I suspect that like many presidents, it will take time to assess Joe Biden’s term in office — good? Good enough? Bad? And that’s assuming we remain a country where serious assessment is possible rather than telling the Necrotic Toddler “Oh, all the presidents before you sucked! You are the bestest, most wonderful president ever!”
Certainly he did plenty wrong. Immigration policy too strict (and that didn’t stop Republicans lying about Completely Open Borders) We needed an attorney general willing to prosecute the Toddler for 1/6, for instance, and Merrick Garland wasn’t. While Biden seemed to grasp how extreme the Republicans had become — I didn’t see any real attempt to compromise and make nice on most issues — we needed more aggressive anti-fascist action (I don’t know what that would be, though). Still I think he accomplished a lot that was good, particularly given the Republican SCOTUS and Democrats’ slim control of the Senate.
The inspiration for this post was a long rant on FB saying the reason Biden lost was that life in America is terribly frustrating for many people, whether from inflation, sexual harassment, the frustration of dealing with corporate America and on going enshittification. The Democratic response was “no, things are pretty good,” which was less effective than the Republican”everything’s wrong because of immigrants, DEI and trans people!”
Perhaps there is some truth to that — a visionary president with some game-changing ideas might have been what we needed (I’m assuming the poster wants something likes that rather than a Clintonesque “I feel your pain.”) Then again, it may be the common assumption that “if the candidate had only embraced my preferred policies, they’d have won,” whether those policies be Medicare for All, taxing the rich or throwing trans people under the bus. The Toddler won on his hatemongering platform; it’s not doing him much good now.
The counter-argument to the post, as countless radicals and reformers discovered in the 1960s and 1970s, is that visionary change takes a lot of work. As Sara Davidson says in Loose Change, the radical left dreamed of smashing the system and building back better. The center held. However, she says, the smaller scale changes were not insignificant: the Vietnam War ended, Nixon out of office, the draft ended, women legally shielded from discrimination in the workplace (yes, I know discrimination still exists but the legal baseline is still important), the Voting Rights Act and other civil rights protections in place.
Likewise, Biden did a lot of stuff to make the system work better for people. Removing medical debt from credit reports. Student loan forgiveness (something the Supreme Court struck down, alas). Lowering prescription drug prices for seniors (“In 2018, the average list price of a month’s worth of insulin was $12 in Canada, $11 in Germany, and $7 in Australia. In the U.S., it was $99.”). Pardoning veterans convicted by the military for gay sex. Over at Lawyers Guns and Money, Erik Loomis has ranked Biden as the best pro-labor president in his lifetime (I don’t have the specific links), and with one of the most diverse cabinets. Loomis is a labor historian and he does not give compliments casually.
Kamala Harris’ proposal to let Medicare cover in-home care would have been another game changer. The financial gymnastics to get Medicare coverage when you need assisted living are insane, and require moving into a facility. If in-home care is covered, seniors could stay in their homes and kids caring for them — typically women — would have a big burden lifted off their backs.
While it didn’t directly benefit Americans, Biden massively restricting the use of drones in American operations was a huge deal. Under Obama and even more under the Toddler, we used drones with little restriction and shot up a lot of innocent people. Requiring presidential authorization to use them — and Biden didn’t grant it much — was an important step. So was ending our 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yes there was lots of horror and tragedy in the outcome; it was still the right choice.
That none of that closed the deal for Harris doesn’t prove Biden didn’t do enough for people. It’s possible, as the Atlantic says, that Biden didn’t promote his administration’s accomplishments enough. Or that policy, even popular policy, doesn’t influence voters as much as we assume. They’re more into “vibes” as some people put it, or convinced that even though their neighborhood is fine, there’s high crime and inflation everywhere else. To paraphrase one meme, the low-information voter isn’t someone who doesn’t understand alternative minimum tax, it’s someone who thinks the president could kill inflation tomorrow with one phone call.
The media is another factor. I remember one writer for the NYT admitting in 2024 that no, they hadn’t written anything about the positive economic news under Biden — but that would be working as Biden’s press agent! If he wants them to say good things about his policies, he needs to sit down in a one-on-one interview and tell them. Which I’m sorry, is bullshit; reporting good economic news is reporting, just like bad economic news. The Philly Tribune suggests the obsession with looking objective led the media to write unflattering coverage of Biden to show they were just as critical of him as of the Toddler — never mind that Biden was running things better. They seemed to focus, for similar reasons, on the worst parts of the Afghan and Iraq withdrawals.
The media also had no problem taking hack Republicans such as Bill Barr and presenting their “insights” — Biden’s border policies will destroy America! — as thoughtful assessments. Hell, Newt Gingrich still gets quoted occasionally in the press and he’s never been in anything but a loudmouthed jackass.
Then there was the massive focus on Is Biden Too Old? Is He Too Demented? As Rebecca Solnit says, the fact his administration ran smoothly to the finish shows he wasn’t too old or impaired to govern. That’s not to say having someone that old in office is a good thing; however the Toddler’s old too. Somehow as soon as Harris replaced Biden, the media decided candidate age was unimportant. The Toddler’s mental wandering never seemed to matter to the press; if Biden had sounded half as demented it would be fornt-page news.
Maybe there was a better campaign or better policies that would have turned the tide. Maybe with Kristin Synema and Joe Manchin blocking legislation in the senate and the Supreme Court gutting so many liberal policies, there was no better policy. Maybe a candidate who wasn’t a black woman — and I say that as someone who’d have loved to see Harris as Madame President — would have made a difference (though it’s worth remembering Hilary Clinton won the popular vote). Truthfully, I can’t guess. Biden made his share of mistakes and his immigration policies were stricter than I liked (and they still lied about him letting terrorists in from Mexico). He did a lot of good too, and he deserves to be acknowledged for that.
