When Joe Biden stepped aside, one thing that happened was an outpouring of affection from Democrats. there has been a weird pushback about that recently. Nancy Pelosi made some disparaging remarks about the Biden team and now Jon Chait has written a very pundit-like column attacking the argument that Biden has been a better president than Obama.
Chait is always a writer likely to succumb to his priors, still he was fairly accurate in sounding the warning about the illiberal Left on college campuses. His argument - as an argument and not a scholarly analysis - tends to denigrate some of what Biden did. The main argument in my mind that Biden is better than Obama is that he was able to accomplish more given his slim majorities in the Senate. From the point of view of doing the most with the least, Biden surpasses Obama. Obama had a 60 vote Senate majority! Of course he was able to get more done.
The dissatisfaction with Obama's record stems from a sense that he did a lot of performative bipartisanship that tended to undercut the need for more "progressive" reforms. Biden, on the other hand, made his bipartisanship largely invisible. As such, he as able to pass some very impressive legislation in an environment that was far less favorable for such than Obama had.
One point that Chait relies on to make his case is that Biden is very unpopular. It will very interesting to see where his popularity resides by 2025, especially if Harris wins. Biden's unpopularity stems largely from three things: increasing negative polarization; his age; the global dissatisfaction with incumbents. What has been strange is that Harris - the incumbent VP - has seen her favorables spike after Biden stepped aside. Some of that - a lot of that - is that the last two don't seem to stick to her. She's young and as the #2, she isn't held liable for the free floating anger that Covid and global inflation brought on.
Biden does not have a "big fucking deal" like the Affordable Care Act to rest his legacy on. However, he clearly did more with less. As for favorability, Obama lost control of the House in 2010 and never regained. Biden saw a fairly favorable midterm election that kept his narrow majority in the Senate and allowed him to rebalance the federal court system. If we excuse Obama's inability to get Merrick Garland confirmed on the grounds that he had no levers over McConnell, then we have to give Biden credit for maintaining an improbably Senate majority.
Chait's main argument is that Biden pivoted too far let for no appreciable gain, whereas Obama cleverly found a way to the middle; his argument is also that this is what Harris should do. This is where he falls into the Pundit Trap. Pundits are, by definition, highly literate, highly engaged political junkies. Chait's own argument is littered with studies and sources. His argument falls into this trap when he attacks the choice of Tim Walz.
For Chait, Walz represents a capture of Harris by the Left. I suppose the argument is that he preferred Shapiro or the milquetoast Kelly as being more electorally viable. What he clearly fails to see is that Walz's "leftist" bona fides are largely popular and he's an extremely effective salesmen for them. "Republicans see me helping our neighbors and they call it socialism" just lands differently when it comes from a guy like Walz. He's on the ticket because he doesn't upset the anti-Israeli left, yes, but he's also on there because he's an ideal running mate for the Black woman from California.
The term "Vibes Election" is a little overused, if only because every election is a vibes election. Partisans largely do vote for their party's nominee. Today that means Trump's floor is probably 40%, even as he decompresses before our eyes. The people who sit there, look at Trump and Harris or Biden and say, "Jeez, I dunno" are not people who care about how Harris plans to pay for her tax cuts for children. They are Paul Campos' "Arianna Grande Voters."
I do think that Harris has assimilated an important lesson from Obama about using universal language to describe her agenda. I love the prominent use of "freedom" from her and Walz (again, he lines up well with her). She's running on the same middle class bromides that Obama and Biden ran on. How many times did Biden mention Scranton in 2020, for crying out loud?
The strongest part of Chait's argument is that we have tended to downplay what Obama accomplished in his first two years. However, that shouldn't require denigrating Biden's accomplishments. Yes, Obama greenlit the raid on bin Laden's compound. Biden not only finally got us out of Afghanistan - which Obama failed at - but he has also created a global coalition to protect Ukraine. It's worth noting that Ukraine lost Crimea in 2014 - when Obama was president.
Ironically, Obama's greatest weakness seemed to be that he never really seemed to understand the nature of his opposition. His famous keynote speech in 2004 is a great example of that. He's not dumb. He knew it was just rhetoric, rhetoric that America's first Black president would have to use. Harris has impressed me by assimilating the idea of using universal language, but also by hitting Trump hard and repeatedly. "When they go low, we go high" is laudable, but also laughable in Trumpistan.
In the end, I do think Biden's accomplishments rival or outpace Clinton's. If Harris wins, he will be seen as a really consequential president and perhaps our finest one termer. Obama had a more favorable landscape in the Senate that allowed him to do things like the ACA. What Biden has done is more impressive given the landscape, but they have equal claims, I think to being excellent presidents and it wouldn't surprise me if they wind up with fairly similar rankings with the perspective to time.
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