I'll skip over the theoretical stuff, and just skip to talking about the Democrats (whomst I hate).
With Biden, you need to watch the hands, not the mouth. Biden only proposes stuff that the left likes when he knows it won't pass — and he has a couple of thumbs on the scale (Manchin and Synema) to ensure that they don't. It's a matter of optics. On the eviction moratorium, for example, Biden knew he'd be overruled, and he knows that the Senate won't allow any extension by legislation to pass; all he actually did was get the actual leftists to stop camping out on the capitol steps. The Biden administration isn't practically governing to the right of the Obama administration, which was itself right wing. Look at the notable accomplishments of the Obama administration: a massive bail-out to investment banks, blocking socialized health care while enforcing/guaranteeing the revenue streams of private insurance companies, and maintaining the Global War On Terror, in part by ramping up the drone war.
On the other hand, if you consider health mandates authoritarian...I don't know that we have any common ground for speaking. If public health isn't a legitimate government concern, then probably nothing is.
I can't say I agree with you that Biden is putting on a show just to keep his party together, but I'll leave it at that for now.
I do actually think public health is a legitimate government concern. That doesn't mean the government needs to exercise authority to the fullest extent for every health concern.
The 2010 and 2018 flu epidemics both killed far more children than COVID has killed. Where were the child vaccine mandates, school mask mandates, and school lockdowns then?
Once the COVID vaccine came out, the need for government intervention was mostly over. The authoritarianism comes from the continued over-reactions and unnecessary use of authority that lasts to this day.
With Biden, you need to watch the hands, not the mouth. Biden only proposes stuff that the left likes when he knows it won't pass — and he has a couple of thumbs on the scale (Manchin and Synema) to ensure that they don't. It's a matter of optics. On the eviction moratorium, for example, Biden knew he'd be overruled, and he knows that the Senate won't allow any extension by legislation to pass; all he actually did was get the actual leftists to stop camping out on the capitol steps. The Biden administration isn't practically governing to the right of the Obama administration, which was itself right wing. Look at the notable accomplishments of the Obama administration: a massive bail-out to investment banks, blocking socialized health care while enforcing/guaranteeing the revenue streams of private insurance companies, and maintaining the Global War On Terror, in part by ramping up the drone war.
On the other hand, if you consider health mandates authoritarian...I don't know that we have any common ground for speaking. If public health isn't a legitimate government concern, then probably nothing is.