that he will act to save the economy, their jobs, and their families’ well-being— all of which would be at stake with a default.”

By screaming “Do not fold!!!” to Republican House members, Trump has pinned the tail of blame on his own donkey.

He could have stayed out of this fight and let others take the political hit if the worst-case scenario occurs. But he wants to be sure it happens. Should it occur, no one should forget his central role—certainly not as the 2024 presidential campaign heats up.

Keep in mind, too, Trump’s glaring hypocrisy here: This is the self-described “King of Debt” who spent like a drunken sailor during his four years in office, raising the national debt by $7.8 trillion.

He’s not in it to keep America safe from overspending. He’s in it for himself.

He doesn’t even mind telling us he’s a hypocrite. At the CNN town hall on May 10, host Kaitlan Collins confronted Trump with his prior statements on raising the debt ceiling:

Collins: You once said that using the . . . debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge just could not happen. You— you said that when you were in the Oval Office.

Trump: Sure, that’s when I was president.

Collins: So why is it different now that you’re out of office?

Trump: Because now I’m not president.

Trump can’t help saying the quiet part out loud. As he did by insanely bellowing in his January 2017 inaugural about “American carnage.” That is precisely what he seeks to bring about now, in service of his own interests.

It is up to President Biden to protect the nation and avert the chaos Trump is aiming for. And in the months ahead, it is up to sane middle America to speak, act, organize, and vote to ensure that Trump does not get the second term for whose sake he is eager to see the economy crash.