BIDEN WON'T BEAT DeSANTIS BY TALKING ABOUT HIS PAST SUPPORT FOR CUTTING SOCIAL PROGRAMS

New York magazine's Eric Levitz believes that Democrats who fear Ron DeSantis are overlooking his obvious vulnerabilities, one of which is this:

Before his present incarnation as a populist purple-state governor, DeSantis was a pro-austerity, right-wing House member....

During his 2012 congressional campaign, DeSantis expressed support for privatizing Social Security and Medicare. In 2013 and 2014, DeSantis deemed Paul Ryan’s infamous proposals for balancing the federal budgets insufficiently austere. Instead, as Josh Barro notes, DeSantis voted to replace those proposals with the Republican Study Committee’s more radical budget blueprints. The RSC’s 2013 fiscal vision would have raised the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare to 70, slowed the growth of Social Security benefits, and ended Medicare as we’d known it, transforming the program from a health-insurance entitlement to a stipend that wouldn’t necessarily increase with rising health-care costs.

Even Republicans (mostly) support Social Security and Medicare, so this would seem like a potent attack in the primaries. But I think DeSantis will self-righteously declare that he supports Social Security and Medicare and anyone saying otherwise is just listening to a whole lot of lies from the liberal media. Also, Republican voters agree with 2013 DeSantis that government spending is awful in general, and is completely out of control.

If he makes it to the general election, he's home free, for this reason:

President Biden as a first-term senator in 1975 introduced a bill that would have limited budget authority for all federal programs to between four and six years, which experts say would have required new legislation to fund Medicare, Social Security and other federal programs.

The Biden measure bore striking similarities to the plan Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) unveiled in 2022 to sunset all federal legislation after five years — which is now at the center of a political firestorm.

It gets worse:

Biden doubled down on his legislation in the '90s, saying on the Senate floor that his bill would affect Social Security.

"When I argued that we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security, as well," Biden said. "I meant Medicare and Medicaid. I meant veterans’ benefits."

"I meant every single solitary thing in the federal government," he said. "And I not only tried it once, I tried it twice, I tried it a third time, and I tried it a fourth time."

Alas, there's video:

Speaking of people who want to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Veteran benefits… #SOTU #sotu2023 pic.twitter.com/hRmvLcU2DY

— Wade Miller (@WadeMiller_USMC) February 8, 2023

It's true that Biden can say he was wrong back in the twentieth century. (The Republican ethos probably requires DeSantis to avoid saying he was ever wrong about anything.) Biden can pledge that he'll never sign a budget that cuts these programs, and dare DeSantis to do the same. Biden can point to video of DeSantis advocating cuts.

But swing voters are likely to come away thinking that neither candidate can be trusted on the issue. So Democrats need to find another way to beat this guy.