President Joe Biden, Diplomacy, and the Working Class

New York, June 20, 2021–One thing nice about being homeless in New York City is that you can enjoy free speech.(I am not so sure about freedom of the press, however.) When one is homeless in New York, one can freely express one’s opinion about, say, the U.S. president, and still remain under the radar. I know a blog on social media is different, as I suggested a moment ago. Although I am currently homeless in New York, I will comment on the current U.S. president on my blog, as I had hoped to after he was first elected, and I wrote a blog post on the outgoing president, President Donald Trump, instead.

I was thrilled when current President Joe Biden was elected and began his term. I wanted to celebrate his victory with a blog post, but I ended up writing about the then-still-current president, President Donald Trump, instead. I would like to celebrate President Joe Biden’s victory now. Congratulations and Godspeed, I say to President Joe Biden now.

Part of the reason I voted for then-candidate Joe Biden was that I believed he would still do the job as a U.S. president, despite the fact that he was being demonized by President Trump and the right wing as politically far-left. I did not believe President Trump when he erroneously claimed that our country and the world would fall apart if Joe Biden were elected. What’s more, Joe Biden held his own against Donald Trump in the debates. As a plausibly working-class guy, candidate Joe Biden won my confidence.

President Joe Biden has borne that out, and shown his promise is true. The only problem is that, as usual with U.S. presidents, including former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden is doing too good a job as the U.S. president. Donald Trump did not do too good a job, but he did the job. President Joe Biden is doing the job, also, but I think he is doing too good a job, currently.

First, I do not remember what Joe Biden has done so far, up to this point, for the working class and the labor movement in America. I remember now. Joe Biden paid the American people with the stimulus checks, and he is trying now to stimulate the economy, albeit without the stimulus payments to the American people. I remember, also, that President Biden attempted to raise the federal minimum wage, but was blocked by the Republicans in the U.S. Senate. The federal minimum wage has not changed, therefor, at this time.

As for doing the job as U.S. president, Joe Biden has really done a bang-up job. It’s scary how well he is doing, in this regard. Micheal D. Shear said it in his article in the *New York Times* (6/18/21, p. A8). Commenting on President Biden’s poise upon leaving Europe, Shear wrote that “he left Switzerland to conclude his eight-day, three-country diplomatic tour of Europe.” That is true. President Biden shored up the G-7 in England, then NATO from Brussels, Belgium, and he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva. He also met with the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan along the way, and the European Union (EU) (*New York Times,* 6/18/21; *Daily News,* New York, 6/16/21, p. 10, 6/15/21, p. 18.) President Biden accomplished an entire year’s worth of diplomacy, in Europe, and he did it in just over one week.

What is truly frightening about all of this is not even the staggering pace and volume of the diplomacy, but the content. With the G-7 and NATO et al, President Joe Biden shored up global capitalism and the world economy, and re-established America’s place in the world, diplomatically and economically. That is, capitalism globally is still sound, and Europe and the U.S. are on top, to spell it out. By the time today’s paper hit the newsstands, what’s more, President Biden had already earned the ire of the East on the planet, including China and North Korea (*New York Post,* 6/19/21, pp. 9, 24). Russia had already expressed its disdain. I should note that this bad start with the East can change.

The troubling thing for me is that the working class of the world, including in the United States, was just held down under global capitalism. Unfortunately, that is part of the job of the U.S. President, in my humble opinion. Think NAFTA redux. This is the G-7, baby, and if anyone out there has any questions, that is the NATO summit. I just hope President Biden had fun, that is all.

I still think President Joe Biden’s heart is in the right place regarding the working class. (So was President Bill Clinton’s). I think he still wants to help the working class, but he, sadly, lacks the occasion to do so. President Joe Biden may be doing fine as the U.S. president, but he needs to demonstrate to the American people, and to American organized labor and the American worker, in particular, that he works in their interest and on their side, in point of fact and in this real world. President Joe Biden needs to make the occasion and prove some working-class credentials, at this time.

Otherwise, he’s doing just fine. Very fine.

—Nicholas Patti

New York, NY

USA