I have only posted once before under the title Joe Biden. As I reflect on that, compare it to the more than twenty times I have posted about the Trump Presidency, I must honestly accept that I was not as critical of the Biden Administration as I should have been, that I engaged in a sort of myopic, even tribalistic perspective.
Of course, I could excuse this lack of criticism with the simple reality that compared to Trump, I agreed with most of Biden's policies. That while I saw in Trump a mean, selfish, poor excuse for a human, I considered Biden a good man who did not always make the proper choice. I guess I was able to excuse his mistakes with the reasoning that he was doing his best, what he thought was best for America, while Trump only does what is good for Trump.
That being said, I read the other post I wrote about Biden. Here is a link, written just after his presidential victory in November 2020.
https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2020/11/congratulations-to-joe-biden.html
At the time, and this was before the horrific events of January 6th, 2021, I advocated for Biden and the Democrats, and all of America, frankly, to begin the process of ignoring Trump, the belief being that his love of attention, if not rewarded, would drive him out of the spotlight.
But more than that, the post discussed the pandemic.
There is much written in the world of psychology about the power, for good and bad, of denial and suppression. When I wrote that post, only (what a sad adjective to use) 250,000 Americans had been killed by COVID, less than 25% of the eventual total. We were still months away from a vaccine. Very few children were back to school, nor would they be for quite a while. Masks were as commonplace as shirts and pants. Remote work was gaining in popularity but still a novelty for most Americans. Supply chain shortages were prevalent, although at least we could get toilet paper.
I truly believe that historians will debate at what level, not whether or not, America has experienced some type of mass denial or suppression of that time. That, rather than analyze the foundational reasons for why a zoonotic disease was able to spread around the world, killing millions of people, a million here in America alone, we pretend it didn't happen, and worse, suppress the reality that the president at the time was totally ineffective in establishing a nation wide program to reduce the sickness and death, at one point musing on TV that perhaps we could figure out a way to inject bleach safely as a way to combat the disease.
That not only didn't we hold him accountable for the fact that more people died in America from the pandemic than anywhere else, and that our mortality rate was towards the bottom of all nations on Earth, and worse than almost all of the "civilized" countries, but that we blamed the consequences of the pandemic, the supply chain shortages and interruptions, and inflation on the following administration. And worse, far worse, rather than praising the vaccine that assisted in the world's recovery, we now have an anti-vaccine movement that is so strong that we have one such advocate in charge of our nation's health and human services department which oversees the very people that worked so hard to provide us with that vaccine.
But perhaps that is not enough to excuse Biden for his mistakes. So let's review them.
As the consummate politician that he was, Biden believed far too much in the theory that politics, the art of negotiating with those across the aisle to create laws and policies that helped most people, was still in force in America. I would have thought that he would have learned that during his time as Obama's VP, or perhaps he thought that having a common enemy, COVID, would unite the two parties to put aside their differences.
He was dead wrong. So, while he spent a lot of time and energy, for good reason, getting the vaccine in as many arms as possible, he neglected the border. And when it became clear that he needed to act, he fell back to his politician instincts, and again spent far too long negotiating with the GOP to fashion an immigration policy that was never going to be approved as long as Trump controlled the party. Then, when he finally acted unilaterally, it was far too late, the proverbial closing the barn door after the horse had left.
As for inflation, he spent too much time pretending it would dissipate on its own. Not that there weren't many economists who thought the same, but his focus should have been on communicating with the American public that he felt their pain. And yes, that perhaps that last stimulus check could have been more precisely directed, not distributed as widely as it was.
I was also quite disturbed by his tacit endorsement of Israel's slaughter of Palestinians as revenge for the atrocities of October 7th, 2023. Clearly, anyone who made the short term choice to register their complaint about Biden's handling of this crisis by withholding their vote for Harris, has been proven wrong, considering Trump's outrageous comments of forcing the Palestinians to go to other countries, or that America might create some kind of new Riviera where they used to live.
Immigration and inflation sunk the Biden administration and the party as a whole, not necessarily because it was their fault, it was partly, but because they didn't act decisively enough when it came to illegal immigration, and did not connect or pay attention enough to working class Americans in the case of inflation.
But his biggest mistake was not adhering to his original plan of being a one term president. Again, perhaps he didn't consider that Trump, who had been rejected so resoundingly in November of 2020, would maintain his hold on the GOP, especially after stoking an attack on the capitol building through his election results denials and lies. Still, he should have made it clear sometime in 2022 that he wouldn't seek another term. And, without endorsing any candidate, he should have provided a clean slate for the Democrats to have an open primary campaign so that the electorate could make the best choice.
While it may be true that whomever emerged from the primaries would have still had immigration and inflation as anchors around their neck, they may have been able to fashion a response that could have separated themselves from Biden and provide an alternative to both Biden and Trump, while Harris, out of loyalty or lack of vision, could not.
Of course, this criticism about Democrats, that rather than act, they spend too much time trying to convince everyone that they are right, is nothing new. Whether one blames it on the fact that the Democratic tent is bigger, holds a wider slice of opinions, or just that they are not willing to storm the castle, as the GOP faithful demonstrated on Jan 6, is besides the point.
The DEM approach of two steps forward, one step back is bad enough, but far more acceptable to where we seem to be now, barely one step forward, a bunch of steps back. I would say that had Biden acted more like Trump, declared a mandate for change (after all, Biden's electoral college victory was similar, plus he had a far bigger popular vote victory), and made things happen, I might sound hypocritical, but perhaps that is the only tactic that works today.
It is one reason why the attacks on Tesla vehicles, even the violent ones, do not bother me as they would have before Trump, seeing that the GOP recognizes no restrictions on their behavior, as long as it can be wrapped in an American flag and called patriotic.
I originally thought of composing this post because of a dream I had about Joe Biden a few nights ago. In it, I pleaded with Joe to go public concerning some of Trump's more outlandish claims, especially the one about Biden's pardons not being valid because of the use of the autopen, or because he didn't sign them at all, being mentally incapacitated.
Don't get me wrong, I don't expect Biden to start appearing on the news shows every week, calling out Trump and the GOP for their attacks on democracy, careless tariff threats, and abuse of the federal government's spending power by attacking anyone who disagrees with Trump's "vision", not to mention their open threats against any judge who interprets the law differently than they, but I do expect him to appear a few times in the next six months to both contradict the attacks on his mental acuity, and to present an obvious alternative to the insanity of the current administration.
But more importantly, as I emphasized in my dream conversation with Biden, he must refrain from attacking the voters who elected Trump. In fact, I encourage other Democrats as well to focus their criticisms on the GOP, its policies of meanness to citizens and non-citizens, its attacks on the federal work force, and the myriad other objectionable actions on display on a daily basis. But stop attacking the voters.
Perhaps even stop attacking the MAGA movement itself. While I still have some semblance of hope that like the McCarthy era which featured blatant Constitutional violations against Americans considered not "American" enough whether due to their alleged association with Communism or being gay, or just disagreeing with McCarthy's perspective of what Americans should think, the MAGA movement will also burn itself out as the people labelled as anti-American begins to include everyday citizens who just have a different opinion, and who believe in their rights to express those opinions.
In the meantime, Biden, Harris and every Democrat who believes in our experiment with democracy needs to continue to speak out, whether it be monthly or daily.
That is the message I gave to the ex-president in my dream, and that is my emphasis with this post.
Anything short of a strong, continued series of statements which present facts, and an alternative vision, (and that is critical as well), will only extend our current path towards an autocratic government.
Also, we need to separate the MAGA loyalists from the super rich who are aligning themselves with Trump and his movement, not because they really believe in its tenets, but because they know they can use the movement's energy to enrich themselves, and lock down control of where we are heading as a country, and who will, and who will not benefit from that change in direction.
As my dream ended, my final advice was for Biden to dig out those dark, aviator sunglasses, and embrace, at least for the next year or so, that badass personality that passed by much too quickly during his term.