Farewell To Joe Biden

Outgoing President Joe Biden has a strong record of accomplishment to look back on.  He got us out of COVID, he revived the economy, he capped insulin prices, he got a major infrastructure deal through, he expanded NATO, he started bringing back blue-collar jobs, he set the nation on a course to fight climate change, and he restored dignity to the White House.

President Biden believes that if he had remained in the 2024 campaign, he would have defeated Trump.  I agree.  Alas, I'm the only one who apparently does.

Because of Biden's failings - the Afghanistan withdrawal, inflation, his advanced age - most people agree that Trump would have wiped the floor with him in the 2024 election.  I would have thought so too, if I hadn't been paying attention to what Biden was doing and what his administration was accomplishing.  That's just the trouble.  One of the reasons I stopped consuming American legacy media (I watch BBC World News America) is that they have long had a bias against Biden and, quite frankly, any other politician who embraced public service with an idealistic sense of making positive contributions for the benefit of the people.  The media love to lionize and promote politicians who are flashy, interesting, or entertaining - from Ronald Reagan to Gary Hart to George W. Bush to Donald J. Trump.  And even as the media picked Biden apart for every little thing, they sane-washed Trump and made him an acceptable alternative to Biden in 2024.   

In no way am I suggesting that I was always for another Biden presidential run in 2024.  I have said repeatedly that I would have preferred to see him step down after one term and pass the torch to someone else long before he did.  But once he was in, I figured he knew what he was doing, and I was certain he'd pull through.  But the media have been lampooning and undercutting Biden for decades, making fun of his inarticulateness based on his stutter, dismissing him as dull, overemphasizing his gaffes, and writing him off as an unserious figure since his days as a U.S. Senator.  President Barack Obama had such a dim view of Biden's political viability that he anointed Hillary Clinton as his chosen successor instead.  (Voters in states worth 306 electoral votes in 2016 rejected Obama's choice.)  Even as President, his own party disrespected him, as they all turned on him after one very bad debate in a way that Republicans never would have even considered doing after Ronald Reagan's disastrous first debate with Walter Mondale in 1984.  Of course Biden had no chance of beating Trump in 2024.  No one gave him a chance.  

Messaging?  Yes, the Democrats are lackluster at getting out their message as to what they want to do and what they accomplish.  But they haven't been completely unsuccessful at that, having won the popular vote in seven out of eight presidential elections from 1992 to 2020.  Democrats usually succeed when they stand together.  That was obviously not going to happen in 2024 with Biden, because too many Democrats wouldn't stand by him together.

It is all good and fine to suggest that Joe Biden will go down in history as one of our greatest Presidents, but historians will more likely than not grade him as average at best.  One thing Biden hoped to do as President is "restore the soul of the nation," and, as the 2024 election results proved, he clearly failed at that.  Had he become President in 1989 or 2009, had he been elected on either of his first two tries, and accomplished everything he did as the 41st or 44th President rather than as the 46th, he would have been a lead-pipe cinch for being placed among the greats, such as Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, and Truman.  But Joe Biden became President in 2021, and everything he was not able to accomplish will likely lower his standing among the forty-five men (the Presidency is and always will be a fraternal order) who have held the office.  He could not get his comprehensive Build Back Better package passed by Congress because of the intransigence of now-former Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.  He could not get voting-rights legislation passed.  He could not get immigration reform passed.  But most of all . . . he could not get Donald Trump behind us. 😟😭