The tragedy of Joe Biden is that people see his age, his frailty and his ailing poll numbers and they miss the bigger story. Which is that his has been a truly consequential presidency, even a transformational one. In less than three years, he has built a record that should unify US progressives, including those on the radical left, and devised an economic model to inspire social democratic parties the world over, including here in Britain.

Sadly for Biden, politics and government are different things: it takes more than a record of good governance to get reelected. For one thing, voters cast their ballots less as a verdict on the past than as an instruction (or hope) for the future. And the fear, shared by 76% of Americans, according to a poll this week, is that Biden, who would be 86 at the end of a second term, is simply too old to lead them there. Put aside the fact that his near certain opponent in November 2024, Donald Trump, is only three years younger. Trump has a presence and vigour, an ability to project himself, that Biden does not. And that simple fact affects – distorts – the entire way the Biden administration is seen. As one observer puts it, “the vibes are off”.

The challenge for Democrats is to use the 14 months between now and election day to get past that, to point out the malignancy of Trump and the danger a second Trump presidency would represent to the republic and the world – and also to make the positive case for what we might call Bidenism. Luckily, that is not a hard case to make.

That’s because, though elected to be no more than a calm hand on the tiller, a stopgap, interim leader who might allow the country to steady itself after four years of Storm Donald, Biden has confounded that expectation. He has none of the stage presence of his old boss, Barack Obama – who never had any trouble with vibes – but he can already claim to have achieved much more.

Top of the list is, characteristically, something that sounds boring but is of enormous significance: the Inflation Reduction Act, passed last year. That seemingly technocratic piece of legislation actually achieves two epochal goals. First, it hastens the day the US makes the break from fossil fuels – by making clean energy not only the morally superior option for both industry and consumers, but the financially superior one too.

It does that through a massive raft of tax breaks, subsidies and incentives all designed to encourage the production of wind turbines, solar panels, ever improving battery technology, geothermal plants and the like, along with tax credits aimed at making electric cars irresistible even to those middle-American consumers more concerned about their wallets than the burning planet.

The estimated cost of $386bn is huge, but that’s not a limit on how much Biden has committed to spend. On the contrary, if the demand is there for solar panels or electric vans, Biden’s law obliges the US government to keep spending. A calculation by Credit Suisse reckoned the figure could rise to $800bn, which will in turn unleash $1.7tn in private-sector spending on green technology. Small wonder that everyone from environmental activists to Goldman Sachs hailed the act as a “gamechanger” in the fight to tackle the climate emergency.

But the second goal of the legislation is almost as significant. Biden insisted that this surge in green manufacturing would happen inside the US, thereby reviving industrial towns and cities in decline since the 1980s. It is US factories that are getting the subsidies to build all this clean tech – alongside an earlier, huge package of infrastructure spending – restoring jobs to workers who had long been written off.

The Inflation Reduction Act is the centrepiece of Bidenomics, an approach that resurrects Democratic principles discarded in the Bill Clinton years, seemingly for ever: old-school industrial policy centred on an activist state making serious public investment in manufacturing; muscular regulation of corporations; and warm encouragement of unionised labour. (“When unions win, Americans across the board win,” says Biden.) Which is one reason why the AFL-CIO trade union, echoing Goldman Sachs, also hailed the act as a “gamechanger” for working people.

The passage of the legislation – all the more remarkable given a Senate then split 50-50 between the parties – and its impact are set out in an outstanding new book on the Biden presidency, The Last Politician by Franklin Foer. He describes how Biden, whose hands were already full with the Covid pandemic and the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, was not content simply to be a caretaker manager, troubleshooting crises. Instead, “he set out to transform the country through some of the biggest spending bills that have ever been proposed”, Foer told me when we spoke this week.

The result is that Biden has “redirected the paradigm” of US economic life in a way that will affect Americans “for a generation”. While Obama and Clinton were “deferential to markets”, says Foer, Biden has reversed “the neoliberal consensus” in place since the Ronald Reagan era. He doesn’t leave corporations alone; he gets stuck in, taking on de-facto monopolies, reviving “anti-trust” policies that had long been abandoned. (“Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism,” insists Biden. “It’s exploitation.”) “Like Reagan, Biden is resetting the economic trajectory of the nation,” adds Foer. “In fact, as a matter of substance, he is the most transformational president since Reagan.”

Internationally, the change is not as dramatic, but Biden is credited with bringing stability after the chaos and dictator-coddling of the Trump years and, especially, for building and maintaining a western alliance in support of Ukraine as it defends itself against Russian imperialism. Others admire his handling of China: robust, without crossing the line where a cold war turns hot.

There’s more to the Biden record than this, of course. Inflation is not at European levels, but Americans are feeling the cost of higher prices. And plenty had their confidence in the president shaken two summers ago, when they saw images of a scrambled, chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan, to say nothing of the climate activists who cannot forgive his approval of an oil-drilling project in Alaska. His poll numbers point to a grim truth about politics: that it can be a cruel business. No matter how strong his record, Biden looks older and shakier than Trump and he is less entertaining. And those may be reasons enough for him to lose.

For now, the Biden presidency is a reminder of why politics matters, why political skills matter, including the dark, sometimes ugly arts of getting legislation passed, often through painful compromise. It also suggests a possible, unexpected formula for success, one Labour might study closely: campaign in reassuring prose, but govern in radical poetry. Biden was no one’s idea of a fire-breathing leftist: that’s one reason why he was able to win. But once you’re in, you can dare to be bold. Once you have power, be sure to use it.

  • gregorum
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    9 months ago

    Let me know when we get universal healthcare, the federally protected right to abortion, equal pay across race and gender, federally protected rights for lgbtq folks, federal legalization for cannabis, and all the other things progressives have been demanding for decades…

    Biden the progressive dream president? Ha!

    • spaceghotiOP
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      159 months ago

      TIL that the office of the President of the United States has dictatorial powers.

      • jack [he/him, comrade/them]
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        99 months ago

        We’re seeing state legislatures all over the country ignore the courts to prevent democracy in their domains. The court can’t actually do anything. Biden could tell them to fuck off, abolish student debt, and they’d be powerless.

        Or at least he could fucking try.

        • spaceghotiOP
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          39 months ago

          So you want Democrats to discard the rule of law the way Republicans do, giving Republicans the win at destroying our government so they can replace it with private interests? Seriously?

          • jack [he/him, comrade/them]
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            119 months ago

            Yes. I do not care about “the rule of law” if all it does is make my life worse and the capitalists can ignore it whenever convenient. It has no value to me.

              • One of the biggest battles for republicans, that of ending bodily autonomy, was achieved under Biden. How is that not a better example of republicans winning than whatever you’re trying to say with your link? (I didn’t read it, not sorry)

                • spaceghotiOP
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                  49 months ago

                  Because that was a product of the Trump administration getting to replace three Supreme Court Justices and tipping the balance toward conservative extremism. It wasn’t something Biden did, it’s something he couldn’t prevent and not relevant to the topic.

          • jack [he/him, comrade/them]
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            9 months ago

            How about this: why doesn’t he enforce the rule of law on the Republicans who flout it? He’s in charge of the justice department and could charge the politicians blatantly ignoring the court that he says must be respected. If he believed that, shouldn’t he prosecute the state Republicans ignoring the SCs order to create new district maps? We would accept the legitimacy of the “rule of law” much more readily if it were actually applied consistently.

      • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        59 months ago

        Most of those things Biden said he could do…

        And every one of them is what the DNC said we could accomplish with Biden and 50 D senators during the Georgia runoffs…

        If say voters don’t have the memory of goldfish, but moderates routinely prove me wrong…

        That, or they have the same morals about lying as republicans. Hell, probably both just going off the last 30 years of American neoliberalism

            • spaceghotiOP
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              79 months ago

              It addresses in a large part of how the government works and why the person I’m responding to doesn’t understand why Biden can’t just govern by fiat. A concept that a depressing number of people in these comments seem to be ignorant of or purely dismissive.

              The problem with governing by fiat is what happens when the opposition gets their turn. It’s how Republicans want to run the country, and it’s not doing us any favors.

              • @TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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                59 months ago

                I don’t think people expect Biden to write executive orders for everything. But they do expect him to fight more for progressive issues like healthcare , minimum wage, campaign finance reform, etc. They want him to be an advocate for progressive policies. They want Dark Brandon.

                • spaceghotiOP
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                  69 months ago

                  So we’re not going to acknowledge the progressive policies that he has fought for because he hasn’t done everything we demand? Personally, I didn’t expect him to stand up for half of the policies he’s enacted, let alone the ones he’s fought for but lost.

          • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            39 months ago

            If I’m wrong and I don’t know how it works, what about the people running the party who made those promises?

            Or are you saying I don’t know how it works, because I should have known they were lying to voters? I missed that moderate argument, is it coming back?

            • spaceghotiOP
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              89 months ago

              I’m not going to defend the claim that all they need is fifty senators and the Oval Office to pass sweeping regulatory changes. I don’t know who said that, but they should be called out for lying. It wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now. The most that can be said for fifty senators is that it gives them enough of a majority (with the Vice President) to set the agenda. It doesn’t stop Republicans from obstructing the way they have been for over two decades, and it doesn’t force the Republican-led House to pass bills that progressives want.

              Someone is lying to you. Democrats do their share, but at least they’re not actively trying to make your life worse the way Republicans are. Biden’s policy and legislative record as President are far more impressive than anyone expected, and the author of this piece outlines how and why. I’m sorry if that’s not enough for you, but politics is the art of what’s possible. For fantasy, try Anne Rice.

              • CapgrasDelusion
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                29 months ago

                Biden’s policy and legislative record as President are far more impressive than anyone expected, and the author of this piece outlines how and why.

                No one you’re responding to read it.

                • spaceghotiOP
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                  29 months ago

                  Sadly true. I don’t know why I expected better. They’re like toddlers throwing a tantrum because they didn’t get everything they wanted.

              • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                29 months ago

                Someone is lying to you

                Yeah, the moderates running the party… They lied to all of us.

                No idea how you forgot about that, it was only a few years ago.

                It doesn’t stop Republicans from obstructing the way they have been for over two decades, and it doesn’t force the Republican-led House to pass bills that progressives want.

                Damn bro, you forgot Biden saying they were only like that with Obama and once Biden became president all his old republican friends would magically do a 180?

                He called Mitch McConnell “an old friend” last week, have you forgotten that too?

                • spaceghotiOP
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                  59 months ago

                  Yes, Biden lied to you. He’s not perfect. He’s not a saint. I’m not defending anyone’s lies. I’m asking you to acknowledge reality instead of insisting that everything be exactly the way you want it to be the instant you want it. There are things he can’t do, whatever he said during the campaign season. Educated voters know how to parse through campaign promises to assess what’s possible versus what the alternatives will be.

                  Biden has been a neoliberal shill for most of his political career, in bed with corporate interests. I’ve never been a fan of him. That’s what makes me so surprised that he’s done as well as he has. He’s still handing freebies out to his corporate masters, and I’m not going to praise him for that. But he’s also done an extraordinary amount of good for the entire nation, and it doesn’t compromise my integrity to acknowledge that as well.

                  Seriously, this black-or-white thinking isn’t how the adult world works. Stop throwing tantrums because you didn’t get the lollipop you were promised.

      • ares35
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        59 months ago

        biden may not lean to the left at all, but he’s still way better than the alternative with our current electoral processes.

    • CapgrasDelusion
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      9 months ago

      The gerrymandered house and the gerry-landed Senate make this impossible. Put whatever candidate you want to replace Biden. The results will be the same or worse.

      We can’t even fill basic pentagon positions thanks to “Coach.” But Biden should have unilaterally fixed everything. Sure.

  • stevatoo [they/them, she/her]
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    9 months ago

    …often through painful compromise.

    Look jack, sometimes you gotta throw trans athletes under the bus to keep your d.i.n.o. voters

  • jack [he/him, comrade/them]
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    109 months ago

    It says there’s a long list but there’s really just the one thing: the IRA. I work in renewables, and it is undeniably a huge boost to the industry. I’m glad for it. But that alone is nowhere near enough to claim even the far left should be behind this “historically progressive” presidency. What did Biden do about student debt? How has his abandonment of any concern for covid at all helped Americans? Under his watch, abortion rights have been dismantled around the country. Public education is under assault. Queer people are facing more public and political hostility than they have in decades. Biden’s administration has dismantled as many environmental regulations as they’ve reinstated.

    He has an enormous amount of power he is simply disinterested in wielding on any of the above. That’s not just vibes or distortion. It’s the facts. If had kept his campaign promise of abolishing student debt, he’d have way more support. But my payments resume this month, and my debt isn’t a dollar less than it was under Trump.

    • AlwaysNowNeverNotMe
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      39 months ago

      Not even to mention the railroad strike busting immediately followed by 2 major derailment spills.

    • krellor
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      39 months ago

      Hard disagree. What did he do about student debt? Asked Congress to act, told the vocal left that he didn’t know if using executive orders to forgive debt would hold water, after Congress failed to act he did use executive orders, and was halted by scotus. He also directed the department of education to forgive loans in large traunches for special cases that could be forgiven.

      Abortion? He directed the executive branch to broaden access to medicines to induce abortions, protect access to annoying through Medicare, and specifically directed the HHD to make sure mifepristone was widely available.

      I mean, it is easy to cherry pick individual actions and paint with a broad brush. I certainly don’t like everything Biden has done, but to blame him for what the Republican states are doing to trans rights, abortion, and student debt is just ignoring the limitations of the office. He’s president of the federal executive, not a monarch.

    • @agent_flounder
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      59 months ago

      I consider myself a progressive. Is Biden progressive? See below

  • @Recant@beehaw.org
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    9 months ago

    Really don’t agree with this one. We have a broken system that the leading candidates in each party refuse to debate other contenders. Our “candidates” have been selected for us before the election has even gotten close.

    Biden is too old and just a career politician that got to this point not because he was the right choice but because he got the right jobs. He had been vying for the presidency for at least 20 years before he got it. It just became his turn.

    Additionally, he is not progressive just a populist. Just ask the railroad works that were told they can’t strike because of a bill signed by Biden.

    More information is here on some of the falsehoods of Biden being progressive when it relates to unions: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/02/joe-biden-is-no-friend-of-unions

    • spaceghotiOP
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      9 months ago

      At risk of repeating myself ad nauseam, no one is suggesting Biden is the perfect president or arch-progressive. Only that the policy successes he’s managed to create are far more progressive than anyone expected and are victories we’ve been waiting for since Clinton’s failed promises.

      That leaves plenty of room for other ways he’s disappointed us.

  • Silverseren
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    89 months ago

    Not sure why you posted this to the lemmy.ml politics. It’s just a bunch of tankie trash here that want to throw everyone under the bus if it benefits countries like Russia and China.

    There is no progressive action that would be good enough for them. The goalposts are continually moved despite every accomplishment.

  • @Conyak@lemmy.tf
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    69 months ago

    I’m happy with a lot of what Biden has done but saying he is the president progressives have been waiting for is absurd.

  • ArugulaZ
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    69 months ago

    You’ve got two choices: Biden, or destruction. Stay home, that’s destruction. Vote third party, that’s destruction. It’s really as simple as that.

    • @Count042@lemmy.ml
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      59 months ago

      I’m 42. That has been what I’ve been told every election, as things get worse and the Democrats become more right wing.

      This is the standard shaming campaign the Democrats do to demand the votes they haven’t earned and have no intention of trying to earn.

      Fuck, I’m actually jealous of the Republican base. At least their party actually pretends to try to service their base.

      If it is so important, and Biden and Harris poll so bad, why can’t we have a primary. You know, a little democracy from our shaming Democratic party.

    • ares35
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      49 months ago

      that’s pretty much it. until the entire process gets a major overhaul away from fptp, the democratic primaries is where you can be picky on your candidate choices. but at the general, you a) still have to show up, and b) have to support the democratic candidate even if they weren’t your choice at the primary. because you know damn well that they are voting party-first, any missing or split democratic vote is essentially giving them one.

    • hypelightfly
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      9 months ago

      Sure, that’s why I’ll vote for him again. That doesn’t make him the president I’ve been waiting for though.

    • @agent_flounder
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      29 months ago

      It is possible to disagree that Biden is what we progressives want while still planning to vote for him. Obviously it is either that or let the fascists take over and further wreck democracy and further persecute marginalized groups.

      I for one will vote for Biden and also volunteer to help the Democrats win elections at the federal, state, and local level.

  • Veraticus
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    49 months ago

    In what sense is this not true? Everything progressive care about has advanced so far under Biden. The only argument against is that perfect must be the enemy of the good.

  • Alto
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    49 months ago

    Ah yes, progressives have totally been waiting for yet another neocon