Co-published by Splinter
Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, who is battling a progressive challenger in his party’s primary, has found an unexpected supporter — former Vice President Joe Biden, whose Affordable Care Act public-option proposal Carper helped defeat back in 2009.
In 2009, as the U.S. economy teetered on the brink of catastrophe, a newly elected Barack Obama leaned heavily on the counsel of a small circle of experts. Perhaps the most unlikely member of Obama’s inner sanctum, which included Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, Christina Romer and Peter Orszag, was Jared Bernstein, a meditation devotee and professionally trained musician with a PhD in social welfare.
Chosen by Joe Biden to be the Vice President’s top economic advisor, Bernstein had distinguished himself as a passionate critic of inequality during his long tenure at the Economic Policy Institute, one of the country’s leading think tanks. His views on economic issues were well to the left of Obama’s and the rest of the President’s team, ensuring that progressive ideas would get a hearing inside the White House as the administration wrestled with the worst downturn since the Great Depression.
While Obama and his advisors succeeded in reversing the Great Recession’s massive job losses and saving the bacon of the financial industry,