From Substack: Some Advice for President Joe Biden’s 2024 Reelection Campaign
It should not be ignored that President Joe Biden and his reelection campaign team have a lot of work to do. Most of it will not yield results right away either. He will have to continually and directly confront “the age question.” He will have to continually and forcefully convey in no uncertain terms that he did not use his political power and influence to help Hunter Biden or to help Hunter avoid the legal consequences of his actions. Finally, he will have to motivate an unexcited party base while retaining nervous Independents.
President Biden is contending with a balancing act far greater than the twists and turns of 2020. Great progress comes with great struggle. Successes on an administrative and governance level come with ongoing problems and crises that tend to overshadow these successes. Governmental stability comes with lingering social tensions and division.
Too often, these longer-term problems become associated with the person in power. These problems date back far beyond President Biden. 4 years cannot undo 40 years of decline that started with Ronald Reagan, accelerated under George W. Bush, and shifted into overdrive with Donald J. Trump. 4 years cannot undo the decades of Democratic appeasement of the radical wings of the Republican Party, whether it was Bill Clinton and his presidential triangulation, or Manchin and Sinema and their refusal to recognize how much the Republican Party has shifted away from compromise, bipartisanship, and sanity in government.
The issues in today’s politics are systemic and cannot possibly be an indictment of President Biden’s leadership. To the contrary, they are an indictment of the political status quo, a status quo that Donald Trump, for all his cultural war bravado, is a critical part of.
However, to gain the support of those who feel the consequences of this decades-long neglect of American prosperity, the Biden 2024 reelection campaign will have to address the heartache, pain, anxiety, and even despair of the American people across all regions and corners of the United States.
Yes, President Biden can tout his accomplishments. Rightly so. From the very beginning, many people have had low expectations for the Biden presidency. President Biden has every right to show how these low expectations did not define his presidency.
He can point to the American Rescue Plan, a lifeline for communities across the country reeling from the toll of the coronavirus pandemic. These communities included state local governments and other local municipalities, which were struggling to sustain their budgets and invest in economic development, government services, and social problems. Especially given the economic crises facing China’s municipalities and local governments, these accomplishments are all the more striking.
He can also point to his work with Congress to develop a comprehensive bipartisan infrastructure law. Unlike Donald Trump, who promised to pass an infrastructure bill but never did, Biden used his experience in the Senate to secure the votes. Consequently, America saw the largest package of investments into infrastructure and transportation in about half a century, with new money for roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, ports, water systems, and broadband.
And even though the Build Back Better program did not pass fully, the Inflation Reduction Act put record funding into renewable energy and environmental protection, climate action & resiliency, K-12 public education, and lowering prescription drug prices.
There’s more. There’s the potential of the CHIPS Act (if implemented right). There’s the PACT Act, postal reform, and dozens, if not hundreds, of other bills passed in Congress, a good number of these on a bipartisan basis. There’s his notable executive action on mental health parity, junk fees, student loan debt relief, environmental justice, and racial equality.
Finally, we cannot forget his work in restoring competency across all levels of government, from the Cabinet, to smaller federal government agencies, to military officers, to law enforcement attorneys, and judicial appointees.
We can all be proud of these achievements. They occurred despite a razor-thin margin for error in Congress, and despite those who continue to criticize our work and blast “the left” for every bad event out there. People like Joe Manchin, and Kyrsten Sinema, and Joe Lieberman, and Sean Patrick Maloney, and, remarkably, President Biden’s own Commerce Secretary (who has her own major credibility problems).
If they wish to complain about “the left” driving the political agenda, and to return to a version of the pre-Biden status quo, they should think about the desperation of the people in the Industrial Midwest, in the Great Plains, in Appalachia, in the Black Belt, in the Rio Grande Valley, in Indian Country, in Rural America, and in many urban areas. They should understand that these people have seen their livelihoods disappear in front of their eyes. Why? Because of deindustrialization in manufacturing and mechanization in agriculture. Because politicians like Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, who pretended to sympathize with the working class, left unions behind the curve, while padding Big Business. Because other austerity politicians tried to cut people off from lifelines like Medicare and Medicaid. Because Corporate America, aided by politicians propped up with Super PAC money, priced out these people and ripped them off time and time again.
The struggle is real, and those that blame “the left” for trying to address it are in denial about the crisis America faces right now. To borrow the words of former Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy, this is “a common struggle” that will determine the future of American democracy.
If anything, the struggle, framed in this way, validates what President Biden has already done and dictates what he should do. When people got the help they needed, they created an era of American prosperity. When American conservatives took all this away, they fell into a hole. Biden is not at fault for America’s falling into that hole. It’s the House and Senate Republicans who are complicit in that. They, after all, wanted to roll back the progress we made with ransom demands. They want to bring government to a halt with another government shutdown. They want to distract from their abysmal record of party infighting with an impeachment of President Biden. They want defund the FBI, go after the DOJ, and free violent January 6 seditionists. The GOP is the Grand Old Party of Obstruction and Gridlock, and it is the Grand Old Party that opposes popular programs and causes like the PRO Act, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Social Security expansion, childcare, eldercare, voting rights, marriage equality, reproductive access, and gun safety.
Look no further than Donald Trump to see this abysmal record and hypocritical political posturing at work. Trump’s presidency, while terrible across the board, was especially bad on the kitchen table issues. Trump tried (and luckily failed) to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He gave the Big Banks an opportunity to almost tank our economy again (SVB’s collapse, for instance, was a natural result of deregulation policies implemented by the Trump Administration). He, with the help of Mnuchin and Scalia, busted up workers and undermined unions. He and DeVos sought to privatize public education, a position at odds with the Founding Fathers and with the clear benefits of public education. He sliced-and-diced the social safety net, especially for Rural America. Finally, to add insult to injury, he gave his rich buddies tax cuts and burdened our generation with an extra $2 trillion in government debt(never mind his handing of the pandemic).
Build Back Better Bidenomics is more effective and groundbreaking than Trump’s trickle-down economics will ever be. Biden has done more for working families and the middle class in just two years than Trump has in his entire life. And he has made our country much stronger now than it was almost three years ago when he took over. We need to expand on our progress.
And we need to highlight the contrasts. The contrast between a gold-tinted penthouse dweller in New York and a man who has lived the struggles of everyday life in Scranton and Wilmington. A leader who knows what places like Scranton, Youngstown, Gary, Hammond, Flint, Peoria, St. Joseph, Dubuque, Janesville, Duluth, and Utica mean to this country. President Biden understands that economic relief, lower costs of living, education access, affordable health care, green-collar jobs, and a level playing field are much more important than outdated, irrelevant, and pointless culture wars.
If President Biden runs proudly on this contrast and on his remarkable track record, he can unite Sanders/Warren progressives and Biden Democrats alike. Just like he did in 2020. And he will also win back the swing voters he needs and even start rebuilding the Democratic Party’s traditional blue-collar working class coalition.
Other Recent Developments:
R.I.P NM Governor Bill Richardson. On a much more positive note, congrats to Gabe Amo on his groundbreaking campaign and likely history-making representation for RI in Congress.
