During the general election campaign, Joe Biden, his handlers and establishment media pundits rejected claims that he was a tool to advance the agenda of the Democratic Party’s far-left faction.
“Old Joe,” they assured American voters could be trusted to govern as the “moderate” politician he was for 47 years in Washington.
In an appearance on “The View” in June, for example, Jill Biden argued that as “a moderate,” her husband could win many Republicans who didn’t like Trump. She recalled people coming up to her and saying, “Jill, I’m a Republican, but I’m going to vote for your husband because he’s a moderate.” New York Times columnist David Brooks assured his readers in August that the moderate “forces that brought Joe Biden the nomination are far more powerful than a few extremists in Portland and even the leftist illiberals on campus.”
But if an early assessment by the leader of the far-left congressional “squad” is any indication, after one week in office, Biden is pleasing the progressive base, if not the “extremists” and “leftist illiberals.”
“I’m feeling extraordinarily encouraged,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., the House sponsor of the Green New Deal. “And I think that the significance of President Biden’s executive orders communicates a lot.”
In an interview on MSNBC’s “All In,” the New York lawmaker said the orders Biden issued Wednesday on climate change, in particular, show “a good-faith openness and relationship” to the party’s progressive activist base.
“One is that it really communicates that he meant what he said on the campaign trail, that he would make climate change a central priority of his administration, and that he considers it, not just a national security threat, but frankly, the global matter that it is,” she said.
“But it also really signifies a good-faith openness and relationship to those activist communities that you had mentioned, these grassroots communities and organizations, on the ground workers, etc., scientists, saying, we are not going to be resistant to grassroots movements, but we are going to collaborate and work with grassroots movements all across the United States to make sure that we are creating as many jobs and as much justice as possible as we fight to save our planet.”
During the 2020 election campaign, as WND reported, Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff admitted that the true, ultimate objective of the radical Green New Deal is to radically transform America’s free-enterprise economy into a socialist system.
‘Not the time for small measures’
On Wednesday at the White House, Biden announced that along with ordering the nation’s first national intelligence estimate on climate change, he was forming a new Office of Domestic Climate Policy led by Gina McCarthy, a “civilian climate corps to heal our land,” the deployment of former secretary of state John Kerry as a “climate envoy” and a halting of oil and gas leases on public land.
Biden, who plans to convene a summit of world leaders on Earth Day, April 22, said the aim is “to deliver a whole-government approach to the climate crisis.”
“This is not the time for small measures. We need to be bold,” he told reporters.
Just prior to his inauguration, Biden’s personnel selections indicated, Axios reported, that his administration would be the first in history “to construct economic policy around issues like race, gender equality and climate change, rather than around traditional indicators like gross domestic product or deficit ratios.”
Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said that as part of the new thrust, he wants the Biden administration to have the Justice Department investigate organizations funded by fossil-fuel companies that propagate “climate denialism and climate obstruction and political ownership of the Republican Party.”
The climate office head, McCarthy, said at the White House on Wednesday that Biden’s executive order establishing her office “starts by saying it is the policy of this administration that climate considerations shall be an essential element of U.S. foreign policy and national security.”
She called climate change “the most significant public health challenge of our time.”
Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].
This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
