In the first few moments of the unscripted portion of President Joe Biden’s press conference this week, he referred to his running mate as “Vice President Trump.” That gaffe, on the heels of his referring to Ukrainian President Zelensky as “President Putin” earlier in the day, became the immediate headline of—and takeaway from—the anxiously anticipated presser, an event that was supposed to clarify the president’s shaky standing and embattled reelection effort.

Many people likely didn’t stick around past that mix-up. But those who rode out the entire hour may have noticed something far more interesting: At the presser, the president delivered an unequivocally and forcefully progressive message, pushing a vision of left-leaning policies that have been scarcely mentioned by the White House in the past few months.

This was no prizewinning oratory. The president’s speech was sometimes garbled and halting. Biden has long had a penchant for maundering. He’s bad with names and worse with statistics. He frequently relies on the word anyway to get him out of grammatical cul-de-sacs and rescue runaway trains of thought. He is still old, and he seems meaningfully older than he did last year.

But beyond the style, the substance of the speech was quite notable. Biden hammered corporate greed repeatedly, calling out ballooning corporate profits as a major part of the inflationary economic environment, which he pledged to crack down on in a second term. He made constant mention of the middle and working classes and laid out his vision for governing in their interest. He harped on the rich paying more taxes.

After that, Biden introduced a newish policy of capping rent increases, a program that was news even to close watchers. Of course, in traditional Biden fashion, the delivery was somewhat jumbled, and it’s not entirely clear........

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