Hey Democrats, Stop Dumping on Joe Biden
The President deserves more respect than this, even if he screwed up.
by Ben Cohen
It is now obvious that President Biden screwed up by seeking re-election. He was too old and should have stepped down in time for another candidate to take his place. A healthy Democratic primary could have resulted in a better candidate to run against Trump, and we could be heading into next year confident the US will survive as a democratic country.
Biden’s messaging while in office was pretty bad too. He failed to highlight his many successes, and didn’t spend enough time telling Americans how he was (quite successfully) fighting inflation. He flopped spectacularly against Trump in the first debate, and hung around too long afterwards.
Now that Trump is set for the White House, Joe Biden’s legacy appears to be in tatters. His job was to stop Trump getting re-elected, and he failed. And now that Biden has pardoned his son after pledging not to, Democrats and the media are openly dumping on him.
An opportunity to vent
U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, told the press earlier this week that Biden was wrong to pardon his son. "He [Biden] didn't need to tell the American public, 'I will not do this,' and he did. And when you make a promise, you got to keep it," he said.
On his podcast “Pod Save America”, former Obama staffer Tommy Vietor was scathing about the President’s decision to pardon his son.
“Now everyone looks stupid. Everyone looks like they are full of shit,” he said.
“And Republicans are going to use this to argue it was politics as usual when Democrats warned of Trump’s corruption or threat to the rule or the threat to democracy. And I think that’s the piece of this I am most frustrated with, which is Joe Biden looking like a typical, lying politician. And I think that leads to a cynical feeling that all politicians are bad. They are all the same, and that this is just par for the course.”
Chuck Todd had this to say about Biden’s explanation for pardoning Hunter:
Biden has now borrowed Trump’s rhetoric to describe what he views as Hunter’s experience with the justice system. What kind of precedent will we have set if both parties accept the premise that whoever’s elected is going to politically prosecute his or her opponents? It’s part of Biden’s rationale for the pardon. And it will surely be Trump’s rationale for future pardons.
Former Obama strategist David Axelrod explained that the outpouring of anger was about more than just the pardoning:
“There’s been a lot of heartache at the end here that has disturbed a lot of people, in which he [Biden] appeared to be prizing himself over the party and even the country. You’re seeing that tumble out here.”
Does President Biden deserve all this scorn from the press and his own party? The answer is no, and here’s why.
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It’s the Economy, Stupid
By most metrics, Joe Biden’s presidency was actually extraordinarily successful. Biden rescued a pandemic weary country from four years of mismanagement and corruption. His administration led a highly successful vaccination campaign and turned the US economy around faster almost any other country. Biden signed back up to the Paris Climate Agreement and signed bills that spurred unprecedented investments in green tech. He warned the world about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, then almost single handedly revived NATO to defend it. Biden presided over a hugely successful midterm in 2022, and then managed to cut inflation by almost 7%.
The problem was that the Biden administration didn’t cut inflation fast enough. Americans spent most of the Biden years struggling with rising grocery and rent costs, and by the time it came to the election, no one cared that the numbers had dropped. This happened to incumbents around the world, and it is unclear whether the Biden administration could have done anything about it. If you look at global trends, it now seems obvious that Democrats were doomed to underperform:
Kamala Harris ran about as good a campaign as anyone could given the circumstances. You could argue that with more time she could have done a better job, but by almost all metrics it was incredibly successful. She delivered a powerful, widely praised speech at the Democratic National Convention, battered Trump in the debate, raised more money in a shorter space of time than any candidate in history, and built a formidable, nationwide campaign infrastructure. Could another Democrat have done the same? It’s possible, but no one seems to be able to name them.
Learn from the Republicans?
None of this exonerates Biden from his mistakes, but it does provide some much needed context. The President is a proud, stubborn man who only defeated Trump in 2020 because he refused to listen to the naysayers and fought back from a disastrous start in the primaries. But what made him successful in 2020 was ultimately his undoing in 2024.
There are lessons the Democrats must take from their loss last month. The must look honestly at their mistakes, confront the ideological extremists, and figure out why so many working class Americans have abandoned them. They must welcome new leaders with new ideas, and try to talk with the public rather than to them. But they must also stop the circular firing squad and dumping on their own.
Republicans for all their sins know how to stick together. After Trump lost in 2020 and then tried to storm the capitol, it took Republicans just a few months to stop the infighting and get behind him again. While Joe Biden isn’t going to run again, the party could at least try to celebrate his accomplishments and not turn on him because he legally pardoned his son.
If you are angry about what happened, direct it at the oligarchs who financed Trump’s campaign. Or Elon Musk who turned Twitter into the biggest propaganda propagator in human history. Or Donald Trump, who lied and cheated his way through life all the way up to the presidency.
Joe Biden’s legacy is complex and imperfect. But it should not be reduced to a single election or a controversial pardon. It is a lot more than that, and Democrats should remember to celebrate it.
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No Political Capital For Donald
He can't even get his picks through the Senate’s advice and consent process.
by Bob Cesca
WASHINGTON, DC – As I write this, Pete Hegseth’s Mom is calling around trying to convince U.S. senators to let him run the Pentagon. You know, like all alpha males. By the time you read this, it’s quite possible Hegseth will have withdrawn his nomination.
Set aside his alleged sexual abuse, serial cheating, gross lack of personal hygiene, and obvious alcoholism, Hegseth is vastly unqualified for the job. He’s a weekend TV host on Fox & Friends. He’s not even qualified enough to be a first-string giggling couch tumor on the Monday through Friday edition of the show. He’s only qualified enough for two episodes a week. And this part-timer thinks he can run the world’s largest bureaucracy? Pathetic.
Most of Donald Trump’s “whack-pack” menagerie of cabinet picks are equally unqualified and unserious…
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Granted, Biden ought not to have clung so long to the assumption of his nomination. But we had a great candidate. The problem was that she was a woman of color in a nation with too many racist misogynists and too many who declined to vote to, perhaps, avoid looking like racist misogynists.
When I was around 18 or 19 years old, I remember actually being impressed with George H.W. Bush when he relented to raising taxes despite his "read my lips" promise. Even from that young an age, I have always thought it absurd for grown adults to hold others to promises, particularly when things clearly haven't worked out as expected. My response to people who angrily say, "But you promised!" is normally something along the lines of, "Are you five years old?"
When Joe Biden made that promise, he obviously was banking on a normal American justice system, and a permanent return to sanity in America with Trump gone. He was certainly not expecting Trump to actually return to power. Now, after the announced nomination of an openly vengeful thug for head of the FBI, by an openly vengeful thug of a President-elect, after watching Congressional Republicans go after Hunter to get to Joe, and knowing that Trump has corrupt judges on his side in the Judiciary, it is more than reasonable for Joe to change his mind.
Things obviously didn't turn out as expected. The good and great American people re-elected a crook, who absolutely needed no pretext to pardon the J6 terrorists any more than he needed one for all of the other corrupt pardons he handed out in his first term. If they now have a problem with the outgoing President taking understandable action on the basis of this once unthinkable disaster of an outcome, then the people who made this outcome happen should take a long look in the mirror, so that they may figure out a way to go fuck themselves.