Source: Anna Moneymaker / Getty
Watching President Biden’s farewell last week, I couldn’t help but be impressed with how, in just four years, the president not only delivered on his 2020 campaign promises but spectacularly went beyond them, creating a record of 16.6 million new jobs and cutting the racial wealth gap to its lowest point in 20 years.
He’s raised wages and cut the cost of prescription drugs. He invested nearly $600 billion in rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure, helped create 21 million new small businesses, protected over 1.2 million Americans from lead in their drinking water and provided free or discounted high-speed internet service to more than 23 million low-income households.
Thanks to President Biden’s leadership, more Americans have health insurance than ever before, we passed the first major gun safety law in nearly 30 years and both unemployment and violent crime are at a 50-year low.
He also helped lead our nation out of the worst pandemic since 1918 and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression…but who’s counting?
Donald Trump, on the other hand, has promised to repeal much of that progress.
Where President Biden has led the way on clean energy and fighting climate change, Trump has pledged to eliminate our work to cut emissions and launch a new era of drilling and fracking across America.
Where President Biden championed equality by investing in minority-owned businesses, fighting housing discrimination, rebuilding disadvantaged communities and rooting out systemic racism in our justice system, Trump has vowed to immediately end our federal government’s commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion.
Where President Biden worked for all Americans, Trump promised to end birthright citizenship. Where President Biden worked to increase funding for education, Trump vowed to cut federal funding to schools that teach American history that isn’t whitewashed. Where President Biden led the fight against terrorists, Trump has promised to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists.
On top of all that, Donald Trump and the MAGA GOP made a series of promises that are simply beyond the power of a president to deliver upon including pledges to:
- Significantly lower the price of groceries.
- Bring gas prices to under $2.00 per gallon.
- Cut the cost of car insurance in half.
- Convince landlords to reduce rent across the nation.
- Bring down the price of a single-family home.
- Ensure the average family qualifies for an interest rate below 3%.
- Eliminate taxes on Social Security.
- Eliminate taxes on tips.
- Eliminate taxes on overtime.
- End the war in Ukraine in January.
- End the ongoing conflict in Israel.
- Lower taxes for all families making under $200,000 per year.
Source: Bryan Woolston / Getty
Of course, Trump knows he can’t deliver on these. That’s why he’s already trying as hard as he can to walk them back including his signature campaign promise to lower grocery prices. But that’s not a real surprise. After all, the GOP has a long history of overpromising and underdelivering. That’s one of the main reasons Trump lost in 2020.
In order to win the election, Donald Trump wrote a check to the American people and that check is coming due. The clock starts ticking on January 20th.
As Democrats, that’s where we come in.
You see, we all know that Trump and the MAGA GOP will do anything to distort history and dodge responsibility for their failed leadership. They’ve been doing it for as long as any of us can remember. Our job is to stand up to do what we can to protect the American people from disastrous policies like putting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security on the chopping block. But we also have to hold them accountable for making outlandish promises they have no intention of living up to.
When they try to hem and haw about legislative and bureaucratic resistance, we have to point out that they have no one to blame but themselves. How many times did we hear MAGA members of Congress try to blame Democrats when they couldn’t get a Republican majority to vote for a Republican Speaker of the House? Get ready to watch that kind of dysfunction on steroids and, when they try to roll out the old scapegoats of “Big Government” or the “Washington Swamp,” it’s up to us to tell the truth.
Republicans now control the House, the Senate, the White House and the Supreme Court. They ARE the government. They ARE the swamp they want to drain. They’re the ones in power and, at the end of the day, the buck stops with them for better or worse. We have to remind them of that. We have to remind the people. We have to hold the MAGA machine accountable.
We have to remind Donald Trump that he’s on the clock for the American people…and the clock is ticking.
Donald Trump can make up all the empty excuses he wants. This isn’t a game.
Antjuan Seawright is a Democratic political strategist, founder and CEO of Blueprint Strategy LLC and a senior visiting fellow at Third Way. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter @antjuansea.
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