Joe Biden Should Be In East Palestine Before Donald Trump

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Earlier this week, before President Joe Biden or Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Donald Trump visited East Palestine, Ohio, and criticized the administration for its response to the catastrophic train derailment that devastated that community. earlier this month. Flanked by newly elected Republican senator JD Vance, Congressman Bill Johnson, and several local officials, the former president clearly put Biden in 2024 campaign mode and declared, What this community needs right now is not excuses and everything else you hear. , but answers and results.

A recent article in Politico, headlined Trumps Ohio derailment visit gives Bidens team some breathing room, advancing the case that the trip could prove politically beneficial for Democrats. This framing is incredibly confusing. A visit to the derailment site could be an easy slam dunk for Biden, who, among other things, could use the occasion to denounce the greed of rail monopolies. Instead, by not visiting, Biden needlessly created a political opportunity for Trump and the GOP to once again take advantage of the opening space for the Republican Party to present itself as the true voice of the working class in America.

The Politico piece cited multiple sources critical of Trump as dismissing his visit as a setback and highlighting the Republican’s less-than-stellar record on rail safety deregulation. Buttigieg himself said, Many of the people who seem to find political opportunity there are among those who have sided with the railroad industry again and again as they fight safety regulations on railroads and [hazardous materials] teeth and nails. (On the heels of Trump’s visit, Buttigieg finally showed his face in East Palestine yesterday.)

The Biden administration rooted in both respect for industry lobbyists and donors found on the Republican right created an opening for Donald Trump where none needed to exist.

Amidst this tiresome tit for tat, there must be some truth. With support from Senate Republicans, the Trump administration scrapped proposed new brake requirements that experts say could reduce the severity of the recent derailment. On the other hand, the Obama administration caved to industry pressure in 2014 by introducing a series of disastrous loopholes in its own rail safety law. Opportunistic and cynical as Trump’s visit may be, moreover, his description of the administration’s response isn’t exactly wrong. As Levers’ Andrew Perez wrote, summing up the Democrats’ hopelessness and posturing of feigned impotence:

The Biden administration has been slow to respond publicly to the toxic Norfolk Southerns train disaster in Ohio and when they did, White House officials and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg initially struggled to explain why they weren’t racing. to improve railway safety standards. At one point, Buttigieg even indicated he had little power to force the rail industry to upgrade its safety equipment and procedures.

Thanks to a well-deserved backlash, figures like Buttigieg have belatedly begun to toughen their rhetoric toward the rail industry. (Union leaders remain decidedly unimpressed.) Regardless, the administration’s drag ultimately rooted in both respect for industry lobbyists and donors found on the Republican right created an opening. for Donald Trump where none need exist.

Beyond Trump himself, right wing politicians and intellectuals clearly sense the opportunity. In a post for the American Conservative, conservative commentator Sohrab Ahmari fretted about the interventions linked to the derailment of figures like Marco Rubio and JD Vance, writing:

Rubio and Vance are making an important break not only with the GOP establishment but also with many of their fellow populists, who complain about corporate power and then turn around and lament the rise of the modern administrative state. In doing so, the latter camp reverts to individualism and love for the small that have long characterized the American resistance to corporate mismanagement. But complex economies require complex regulations and regulators empowered to tame market actors whose sheer size would otherwise permit horrendous abuses, where the little guy is defenseless. . . . By putting their finger on profit-maximizing hyper-efficiency as the potential culprit behind the suffering of the East Palestinians, Rubio and Vance are following Teddy [Roosevelts] respectable reformist footsteps and showing what serious populism looks like.

One need not agree with Ahmaris effusive characterization to see that Democrats have a potentially serious problem here. When conservatives manage to stake out the ground as brash populists who defend the community and confront market malfeasance, it rarely happens again to the benefit of liberals in America. The Trumps own an improbable victory in 2016, after all, ran exactly in the one-time bastions of Democratic power like Michigan and Wisconsin and it would have been impossible without his appeals and salvo of labor against NAFTA (fraudulent though they ultimately were).

In this sense, the aftermath of the disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, repeats a pattern we’ve seen often in recent years where Democrats don’t have to make openings that even callous opportunists like of Donald Trump can be exploited.

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