How to Assess Joe Biden’s Presidency:
Feel free to check the past Biden Era archives and follow the editions to come in the Trump Era on Substack, Medium, and LinkedIn, including those on the 2024 Autopsy, Bench-Building, DOGE News, Project 2025 Authoritarianism, Progressive Populism, and more (First Come, First Serve!).
To a quick recap:
Book recommendation: “The Haves and Have-Yachts” by Evan Osnos.
Rural news: Trump seeks to cut safety training for fishermen, loggers, farmers, and other dangerous professions by July.
Trump’s NLRB pick has a history of engaging in anti-union activities for companies like Amazon, Dollar General, Apple, Chipotle, and Trader Joe’s.
The President also commutes the sentence of a Miami healthcare executive convicted of Medicare fraud. Finding that waste, fraud, and abuse aren’t you Don?
The Latino Vote Podcast had a terrific breakdown of the new 2024 Election Catalist report outlining the double-digit erosion of Hispanic support particularly. As Chuck Rocha and Maria Cardona said, it is important Democrats articulate a vision of how to “unrig the system” and level the playing field for a brighter America.
A new study shows Democrats have no active online outreach infrastructure in the election off-years when they need it most. Wake up, Democrats!!!!!!
Hate has to be condemned on all sides, including in the tragic attacks that took place in Boulder, CO and in Washington DC. As frustrating and horrifying as the situation in Gaza is, violence is never the solution. Much like what was said in the film Green Book, good always prevails when you maintain your dignity under pressure. That is important in saving as many Israeli and Palestinian lives as possible.
American Prospect profiles ten sneaky provisions in the Big, Fat, Ugly Bill (some of which we covered here).
Bond investors fear the potential impact of the Big Fat Ugly Bill.
Experts warn a reduction in student loan access for professional programs could worsen the doctor shortage in the US, via The Guardian.
Now to the main piece:
In a conversation with a congressional candidate (who I will not identify on condition of privacy and anonymity), I was reminded of a saying we have at Providence College: Veritas. Veritas is Latin for truth, which is what educational institutions, at least all the good ones, should have their students seeking.
Here’s my take on the presidency of Joe Biden and how his aging and his decision to run for reelection impacts that legacy (largely because of the return of Donald Trump).
Let me break it down into several parts. On policy, the presidency of Joe Biden is very important. It is the first presidency since LBJ to not shrink, cut, or privatize aspects of the federal government and the services it provides to the middle and working classes.
As has been talked about throughout 2023 and 2024 here, Joe Biden accomplished many major legislative achievements during his 4-year presidency (meanwhile, Trump relies almost exclusively on executive orders, signing approximately 5 bills into law so far, a half century plus low).
Biden started the return of the Democratic Party to being a party whose policies prioritized the interests of the working and middle classes instead of the corporate special interests and dark money groups.
Take it this way from past recaps (for newer subscribers, feel free to check the entire blog archives on the Substack website): Biden was moving the Democratic Party in the right direction, away from its Clinton and even Obama past.
People since 2024 have been talking about the malaise of the Democratic Party. The malaise is one based upon bad policies of the past three or four decades by leaders in the Democratic Party who backed a range of things, from social service budget austerity, and tax cuts for the wealthy, to the deregulation of Wall Street, program privatization, free trade agreements that accelerated the offshoring of manufacturing (like NAFTA), Pentagon bloating, bankruptcy reform legislation, mass incarceration, charter school expansion, and a race to be more Republican on popular economic causes such as labor rights and consumer safety.
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It is because of this rightward turn that things such as Medicare Advantage (privatized healthcare) became law, housing vouchers expanded over public housing, farm programs were cut, and Democrats consolidated their reputation as coastal elitists who looked down on rural and blue-collar voters and instead courted Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
In return, by the way, did Silicon Valley return the favor? Yes, by joining the Trump bandwagon.
But perhaps more important than what was implemented by Democrats in Congress or in the White House, are the ambitious policies Democrats decided to leave by the wayside. National health insurance and universal healthcare, something championed by Democratic Presidents in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1960s, were initiatives thrown in the trash bin. Free public education, including for vocational training, was left in the dust. Bold climate action, with the potential of a vibrant renewable energy economy, was set aside for more fossil fuel development and donations. Tax the rich? That was also discarded by people like Rahm Emanuel, Andrew Cuomo, Gina Raimondo, Josh Gottheimer, Joe Manchin, and Kyrsten Sinema. Workers’ rights and consumer protections, likewise, were largely forgotten. Instead of expanding government programs to create jobs, ensure a basic safety net, including for access to food, water, and shelter, rebuild our infrastructure and transportation, and invest in affordable housing, Democrats before the Biden presidency were cutting, shrinking, and privatizing. Perfectly explains Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016 and even the desire for change (more drastic and visible change in the form of a bomb thrower like Donald Trump) again in 2024.
Doesn’t take much to wonder why “Fight Oligarchy” has so much broad appeal, especially to that of the corporate status quo, as Corbin Trent wrote about here.
The abandonment of those core issues and causes are what made the working class coalition of decades for Democrats ditch the party for Donald Trump, a billionaire. And Joe Biden at least tried to reverse the realignment of the parties by focusing on the working class throughout his entire presidency.
Remember too in 2024, many (though not all) senior advisors to Vice President Kamala Harris pivoted away from the most popular programs of the Biden-Harris agenda, ones that helped working people, whether on FTC Chair Lina Khan’s antitrust actions, cryptocurrency regulation, and labor issues such as the minimum wage and paid leave. In the place of those popular economic causes, the Harris campaign bet that cultural issues, including abortion access, would save the day. Newsflash: they didn’t.
Biden’s first two years in office were a historical success. His achievements are notable in many areas of domestic and foreign policy.
At the same time, it is very clear that President Joe Biden should have not run for reelection and should have dropped out sooner, even if the outcome wouldn’t have changed anything (as I believe even today).
First, this should not excuse the fact that Trump is now our oldest President elected in our entire history, or the fact that the Jake Tappers of the world are being ridiculed for their hypocrisy and desperate ploys to make a buck off of news we largely have already heard and seen.
It is rare after all, to see Lara Trump and myself in agreement about the motives of Tapper’s new book.
No one is a medical expert on this stuff. We don’t know whether Joe Biden has Alzheimer’s or dementia. We don’t even know whether Biden has “cognitive decline.” What we do know is that Biden aged, and that should have been something that Democrats across the board were more attentive to and even honest about.
In early 2024, I did originally think President Biden was capable of running another national presidential campaign. Of course, I did realize that he aged, and that his campaign had to run a 1948 Harry Truman-style campaign, but I did feel that his fiery State of the Union Address was a step in the right direction.
It is clear now that he did not have the long-term stamina to undertake such a campaign, even though he remained capable of being President for his entire 4 years. Did anything bad happen on his watch that was preventable, like a nuclear strike, a violent attack on the US Capitol, or otherwise, that would have indicated a clear decline in cognition, acuity, and activity? No. What happened is clear. His body and mind just wore down over time as he aged, as we all saw, especially at the end of 2023 and 2024. More fatigued, slower, tired, more whatever word you want to use to describe the situation. “Wear-and-tear” perhaps.
I had hoped and expected something that could not be expected of most octogenarians, and for that, I need to be a little humble in understanding that me and other Democrats made a mistake in demanding something more than President Biden was able to deliver.
However, dropping out early would not have come anywhere near guaranteeing a different outcome in the 2024 presidential race. Trump’s reelection stemmed from frustration around inflation and immigration and foreign conflict in Gaza, as well as a campaign message that failed to address the distress of voters out there. That kind of discontent would have been like an albatross around the neck of any Democrat, especially if that Democrat did not fully embrace a populist agenda.
But admitting mistakes were made at least will try to regain goodwill with the voters who felt and still feel misled about those last couple of years.
A little humility goes a long way, and so does consistency. I myself, for instance, always believed Joe Biden should have run for President in 2016 instead of Hillary Clinton, who the party establishment anointed without any regard to her character or her ability to win.
And I always said it is okay for voters to be concerned about someone’s age in the White House. We just had to either effectively address those concerns or find a different candidate. Sadly, we did neither.
I also believe this “scandal,” if you will, is not as big as people think it is in historical context, even as better decisions still were on the table in hindsight. It is certainly no Watergate as Trump whisperer Jake Tapper claims it to be. It is not even at the scale of those in the Wilson, FDR, and Reagan administrations who concealed real severe health issues from the public, whether it was a devastating stroke, being in a wheelchair from polio, or actually having Alzheimer’s.
As long as Democrats remain humble and reflective at the real Biden issues on age, they should be alright electorally, and in doing so, differentiate themselves from the Roy Cohn playbook of lying and denying that all MAGA politicians now follow.
More importantly, the debate about Biden’s aging provides a needed and desired opportunity to question Trump’s own mental fitness and physical acuity, which the mainstream media gives an extraordinary pass on up to this very day.
Joe Biden’s presidency will be marked by many policy achievements, but to gain more of voters’ trust, Democrats willhave to address the age questions remaining out there — as well as the broader concerns over the party gerontocracy. Beyond that, the focus now becomes Trump’s health and age.
Because at the end of the day, Donald Trump is our President now, not Biden.
