RED NOVEMBER: Mainstream Media Acknowledges Biden’s Leftward Shift

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s leftward shift on political issues is garnering the attention of prominent media outlets across the country, most notably now the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

On Sunday, the Post reported that a slew of new policy recommendations from the unity task force set up earlier this year by Biden and his vanquished primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), indicated “a fundamental shift in the political landscape.”

“It’s a remarkable turn for a candidate who was once defined by incrementalism but is now attempting to show voters how he’d grapple with tens of thousands of Americans dying from a global pandemic, an economy in tatters, and a country wracked by a reckoning over racism,” the outlet reported, adding that some of the task force’s proposals, such as building “500 million solar panels, slashing U.S. carbon emissions within 15 years, and rapidly expanding a government-sponsored health care plan,” would have been unthinkable just a few years prior.

The Post’s piece was followed by another on Monday from the Wall Street Journal, describing how the presumptive Democrat nominee’s “big government plan to address racial inequality” contrasts with President Donald Trump’s “market-oriented approach.”

“Mr. Biden’s plans reflect Democrats’ renewed comfort with big government and policies tailored to address minority issues, drawing fresh impetus from recent racial justice protests across the nation,” the Journal reported, further noting that Biden’s plan, which is anchored by $700 billion in new federal spending, underscores the Democrat Party’s “return toward the 1960s-style progressivism … that its leaders have de-emphasized over the past four decades.”

Such coverage by both outlets mirrors the argument laid out in a new book—RED NOVEMBER—from Joel Pollak, a senior editor-at-large at Breitbart News. The book, partially based on Pollak’s observations from the 2020 campaign trail, details how Biden won the nomination of a party that has embraced ideas once considered too radical for the political mainstream.

Pollak, in particular, contends that Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, and his progressive movements succeeded in pushing their ideological agenda, even as the senator’s chances at receiving the nomination faltered. As such, Biden, long seen as a moderate, was forced to take left-leaning positions, including support for limits on hydraulic fracking and expanding healthcare access to illegal immigrants, which is viewed unfavorably by most swing-voters, in order to win the primary.

“Joe Biden, who led the polls throughout the early months of the campaign, was the most left-wing front-runner in American political history,” Pollak writes. “He promised to raise taxes immediately, end the use of fossil fuels, and use federal taxpayers’ money to pay for abortions, among other proposals.”

RED NOVEMBER will be published on July 14. It is currently available for pre-order.