No one needs to worry that President Biden might forget to show up in communities where the pivotal working-class constituency lives. In “Biden stays close to home as he plots blue-collar focused presidential travel,” Kevin Liptak writes at CNN Politics: “Want to see President Joe Biden in person? Consider a move to Pennsylvania.…That is where the President visited again Wednesday, his sixth visit to the commonwealth of his birth since taking office six months ago. He toured a Mack Trucks facility in the Lehigh Valley, met with local union members and received a briefing on the company’s new electric dump truck….”It’s a nice area,” Biden observed to one of the facility’s employees as they walked alongside a cab assembly line. “It’s almost heaven. I’m from Scranton.”….Pennsylvania and Ohio will be the site of contested Senate races next year. And those states’ working-class towns and industrial heritage make them well-suited to promote infrastructure, Biden’s current chief agenda item….a pattern has emerged in each of Biden’s trips that underscores his attention toward blue-collar workers. Speaking after visiting a training center for electrical workers in Cincinnati last week, Biden underscored why he has focused in particular on union workers….”If every IBEW person decided they’re going to quit, this country comes to a screeching halt,” he said in a video posted to Instagram….On previous visits to Pennsylvania, Biden could be found touring a flooring company in Chester, speaking at a carpenters training facility in Pittsburgh and celebrating Amtrak’s 50th anniversary at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station….He has engaged in similar activities in neighboring Ohio, which he visited most recently last week, and Michigan, where he took a joy ride in one of Ford’s new electric pickup trucks in May.”

From “Jan. 6 police officers give a master class on the dangers of right-wing extremism” by E. J. Dionne, Jr. at The Washingon Post: “Four law enforcement heroes made abundantly clear at Tuesday’s inaugural hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol why this inquiry is essential and why so many Republicans wanted to keep it from happening….Their dramatic, heartfelt testimony also made an airtight case that right-wing extremism is a clear and present danger to the United States….“What makes the struggle harder and more painful is to know so many of my fellow citizens, including so many of the people I put my life at risk to defend, are downplaying or outright denying what happened,” D.C. police officer Michael Fanone said….A thorough investigation of what happened will necessarily be an inquiry into the right-wing extremism that is bleeding into the mainstream of the Republican Party. The best among the Republicans know how dangerous this is for their party and the country. Unfortunately, they do not currently have the upper hand in the GOP, which is why Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) were named to the committee by a Democratic House speaker, not by their own leadership….And there was nothing subtle about the racism confronted by Dunn, who testified that the rioters repeatedly addressed him with an unprintable racial epithet. “Other Black officers shared with me their own stories of racial abuse on January 6,” he said….What happened on Jan. 6 was monstrous, the product of a dangerous, anti-democratic sickness haunting parts of the American right. This is the sort of event that a free nation must come to terms with, not ignore; investigate, not sweep under the rug; and understand, not dismiss as a one-off display of violence. That’s why this committee’s work is so important.”

“Rather than insisting on “Medicare for All” — Sanders’ trademark universal, government-funded health care plan — or the climate-change-fighting Green New Deal, Our Revolution is focusing on the more modest alternatives endorsed by President Joe Biden,” Bill Weissert of AP notes in “Pro-Sanders Group Rebranding Into ‘Pragmatic Progressives’: The progressive advocacy group Our Revolution is rebranding now that Bernie Sanders is no longer the undisputed leader of the left“….”Those include expanding eligibility for the existing Medicare program and curtailing federal subsidies for fossil fuel companies…..The shift reflects a progressive movement that is at a crossroads. Biden won the Democratic nomination last year by offering more centrist alternatives to much of Sanders’ agenda. Since then, progressive candidates have faced a series of electoral disappointments and are contending with anxiety from moderate Democrats worried that the party’s leftward shift could cost them control of Congress during next year’s midterm elections….“Coming out of Bernie’s 2016 campaign, in some ways the organization was probably more of a bridge organization between the two electoral cycles,” Joseph Geevarghese, Our Revolution’s executive director, said in an interview. “What we’re trying to build is something that is longer term” and “part of the overall ecosystem of the progressive movement.”….“I think we are rooted in a bold, progressive vision, but we’re also pragmatic progressives,” Geevarghese said….“You can see a real change in the trajectory of where the Democratic Party is when it comes to the big investments, the use of government levers to improve people’s livelihoods, the fight against climate change,” said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth Action.”

At The New Yorker, John Cassidy cites “research by economists—including Janet Currie, of Princeton, James Heckman, of the University of Chicago, and Hilary Hoynes, of the University of California, Berkeley—which showed that, over the long term, government interventions targeted at early childhood generate high returns for the individuals concerned and for society at large. The prioritization of real-world results over a priori theorizing marked an important advance in economics, and it is no coincidence that the Biden economic team is heavily populated by empiricists. But, to make the monthly child tax-credit payments a reality, it also took years of political effort, two upset Democratic Senate victories in Georgia, and a President willing to prioritize a costly anti-poverty initiative. For that last one, Biden deserves special credit….With votes on advancing the two big spending measures expected before Congress goes into its summer recess, and new doubts emerging about the prospects for agreement on the infrastructure package, the next couple of weeks could be key. From a macro-political perspective, the justification for the ambitious Biden agenda is that, after four years of Donald Trump, and a second Presidential election in which Trump gained more than forty-six per cent of the vote, it is imperative to demonstrate to the wider public that the game isn’t rigged for the élites, and that the federal government can deliver tangible benefits to working Americans. Only by accomplishing this objective will it be possible to build a new social bargain on which democracy (and non-predatory capitalism) can rest more securely. One may quibble with elements of this strategy. But, after a week in which it was revealed that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff feared that Trump was planning to execute a coup earlier this year, the thought of its failing outright is almost too dire to contemplate. What’s at stake is much more than dollars and cents.”