His legacy is now intrinsically linked to Donald Trump’s next term. If anything we’re afraid of happening comes to fruition, it will be Biden’s fault for enabling another Trump term.
He failed to defend the country from a fascist takeover.
“Neglected” is the word you’re looking for. “Failed” might imply that an attempt was actually made.
He failed to even try.
I expect Biden to rate below average. But not much. On the other hand, I expect Trump to end up in the “Three Worst” list.
But Biden said he saw polling that makes him think he should have stayed in the race and won. The party won’t learn anything meaningful from this exercise.
Which was a lie. His own internal polling showed Trump pulling 400+ electoral votes https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/biden-polling-trump-votes-harris-election-b2644079.html
Biden’s legacy isn’t going to be about what he did. It’s going to be about what he, and by extension, the Democratic Party, which as president and a member of said party, he is the de facto leader of, didn’t do:
- “fixing the economy”, but not actually paying attention to or addressing the actual problems and lived experiences of anyone lower than “upper class” on the social rungs
- appointing the most absolutely limpdick AG who could not be bothered to meaningfully prosecute any one of the primary players in a fucking coup attempt
- breaking his promise to not shoot for a second term
- refusing to step back from the campaign for far, far too long, when it was clear to everyone on all sides of the political spectrum that he was far too old and senile to effectively campaign anymore
- ignoring the fact that a ton of Americans - particularly younger ones, and left leaning ones - are absolutely and completely sick of the gerontocracy he’s a central part of
- failing to lean away from neoliberalism and corporate-friendly policies that are pissing the vast majority of voters off
- refusing to stop supplying the apartheid - and now, openly genocidal - leadership regime in Israel with advanced military supplies
- being mentally unable to break away from a very ossified and outdated view of Russia, and appeasing Putin instead of meaningfully supporting Ukraine
- we can keep going, but I’ll stop here for now
Overall: Biden will be remembered as a mashup of the worst moments of Neville Chamberlain, Paul von Hindenburg, and Herbert Hoover (except there’s no FDR waiting in the wings, and who knows if we’ll actual get another free fucking election from here on out). Yes: he did a lot of good stuff, but at the same time, he dropped the ball so badly on so many other fronts that were and are absolutely fucking crucial. He’s going to be remembered for the latter part, not the former.
Also the more charitable thing he didn’t do:
- Communicate effectively the good he has done
The Dems (Obama) bragged about not putting their name on the pandemic relief checks FFS.
We now know whether you voted for Kamala or Trump was widely a function of whether you consume political news. Biden failed to use the pulpit of the presidency to break through to “low-information” voters. Sure we can blame the average person for not being masochistic enough to wade through the news, but where do you go from there?
I agree with a lot of these points, but the one about the gerontocracy; I don’t understand how people have a problem with biden’s age but are seemingly fine with trump, who will claim the title of oldest president ever in this next term assuming he doesn’t die in office. (Not saying that I’m inferring that this applies to you from your post btw, just an observation about how everyone says Biden is too old, but the argument hasn’t been effectively used against trump for some reason.)
Trump’s base don’t actually like the man on a personal level. Two of the biggest reasons people vote for him:
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They’re conservative Christians who would vote for Satan himself if it meant appointing more Republican judges.
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They view him as a giant middle finger to the establishment, elites, and existing party leaders.
Note, Trump being old as fuck doesn’t subtract from either of those core values.
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Trump’s age is definitely on the long, long list of things I hate about him.
Same here. I don’t know why it’s not an issue for the people that voted for him though, especially because they made such a stink about Biden’s. Oh wait, I forgot…they’re hypocrites.
People are not a monolith. Those without standards have no reason not to vote Trump. Those with standards have reasons to not vote for either.
Yes both are old, that doesn’t mean we should have two old fuckers running for president. Old white dudes running for president suck.
The left suddenly has no problem with a gerontocracy if we’re talking about Bernie Sanders (83, 1 year older than Biden) or Elizabeth Warren (75).
That’s sort of a blanket statement, and I don’t think it really applies about Warren and Sanders.
My sense is that most folks feel that Bernie is too old. And I didn’t realize EW was 75, but in contrast to both Biden and Trump, I haven’t seen Sanders or Warren randomly zone out and have an ‘old person’ moment on camera.
They both still seem mentally sharp. Whether or not that’s a function of having less press exposure and a greater ability to choose when they appear before the cameras is an unknown.Not advocating for them, mind you, because I do think they’re too old. Just adding that I think their perceived sharpness allows them to avoid those criticisms.
The center had a huge problem with Sanders’ age in 2016. That went away in 2020.
My point was that age only became a talking point in regard to Biden and that’s the only person in the aforementioned gerontocracy that seems to have been affected by the younger voters being fed up, so we’re essentially saying the same thing.
But why single out “the left?” Grassley won reelection two years ago and he’s 91 and afaik plans to run again in 2028.
Generally it’s young Democratic voters complaining, but again, same voters who support Sanders and Warren.
We saw a little bit of it, but not enough of it, with Diane Feinstein. I’m surprised we’re not hearing it about Nancy Pelosi. If you’re old enough to fall and break a hip, you probably shouldn’t be in office.
Yeah, agreed that they’re all too old. Bernie is great, but I’d have expected him to retire by now.
He’s going to look pretty damn good compared to the president immediately before and after him.
But then again a pineapple pizza would look pretty good compared to two piles of dogshit tooThat’s an insult to pineapple pizza and I love pineapple pizza. Let’s just pretend some people really like him and everyone else is crazy like Chicago deep dish.
The average person is simple as fuck and can’t think further back than their last shit.
All people will remember is 9% inflation, the failed withdrawl from Afghanistan, and attempted policy changes that kept getting reverted by the courts.
If we’re really lucky they’ll remember earmarking $7.5 billion for 500,000 charging stations that still haven’t materialized. Oh, sorry, they made 8. So 499,992 that haven’t materialized.
I mean you can easily flip those things.
America recovered faster and stronger from Covid than pretty much every other nation (without a recession), he’s the president who was finally able to get us out of Afghanistan (something the past two president’s tried and failed to do), and the infrastructure bill has been seen as a success I thought from most perspectives.
Not saying this is the right way to look at these events, but just that historians won’t be tied to knee jerk reactions. However, like most president’s I think opinions about Biden will largely be defined by what his actions led to down the road more than his impact during his presidency. What happens with Trump and onward will have an outsized impact on how Biden is written about in the history books.
The problem with the Infrastructure Bill is the results are too far out. By the time any of them are completed, Trump will have claimed credit for them.
The 499,992 remaining charging stations will be Trump branded and gold plated.
and attempted policy changes that kept getting reverted by the courts.
And attempted policy changes that kept getting killed by members of the president’s own party.
As someone who travels for work, everywhere is redoing their roads with that infrastructure bill money. It’s kind of funny because right now everyone is also complaining about all the construction… Biden did a lot of good, but his legacy will be torn apart by enabling Trump 47. I will remember Biden as the guy that worked with the racists while in the senate, protected Clarence Thomas, ran several times for president not getting the hint, got picked as VP for Obama to signal to racists that Obama was “one of the good ones”, then convinced the DNC to rally behind his presidential run to stop Bernie Sanders, then still not getting the hint tried to run again giving Trump basically the easiest path to victory he could have ever had.
