Way back in 2018, in the earliest days of the Democrats’ so-called invisible primary, Joe Biden candidly pitched himself as the type of pro-success Democrat who wouldn’t demonize the wealthy. “I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason we’re in trouble,” Biden said in a speech that year, drawing a distinction between himself and Bernie Sanders. And yet a presidential campaign later, 18 months after wealth tax proponents like Bernie and Elizabeth Warren petered out of the Democratic primary, those billionaires are firmly ensconced in the Biden barrel. A proposal to tax the hell out of them in the most controversial manner has abruptly become a credible proposal in an exhausted Washington, borne less out of an ideological commitment from Biden than from a frenzied, deadline-fueled panic to find $2 trillion in revenue that a single senator won’t deep-six.