A few days ago, I wrestled with the question that I still believe is THE question–how can anyone look at Donald J. Trump and see a person qualified to be President (or, frankly, dog-catcher)? Today, I want to focus on a different question: why has there been so little public appreciation of the incredible performance of a transformative and incredibly successful Biden Administration?
The most recent jobs report (a report Simon Rosenberg characterized as “Smoking Hot”) showed the addition of 254,000 jobs in September–far in excess of expectations. Not only that, but routine revisions from the previous two months added another 72,000 jobs. Both liberal and conservative economists agree that the American economy is currently the strongest advanced economy in the world.
That strong economic performance has allowed the administration to accomplish other important tasks.
Under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris we’ve had the longest period of low unemployment in a peacetime American economy since WWII and the best job market since the 1960s. The stock market is breaking records. GDP growth has been 3% over 3 years. We have the lowest uninsured rate in American history. The rate of formation of new businesses is at an all time high. Wage growth has been running ahead of inflation for some time now. The battle against inflation has been won. The deficit is lower. Crime is down. Drug overdoses are down. Obesity is down. The flows to the border today are lower than at the end of Trump’s Presidency. We passed the first bi-partisan gun safety bill in 30 years. Domestic oil, gas, renewable production are higher than they’ve ever been and we are more energy independent today than we’ve been in decades. The three big Biden-Harris investment bills will be creating jobs and opportunities for American workers for decades to come, while accelerating the energy transition needed to keep the planet from warming.
Read that paragraph again, and unless you have been lobotomized by Faux News and its clones, you can’t help but be impressed. Despite the constant, bizarre and increasingly frantic lies of Trump and his MAGA minions, crime is down. Inflation is way down. The deficit is lower. We are finally combatting climate change. And much more.
Unlike Trump, who is a publicity hound entirely focused on occupying center stage, and entirely uninterested in governing–or honest work of any kind– Biden approached the Presidency as a job. He was so focused on performance rather than publicity that in the third year of the administration, Politico ran an article titled “30 Things Joe Biden Did That You Might Have Missed.” Among them: expanded overtime pay guarantees; first over-the-counter birth control pills; making renewable power the nation’s #2 source of electricity; rules preventing discriminatory mortgage lending; crackdowns on junk fees and overdraft charges; and a wide variety of measures aimed at ensuring a level playing field for American business vis a vis China.
And that was before the administration engineered lower prices for several lifesaving medications–including insulin, which is capped at $35 for Medicare recipients.
American society is certainly not perfect, but these facts are so positive–especially given the chaos inherited from Trump and the pandemic–that Republicans have resorted to simply lying about them. Marco Rubio responded to the most recent jobs report by insisting that it must be “fake.” Trump and his allies lied about FEMA’s response to hurricane Helene, calling it inadequate, despite the fact it was characterized by Republican governors as excellent. And Trump has continued lying about endorsements.
Here’s the thing: As we enter the last few frenzied weeks of the Presidential campaign, it is easy to get caught up in the lies and the constant name-calling–to attend more to the horse-race and less to the candidates’ demonstrable policy and performance differences.
Most of the people who will go to the polls this year lived through a Trump administration characterized by constant turmoil and turnover, not to mention the sight of a U.S. President openly consorting with autocrats while demeaning and undermining America’s allies. For the past four years, those voters have thrived under the Biden-Harris administration. Citizens who care about policy, who base their votes on verifiable facts and experience and who care about the common good, will vote for Kamala Harris. Those who are motivated by bigotry and resentment–voters who reject reality and whose sole interest is culture war and animus–will vote for Trump and the profoundly regressive MAGA movement promised by Project 2025.
Harris is running on the premise that Americans won’t vote to go back. I hope she’s right.
The media seems to have almost forgotten that Joe Biden will continue to be President until next January. They also seem to be focused on Harris exclusively BECAUSE of the rantings of a deranged psychopath. It all makes heads turn and papers sold and air-time advertising work splendidly. Listing these accomplishments amounts to two paragraphs once a week on the Business page.
How many would-be voters pour over the stock market reports every day? Now that Harris has become the Democrat’s candidate, Biden is old news. Sorry for the pun.
Harris continues to struggle between separating herself from Biden and on the other hand extolling the extraordinary accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration. Personally I’d lean on the latter, as she was part of what has unquestionably been a successful term by all measurements. I would make it – and I think she is trying to do just that – a continuation of those successes, adding her own new outlook and policy ideas along the way. Keep moving forward, Kamala, leave the hyperbole to you-know-who, and don’t let up for a minute from now until November 5th. We all need for you to be the next POTUS.
because you have to read the facts. the news services are swallowed up by what trump/jd wants,which falls between cheap rehetoric and nothing new.since the facts take time, thats not allowed anymore. unless we start a campaign of screaming in each others ears as we pass by each other on our way to whatever. like the trumper,teers do. were wallowing in a dead pool. Im watching Joe do his thing. and aware of the facst. but unless you have been in the facts and how its working, you hear nothing. the news media is a vacuum of little more than stacking rehetoric and time constraints over substance. nothing seems to stick. its being overridden by trump nothing. Harris policy seems to depend on Joes past. which isnt getting much play either. theres a buncha good solid jouranalist and commentors who have a constant update and opinions,backed by close to past issues and facts. but its being lost more now due many journalists have been set aside by there news source they grew up in or have now been updated to a dues paying site. I dont app, and prefer my privacy over being followed like a ankle bracelet wearing convict. substack never answered (twice)my e mail about signing in with a password thru their site. if any knows if you can, kickitback.. maybe ill sign up and support the new poverty in news journalism.
Thank you, Sheila, I have had the same thoughts since the beginning of his removal from the reelection campaign. Not pleased with the way it was done and the way he has been ignored after all he and Kamala accomplished under the weight of Trump’s refusal to properly transition and we will never know conditions in our White House once Trump and Co. moved out.
I have cast my support, my donations and my vote behind Harris/Walz and down ballot but keep looking for PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN’S reports of what is going on within the administration as he works 24/7 till January 20, 2025.
Those who complain about Kamala’s campaign process, progress and her actions have lost sight this was thrust on her suddenly as she continued supporting President Joe and performing her Vice Presidential responsibilities; both of which continue to be vital to this nation.
Anyone in the “real” world knows that the Biden/Harris team has scored relentlessly!
It’s the right wing media that cloud/hide the truth. Even the NYT has awakened some, now. Woke! Woke! Woke! OMG, don’t tell my gov’r I said that!
Too much media is on the Murdoch bandwagon.
As I inform the MAGATs on social media, I wouldn’t spend a lot of time comparing Trump’s years to Biden’s years because of all the external events. Prices were much lower under Trump due to early Covid, which killed demand as people stayed home and the economy was shut down. This led to a lot of anomalies.
The same could be said for Biden since he was post-COVID, and most of his policy successes were the result of stimulus spending or debt along with funding three proxy wars around the world. Spending on war should NOT be counted as a positive for the economy—the same thing with profitable private prisons and Big Pharma profits.
There is a huge disconnect between the policies in Washington and the people. Our policies enrich the oligarchs at the expense of workers and retirees. Trump’s tax cuts on the wealthy were offset by increases against the middle class. Now he’s offering to bail out the middle class who he crippled – rich!
Biden didn’t have to think much to bail out the economy after Covid. He had access to an endless supply of money. Rightfully, his support of the ethnic cleansing (genocide) in Palestine ticked off the youth in the world. You’d hear more about that, but it’s been successfully gagged for now. Not to mention his First Amendment banning of TikTok and tariffs against China.
Biden claims to be a peacetime POTUS, but he’s only fooling the naive with the help of the lame media. I agree that Kamala is trying to thread the needle between Biden’s successes and separate herself from his failures. Her continued claims that Israel has the “right to defend itself” is a ruse and only works for those who don’t know better. Will Kamala have the spine to tell the MIC to back down in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the South Pacific?
Time will tell…
Todd, I agree with your critiques of our system–which has been working perhaps better than it sometimes does in a progressive direction under Biden AND his excellent cabinet secretaries AND some strong Democrats in Congress. Still, many people still struggle, some terribly, under our Frankenstein monster of a capitalist-socialist system. Much needs to be done in every sphere, from the justice system to health care to workers’ rights and conditions to the environment to education, and on the list goes. And the Military Industrial Complex remains a major problem under Republicans and Democrats alike. Only ex-President Jimmy Carter had a true vision for peace in the world and saw through some of the lies our foreign policy is built on. Meanwhile, we cannot afford to let Trump or almost ANY Republican be re-elected or elected, as that will push us so far back, and so far down the hole of ignorance, hatred, patriarchy, autocracy, and ineptitude that we will have a hard time ever seeing the light of day again. Vote Blue without turning it into a “my team rah!” kind of support.
Todd, If you count the first three years of the Trump Admin, and then start counting the Biden admin, where things were back to before the pandemic, you will still find amazing statistics. Discounting the pandemic bounce job growth is still DOUBLE under Biden.
As for the Trump admin, the only real policy that I could discern was to keep the stocks market (along with his billionaire friends) flying high. The pandemic killed that dream for Trump. But again in Dec of 2019 (just before the Pandimic tanked the world) the DOW was at $19K. It is now at $42K.
But the economy is not the stock market. That said, everything else under Biden is no much stronger than it was under Trump. You’d have to be blind, brainwashed, or just ignorant to not see how much better things are now. To me the entire economy seems like it is the best it’s been since I entered the workforce in 1980. I’ve seen economist say the economy is the best it’s been in 35 years, and that backs up my anecdotal experience.
When Harris was asked what she would do differently than Biden, she said “not much”. I’d have to agree. Biden has been one of the better Presidents in my lifetime.
We live in two separate cultural clouds. One is the Universal reality, and the other is Trump’s endless publicity amplified for profit by the Murdoch/Musk advertising campaign. They are so incompatible that we each are forced to choose one. Both are not possible.
I just finished “Demon of Unrest” by Erik Larson, a non-fictional account of how the toxicity of the culture of slavery and Lincoln led to the eventual destruction of the Confederacy.
Has it reared its ugly head again, or is this new?
There will always be those who say “they all lie” and throw up their hands and walk away.
When I look back on my long life as a woman in this country and examine the truly incredible changes that have improved my life and life choices, I see most of those coming when Democrats where in the lead and elected to offices at all levels.
Indiana is almost always in the last 5 of states in quality of life issues, healthcare and education. Indiana has been run by Republicans for 2 decades, yet it is always the Democrats who are held accountable for negative outcomes. It is not rational thinking. Too many are clueless about the past and how much things have improves for minorities and women. If they had lived through the oppression and suppression themselves they might not think that things are so awful now that a strong man is the best option. MSM has a lot to answer for if he wins.
Many of those I know who are older and not wealthy fear the future if he gets power again. They have no viable plan B. The anxiety and constant fear are causing sleepless nights and regressive depression. What will women do if they once again become mere vessels and property? If the states are allow to determine healthcare choices and marriage partners, what is to stop them from repealing voting rights, enforcing income status, even slavery under any name they choose to hide it?
I fear that November 5 will be so chaotic and violent, that the resolution will take so long and require law enforcement and military intervention, all feeding the fevered conspiracy cult and bigots, that the outcome will be take months to resolve, if ever.
This is not the future I hoped for my children and grandson. If he wins, the failure will be a burden that I never dreamed would be our legacy to them.
I have volunteered, donated, talked to neighbors, provided accurate information about voting in my community. I don’t have a plan to leave the country, nor do I have the means or will to flee. I will fight in any way I can. It is the only choice.
I haven’t responded to any of the polls I’ve been sent this election season. I can only hope that there are a lot more people like me, causing an under count for Harris.
Everyone wants Harris to break from Biden on foreign affairs. That really puts her in a tough position. They have built a strong relationship and she probably doesn’t want to harm that. If she wins, she can then work on her own policies and positions.
The old man still has a trove of wisdom to contribute.
I have said it before on this forum “that I have had a low opinion of Joe Biden for well over 40 years, but in 2020 I held my nose and voted for him because DJT was so obviously unqualified for the office. I have been totally amazed and impressed with the performance of the Biden / Harris team. They have undertaken the project of economic recovery for the ENTIRE country without prejudice against anybody, particularly the magats. I was wrong about Joe, and I am man enough to admit it.”
That said, let me be equally clear that DJT would have been the wrong choice in 2020 (as he was in 2016), and he will be a disastrous choice in 2024! He, and all of the candidates who bask in his endorsement, or claim to support him, need to be banished from office!
Voters – go do your job and vote these bigots and authoritarians out of office. For me, I am looking forward to being pleasantly surprised by a blue wave.
I can understand people voting for both sides. I will be voting for Kamala because I think its more important to keep a dictator out of office than whatever money problems I currently have. I also am voting for Kamala because she will reinstate Roe v. Wade and get the government to mind its own business again in regards to women’s healthcare. Those are more important matters to me even if I am suffering under the inflation that is happening. I’d like to see Joe Biden and Kamala Harris work towards more affordable groceries and help with education and childcare in the U.S. while at the same time trying to create peace in the Middle East.
Transformative is putting it mildly. Never has a Democratic Party administration been so indebted and partial to the interests of U.S. Oil Companies, the MIC and Christian Zionists.