Of course he is

Kyle Smith:

Joe Biden’s appeal to voters seems to rest on three factors: One, he’d restore normalcy to the Oval Office and act like a grownup; two, he’s a political moderate; and three (related to the other two), people think the country is generally going off the rails and want to punish everyone they consider responsible for said derailment.

By November, Biden will still be Biden — a guy Americans know and more or less trust, at least by today’s standards, when politicians are unpopular. By fall, though, the country may or may not still seem like it’s going off the rails. If it doesn’t, the focus will return to Biden’s reputation for moderation. How well will that hold up?

Since wrapping up the Democratic Party nomination in March, Biden has done the opposite of what you’d think and resisted any urge to tack back toward the center on economic matters. A CNBC reporter, Robert Frank, looked into Biden’s tax hikes and noted that they dwarf Hillary Clinton’s. He put the total tax cost of Clinton’s proposals at $1.5 trillion; Biden’s, at $4 trillion. (The details are here.) Biden’s “unity task force” of economic advisers and environmental activists was staffed not to appeal to the center but to placate supporters of Bernie Sanders by including two Sanders aides and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Biden is now talking about using the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity to “rewrite the economy,” recalling Rahm Emanuel’s wish to “never let a crisis go to waste.”

NBC News reports that Biden’s advisory team and the Democratic Party are pushing for “far more aggressive actions on multiple fronts than many were considering at the start of the campaign.” Ocasio-Cortez polls badly. It would be unwise for Biden to allow himself to be associated with her brand of economic and environmentalist thinking. A Biden who carefully refused to commit himself to any kind of radical economic program but focused solely on offering a change of leadership style would be an attractive candidate. Instead, Biden has been saying that recent events have caused the U.S. to “need some revolutionary institutional changes.” He has praised his task force for offering a “bold, transformative platform for our party and for our country.” He said in a tweet that “we won’t just rebuild this nation — we’ll transform it.”

Americans want relief from all the drama, not for the uncertainty and turmoil to take on a different shape.

Such as what CNBC reports:

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, laying out his plans for an economic recovery Thursday, said President Donald Trump is too focused on the stock market during the coronavirus pandemic.

The former vice president, speaking at an event in Pennsylvania, said he wanted to end the “era of shareholder capitalism.”

“Throughout this crisis, Donald Trump has been almost singularly focused on the stock market, the Dow and Nasdaq. Not you. Not your families,” Biden said. “If I am fortunate enough to be elected president, I’ll be laser-focused on working families, the middle-class families I came from here in Scranton. Not the wealthy investor class. They don’t need me.”

Among the policies Biden described Thursday is a tax hike for corporations. His plans call for a 28% corporate tax rate, well above the 21% set by Trump’s 2017 tax cuts but still below where the top rate was previously.

Jack Lew, who served as Treasury secretary when Biden was vice president, said Thursday on “Closing Bell” that when the Obama administration discussed tax reform, a 21% rate was lower than even what business leaders were asking for and that the economy could withstand higher taxes.

“There’s a lot of room in tax policy to be both sensible and fair and to promote economic growth,” said Lew, a supporter of Biden.

The U.S. stock market sold off sharply beginning in late February as the coronavirus pandemic began to spread in the U.S. and Europe, before hitting its recent bottom on March 23.

Since then, the S&P 500 has rallied more than 40% with unprecedented support from the Federal Reserve and the CARES Act, which expanded unemployment benefits and provided other fiscal relief. The broad market index is still down more than 2% for the year.

The market rebound has come despite a dramatic increase in jobless claims that saw the unemployment rate rise to levels not seen since World War II. Unemployment was still above 11% in June despite a record gain of jobs, according to the Labor Department.

Trump said in a tweet Monday that investment accounts would “disintegrate and disappear” if Biden won in November.

Including your 401(k) account.

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