After reading a few days worth of carping about Joe Biden’s performance, I decided enough’s enough and responded at New York:
Joe Biden has been president of the United States for 43 days. He inherited power from a predecessor who was trying to overturn the 2020 election results via insurrection just two weeks before Inaugural Day, and whose appointees refused the kind of routine transition cooperation other administrations took for granted. His party has a four-vote margin of control in the House, and only controls the Senate via the vice presidential tie-breaking vote (along with a power-sharing arrangement with Republicans). Democratic control of the Senate was not assured until the wee hours of January 6 when the results of the Georgia runoff were clear. Biden took office in the midst of a COVID-19 winter surge, a national crisis over vaccine distribution, and flagging economic indicators.
Biden named all his major appointees well before taking office, and as recommended by every expert, pushed for early confirmation of his national security team, which he quickly secured. After some preliminary discussions with Republicans that demonstrated no real possibility of GOP support for anything like the emergency $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief and stimulus package he had promised, and noting the votes weren’t there in the Senate for significant filibuster reform, Biden took the only avenue open to him. He instructed his congressional allies to pursue the budget reconciliation vehicle to enact his COVID package, with the goal of enacting it by mid-March, when federal supplemental unemployment insurance would run out. Going the reconciliation route meant exposing the package to scrutiny by the Senate parliamentarian, It also virtually guaranteed total opposition from congressional Republicans, which in turn meant Senate Democratic unanimity would be essential.
The House passed the massive and complex reconciliation bill on February 27, right on schedule, with just two Democratic defections, around the same time as the Senate parliamentarian, to no one’s great surprise, deemed a $15 minimum wage provision (already opposed by two Senate Democrats) out of bounds for reconciliation. The Senate is moving ahead with a modified reconciliation bill, and the confirmation of Biden’s Cabinet is chugging ahead slowly but steadily. Like every recent president, he’s had to withdraw at least one nominee – in his case Neera Tanden for the Office of Management and Budget, though the administration’s pick for deputy OMB director is winning bipartisan praise and may be substituted smoothly for Tanden.
Add in his efforts to goose vaccine distribution — which has more than doubled since he took office — and any fair assessment of Biden’s first 43 days should be very positive. But the man is currently being beset by criticism from multiple directions. Republicans, of course, have united in denouncing Biden’s refusal to surrender his agenda in order to secure bipartisan “unity” as a sign that he’s indeed the radical socialist – or perhaps the stooge of radical socialists – that Donald Trump always said he was. Progressives are incensed by what happened on the minimum wage, though it was very predictable. And media critics are treating his confirmation record as a rolling disaster rather than a mild annoyance, given the context of a federal executive branch that was all but running itself for much of the last four years.
To be clear, I found fault with Biden’s presidential candidacy early and often. I didn’t vote for him in California’s 2020 primary. I worried a lot about Biden’s fetish for bipartisanship. I support a $15 minimum wage, and as a former Senate employee, have minimal respect for the upper chamber’s self-important traditions. But c’mon: what, specifically, is the alternative path he could have pursued the last 43 days? Republican criticism is not worthy of any serious attention: the GOP is playing the same old tapes it recorded in 2009 when Barack Obama (and his sidekick Biden) spent far too much time chasing Republican senators around Washington in search of compromises they never intended to make. While they are entitled to oppose Biden’s agenda, they are not entitled to kill it.
Progressive criticism of Biden feels formulaic. Years and years of investment in the rhetoric of the eternal “fight” and the belief that outrage shapes outcomes in politics and government have led to the habit of seeing anything other than total subscription to the left’s views as a sell-out. Yes, Kamala Harris could theoretically overrule the Senate parliamentarian on the minimum wage issue, but to what end? So long as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema oppose the $15 minimum wage, any Harris power play could easily be countered by a successful Republican amendment to strike the language in question, and perhaps other items as well. And if the idea is to play chicken with dissident Democrats over the fate of the entire reconciliation bill, is a $15 minimum wage really worth risking a $1.9 trillion package absolutely stuffed with subsidies for struggling low-income Americans? Are Fight for 15 hardliners perhaps conflating ends and means here?
Media carping about Biden’s legislative record so far is frankly just ridiculous. Presumably writing about the obscure and complicated details of reconciliation bills is hard and unexciting work that readers may find uninteresting, while treating Tanden’s travails as an existential crisis for the Biden administration provides drama, but isn’t at all true. The reality is that Biden’s Cabinet nominees are rolling through the Senate with strong confirmation votes (all but one received at least 64 votes), despite a steadily more partisan atmosphere for confirmations in recent presidencies. The COVID-19 bill is actually getting through Congress at a breakneck pace despite its unprecedented size and complexity. Trump’s first reconciliation bill (which was principally aimed at repealing Obamacare) didn’t pass the House until May 4, 2017, and never got through the Senate. Yes, Obama got a stimulus bill through Congress in February 2009, but it was less than half the size, much simpler, and more to the point, there were 59 Senate Democrats in office when it passed, which meant he didn’t even have to use reconciliation.
There’s really no exact precedent for Biden’s situation, particularly given the atmosphere of partisanship in Washington and the whole country right now, and the narrow window he and his party possess – in terms of political capital and time – to get important things done. He should not be judged on any one legislative provision or any one Cabinet nomination. So far the wins far outweigh the losses and omissions. Give the 46th president a break.
I agree that talking about gas prices and linking Bush to the Saudis is a very good idea. This affects people’s day-to-day lives, whereas they just try to ignore Iraq as much as possible. It also makes Bush look out of touch.
Another thing–if they’re correct, the figures are good, even if Kerry does only as well as Gore, because of the huge growth in the Hispanic population (and hopefully citizenship and voting rates).
Question–how accurate are these “partisan” polls? As a yellow-dog Democrat, I’m usually cheered by polls done by our party or groups that lean our way, but I brush off GOP polls as “biased.” Is that what we’re doing here? (I mean those who are celebrating this news, including Mr. Teixeira)
I agree with precinct1233. The undecideds will go overwhelmingly for Kerry, so he’s in even better shape than these numbers indicate. Bush’s share of the vote among Hispanics will probably not get much higher than it is now, while Kerry’s will increase by a decent amount.
Talking about gas prices a good idea, given that their ridiculously high right now. I’m not so sure people care that much about petroleum reserves, but I remember the Bush bounced back from Gore grabbing his lead by talking about Gore’s stance on our oil reserves, or something like that.
Can anyone tell me why Kerry is demagoguing on gas prices and strategic petroleum reserves right now? stupid and proof that mcaulliffe should have been fired long ago.
Richardson should be the VP choice. He could possibly bring three red states and over 40 electoral votes into the Dem column, plus make New Mexico and California secure.
I know he said he’s not interested, but we need him on the ticket. Kerry and the Party leaders should make that clear to him.
And, the real significance of these numbers is that they all carry an “undecided” number of about 11%. Given a 75/25 split DtoR (a reasonably typical range when an incumbent runs), that’s another couple of points in margin to Kerry, which should boost his numbers to more than Gore’s.
Add in the substantial voter growth (both in absolute numbers and relative to Anglo growth in these states), and Kerry’s in great shape.
Hispanics have been the main demographic group targeted by Bush and Rove. It’s significant that they do not appear tp have made substantial progress. Because of the increase in the Hispanic total vote, Bush would need to get 38% nationally in 2004 in order to lose Hispanics by the same total vote margin as in 2000. In the Southwest, where Hispanic growth is even faster, he would need a higher percentage than that. Increased Hispanic support would not be sufficient to bring Arizona or Nevada into the Kerry column, but it could certainly provide the margin of victory if Bush’s support among white non-Hispanics remains at its current low level, or sinks further.
If the percentages of the Hispanic vote stay the same as 2000, if we registered and turned out a larger Hispanic vote wouldn’t that be a Democratic advantage?
Due to the amnesty and the Bush family’s popularity with Hispanics and due to things like gays and abortion, I don’t know if Kerry will ever do well enough in this group. All Bush needs is 40% of their vote in order to win, and he seems well on his way to that.
While I’ll be the first to agree that these aren’t in any way BAD figures, I wouldn’t leap to classify them as “good” — because Gore did, after all, lose Nevada and Arizona. Surely “good” for Kerry would be larger leads, boosting his chances of winning; matching Gore’s numbers is just holding in place.
The comparisons made are between Kerry’s standing with Hispanics now and Gore’s at the time of the election. Is there any available info on how Kerry’s figures compare to some of Gore’s from earlier in that campaign?
I guess this is good, because Bush may have gotten a boost w/ Hispanics after his green card stunt, but it doesn’t look like Kerry is doing any better than Gore with Hispanics, and I’m not surprised that things are shaping up like the way they did in 2000 with these four states:
Florida-virtual tie
Arizona-Bush advantage
New Mexico-virtual tie
Nevada-Bush advantage