24th July 2024, 8:29 AM
Man, what a tragedy. I mean, as I've said before Biden has been an amazing president, easily the best not only of my life but since at least Truman or FDR. In terms of policy he's blown away my expectations. I was expecting a solidly liberal president in the center of the Democratic party, but he has been much more progressive than that. It's been pretty incredible. (On that note, it was very interesting to note how just before Biden withdrew from the race, while most of the Democratic Party were shoving him out the door, Bernie Sanders and AOC were supporting Biden's continued candidacy because they know he's been an amazing progressive President and know that we can't be sure if Harris will continue that or not.)
There really are only two things he did wrong, but unfortunately they ended up crippling the administration's ability to continue: the way he withdrew from Afghanistan and inflation. On the former, Biden decided to finally end the war. It's saved lots of lives and ended a forever war. The problem is, Afghanistan fell to the Taliban almost immediately afterwards, and the scenes of that collapse were bad. It's also awful for a lot of the people in Afghanistan, the urban populations who wanted a modern life but now are stuck in Islamic fundamentalist medieval Taliban-ville. It also made it clear that the war was a failure and we lost, and nobody likes losing.
This is still an important issue because the Afghan withdrawal is when Biden's poll numbers collapsed. Biden had long wanted to end that war, and when he became President he did... and it destroyed his poll numbers irrevocably. They have never recovered, not even close, they have been bad ever since. The lesson for the future seems to be that it's better to continue a forever war than to end it because the American people are much more upset about giving up than on the constant drip of death and violence that happens in those wars. That's kind of messed up but seems to be true.
The other problem, inflation, is international. Biden did not cause the inflation, Covid did. Some of the Covid response bills may have slightly increased inflation, but for the most part there's not much we could have done to reduce inflation more because it was an international problem caused by events no one had control over. This inflation has toppled governments around the world; it was key behind the British Conservative party's crushing defeat earlier this month, for example. The US has actually managed this better than almost anywhere -- the amount of inflation here is bad, but it's a lot worse in many other places. Biden did a very good job of fighting the inflation, and fortunately there was almost as much wage inflation as price inflation so for many people things aren't actually much, if any, worse off. But when you go to the supermarket and pay so much more than you did five years ago it's hard to keep this in mind, so this always was going to be a very major problem making a Democratic victory this year much, MUCH more difficult.
But what I'd hope people would be able to do is look at Biden's amazing list of accomplishments, how he masterfully managed foreign policy (other than the Afghan withdrawal), as you'd expect from someone with 50 years of top-tier foreign policy experience; how he governed surprisingly progressively; how the US managed the economic problems of the past few years better than almost any other country on Earth because of his management; and more. But no, because of the above two issues Biden had awful poll numbers. Then add his increasing age on top of that and he was forced out of the race. It's such a shame. Yeah, he looked old in that debate, but he'd still be a better President than anyone else, I have no doubt about that.
Now, with Kamala Harris as our nominee (and she has the delegates for the nomination), there has been an explosion of financial donations to the Democrats and immediately improving poll numbers... but like, the reasons why we didn't have that support already are so frustratingly weak that we should have had that support all along! Harris will be a fine President, but Biden's been great.
There really are only two things he did wrong, but unfortunately they ended up crippling the administration's ability to continue: the way he withdrew from Afghanistan and inflation. On the former, Biden decided to finally end the war. It's saved lots of lives and ended a forever war. The problem is, Afghanistan fell to the Taliban almost immediately afterwards, and the scenes of that collapse were bad. It's also awful for a lot of the people in Afghanistan, the urban populations who wanted a modern life but now are stuck in Islamic fundamentalist medieval Taliban-ville. It also made it clear that the war was a failure and we lost, and nobody likes losing.
This is still an important issue because the Afghan withdrawal is when Biden's poll numbers collapsed. Biden had long wanted to end that war, and when he became President he did... and it destroyed his poll numbers irrevocably. They have never recovered, not even close, they have been bad ever since. The lesson for the future seems to be that it's better to continue a forever war than to end it because the American people are much more upset about giving up than on the constant drip of death and violence that happens in those wars. That's kind of messed up but seems to be true.
The other problem, inflation, is international. Biden did not cause the inflation, Covid did. Some of the Covid response bills may have slightly increased inflation, but for the most part there's not much we could have done to reduce inflation more because it was an international problem caused by events no one had control over. This inflation has toppled governments around the world; it was key behind the British Conservative party's crushing defeat earlier this month, for example. The US has actually managed this better than almost anywhere -- the amount of inflation here is bad, but it's a lot worse in many other places. Biden did a very good job of fighting the inflation, and fortunately there was almost as much wage inflation as price inflation so for many people things aren't actually much, if any, worse off. But when you go to the supermarket and pay so much more than you did five years ago it's hard to keep this in mind, so this always was going to be a very major problem making a Democratic victory this year much, MUCH more difficult.
But what I'd hope people would be able to do is look at Biden's amazing list of accomplishments, how he masterfully managed foreign policy (other than the Afghan withdrawal), as you'd expect from someone with 50 years of top-tier foreign policy experience; how he governed surprisingly progressively; how the US managed the economic problems of the past few years better than almost any other country on Earth because of his management; and more. But no, because of the above two issues Biden had awful poll numbers. Then add his increasing age on top of that and he was forced out of the race. It's such a shame. Yeah, he looked old in that debate, but he'd still be a better President than anyone else, I have no doubt about that.
Now, with Kamala Harris as our nominee (and she has the delegates for the nomination), there has been an explosion of financial donations to the Democrats and immediately improving poll numbers... but like, the reasons why we didn't have that support already are so frustratingly weak that we should have had that support all along! Harris will be a fine President, but Biden's been great.
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