Biden Was a Good President and There Were Strong Reasons Why He Ran Again
There is a lot of piling on now about Joe Biden having been well past being able to be president again, and his running again made out to be some terrible betrayal. Isn’t hindsight just so easy?
First, take a step back and remember why he was there. After Trump’s first administration there needed to be a strong candidate to take him on. Biden was not perfect but clearly good enough. He won!
He proceeded to enact some of the most boldly populous policies in a lifetime. His championing of unions, his policies that targeted help for the middle on down, were some of the best since FDR and the New Deal. It would have been better if he had been even more progressive, bombastic, and populist. A hybrid of Bernie Sanders and Biden would have been great. But he won and he did a good job.
He tried to do an even better job but was thwarted. When Obama was elected the Democrats had a short period of having the trifecta, the White House, the Senate and the House. They pretty much frittered that rare and golden opportunity away. Biden tried to avoid that mistake. He had the trifecta to start with and he tried to get a very bold act passed, the Build Back Better plan to help people even more than what eventually did pass. He had the entire Democratic House and Senate with him to pass bold legislation but was thwarted by two people. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who has always been Republican-lite because it takes appealing to a lot of his Republican voters to stay in office (although he ended up not running again). And Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) who, either out of appeasing big donors or extreme naivete reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain caused Biden’s boldest move to be radically reduced. Had they not blocked that the Democrats would have been seen as much more active and supportive of average peoples’ needs and, since the popular vote was only lost by less than 2%, might have led to Trump losing again.
In the 2024 election Trump was clearly a threat. No Democratic presidential contender had come close to seeming to fill Biden’s shoes. Unfortunately there is still part of the nation that is not ready to elect a woman president. Biden had already shown he could beat Trump and become the most progressive president in memory.
Perhaps those close to Biden were seeing a decline that was serious but it was not obvious from a distance. Go back and watch his State of the Union speech to Congress just a few months before the campaign got into full swing, in March of 2024. Here was Biden, sharp, focused for over an hour of speech, feisty with the GOP, quick to improvise and snap back when opponents reacted badly, someone ready to take on a presidential campaign.
He was no doubt considering the nation when he decided to run again. He would have had to have made a firm commitment, one way or the other, by early 2024. If he had decided to step aside who would have looked like a good bet to beat Trump? What was his alternative but to try again?
It’s worth remembering that leading up to the 2016 campaign he was seriously considering challenging Hillary Clinton in the primary. He was just coming off being vice-president for two terms. Some polls were indicating Hillary’s rating was slipping. There was even a serious effort among insiders to draft Biden into the running. He ultimately decided not to because he and his family were grieving the recent death of his son Beau to cancer. Had he gone on he might have won that primary and then beaten Trump before Trump’s first administration. Then Biden would have had his eight years as president at a somewhat younger age.
Well, what’s past is past, but Biden has earned some gratitude that is missing now. He made some serious mistakes across his long career in politics, mistakes that grate on me too. But as is said, the only people who don’t make mistakes are the ones who aren’t doing anything. The current making him out to be a bad president, and his decision to run as terrible, it’s all very cheap hindsight.
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2 Comments
Thank you for your words about Joe Biden—I heartily concur! I am so so tired of the MSM “Biden Bashing” type coverage. Although I was concerned about his age/stamina for a second run (thought the same about Trump btw), I knew he had a vision and strategy for bettering our nation. I was not overly concerned, however, because for me a vote for Biden was a vote for Harris should he need to stand down during his second term. As it turned out I thought Harris/Walz ran a great campaign (wish the USA election season was always so short!) and they did speak to issues and vision and plans, only they did so whilst being encouraging and uplifting rather than bashing and scare tactics. Well, sadly, the Boogeyman won. I miss the days of the Biden/Harris admin when I was not afraid to turn on the news! Joe is a true and decent public servant & that, I think, is high praise.
Excellent piece. The old media has lost me, Morning Joe, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC and most of MSNBC. While I know they have no emotional response to my leaving their audience; I have had a huge emotional relief not ingesting their Pablum. I heard/read lot of voyeuristic reports on Biden, and then I looked at my 401K, or the highway bridges being constructed in Tucson. The media is complicit in the Trump administration and I won’t forget it. Now if we could just get better democrats in there.