I think — and would love to be able to go back and see if this is true — that there was a subtle, relentless negative campaign waged against him from the very beginning. By Trump, most audibly, but by Russian trolls and other social media denizens who never let up on the age and the dementia and Hunter and the crime family and the idea that they were hiding something. I was hearing mockery from the kids from the get go and all my earnest “most effective presidency since LBJ” lessons were drowned out by hilarious videos of him walking into walls and falling off his bike.
I’m not proposing that that is all it was. I also think the mainstream media took the Afghan withdrawal personally. Too many had guides or translators or others left behind and they wrote as though the very idea of withdrawal was a betrayal. I think they went from that to the “why won’t he talk to us, what is he hiding” resentment and they never came back.
I’ve watched this stuff for a long time and I don’t remember as viscous and vindictive a WH press as Biden had. With the “legacy” media world transfused with what felt like contempt and scorn and with the social media echoing it on a more adolescent level, it was just painful to watch.
And notably, the admin did nothing to try to combat it, sure that the weight of his accomplishments would bring people around. They did *isolate* him although I don’t think they were hiding anything. They didn’t “feed the beast” and the beast ate him.
"I think — and would love to be able to go back and see if this is true — that there was a subtle, relentless negative campaign waged against him from the very beginning. "
I was a Biden supporter from before South Carolina and I think he was the best president since FDR. Even better, he had a world class cabinet.
My conclusion is that his problem was he wasnt sufficiently upper crust enough for the media. They hated Scranton Joe and secretly loved Page 6 Trump. They want presidents who have $15 million estates at Martha's vineyard, not houses at Rehoboth Beach.
Think about how Jimmy Carter got treated. Same song, different verse.
Agreed. Best president of my lifetime. When did the American people demonize character? Sad. The press is 100% to blame for 2016 and 2020 being forgotten and 2024.
I think the “when they’re already convinced otherwise” is really critical.
It’s more complex than this, but as long as American voters rely on the narratives others tell them — often without factual basis — and don’t do the work of thinking and understanding for themselves, I’m not sure this democracy can survive. After all, it requires voters to engage and participate in substantive ways that don’t seem to occur now. Did they ever? At a time when more people have the right to participate and have more information available to them than ever before, a decisive number decided to sit this one out and a plurality chose to elect an objectively anti-democratic authoritarian into office. For the second time. Despite an exceptionally productive — if flawed — democratic incumbent candidate. We can point fingers and dissect endlessly, but until voters adopt at least some of the responsibility for democracy, I’m not sure how long they’ll have the choice.
See my Substack. I'm putting my 45+ years of experience to work in an effort to build out the top resource center on the planet for people who want to run for office and/or be well-informed voters. Did detailed posts today on the agricultural economy and then one in PFAs.
The Republicans have two full years to wreak their havoc on the country and democracy, and one knows they will do what they can. President Musk and Vice-president Trump will lead the charge—well, Musk will; Trump is almost completely mentally incapable of carrying a plan or thought—knowing they have no resistance. Then, when the midterms change things, as they often do, we will have a government that will do absolutely nothing, because the Oval Office occupants will kill anything the Democrats pass.
I was a vocal supporter of Biden's decision to quit Afghanistan, it's a shame he couldn't apply that courage elsewhere in his foreign policy. Also the margin of defeat for Biden in Michigan almost exactly matched the number of people who voted uncommitted in the primary. But yes, I'm sure breaking with Israel would have been just as politically toxic. He might have lost Florida!
Until I'm presuaded otherwise (on facts, not rhetoric), I'll continue to go with the explanation that three things predominantly, but not alone, doomed Ds' incumbent presidential administration: (1) Biden's deteriorating campaign skills (which are, as you also note, modest to begin with) and late exit from the campaign; (2) the relentless/clickbait-driven focus of the mainstream media on the downsides of the economy (helping to bake that into the electorate's thinking too thoroughly to change in a short campaign); and (3) most importantly, the globally hostile environment for incumbent governments in the developed democracies: a short list of the rejection or weakening of incumbent administrations: the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, the UK, Italy, Poland, and France. (You can throw Modi's parliamentary losses in there, too.)
I can't quite buy that. One notable fact of the Biden presidency was a choice not to talk to the press a lot, so it is difficult to hold him up as an example of the difficulty in telling one's story.
It doesn't help that the story underwent a dramatic reversal, either, because Biden's ambitions led him to try strange things to capture Trump's base (itself a nutty delusion). Biden won, solidly, against Trump calling his policies on migrants cruel and inhumane. Biden won and the rhetoric improved but the policies remained, and nobody seemed to w2ant to make the case for migrants, instead bitching that a public which was not hearing that case was anti-migration. That included a bogus use of public health authorities to block immigration -- on which subject, Biden won while hammering Trump for politicizing the COVID response, and yet we almost immediately saw his CDC try to rejig definitions to make every county in America "green" and to declare the pandemic over when we were still losing thousands and thousands to it every month. He reversed on many of his major campaign themes.
That includes his supposed mastery of foreign affairs. Biden hammered Trump for backing out of JPCOA and making America less safe, then failed to get back in because he tried to use the sanctions regime to wring more concessions out of Iran, thereby accepting Trump's logic. Indeed after running on making Saudi a pariah, he accepted Trump's logic of bypassing Palestinian sovereignty through a deal with MBS (and, OK, the Biden team will not be remembered at all well by history, because, Gaza. I support Israel's self-defense. But Biden's utter inability to even speak compassionately about Palestinians is utterly jarring and that Netanyahu has been able to completely master him, again shows him in a terrible light). Biden didn't touch tariffs imposed by the executive for bogus national security justifications -- thereby infuriating allies! -- and in the process not only hurt manufacturing but eschewed one of his few anti-inflationary tools and gave Trump the only blow he was able to land on Harris at their debate.
I readily accept that Biden will look fabulous next to the administration on either side of him. But he was terrible at his job and that seems far more because of his inability to tell a good story, than because someone else is telling it.
I was impressed by Biden for standing up to the haters and the MAGA’s railings. He was a great wingman for Obama. His early mistakes in his carreer haunted him. I also believe the dems stabbed him in the back by promoting Hillary. Trump would have lost that election and goodness knows that our country would not be a caldron of lies, deceptions and graft that it is today. Trump was allowed to take over the news cycle by a changing media world. I was proud to have voted and supported Biden’s his administration. And I was equally proud to have voted for VPHarris now to quote Biden “ Will you shut up man!”
I don’t disagree with most of what you said. But the biggest issue right now with the Democrats is that they are not up for the fight against authoritarianism and oligarchy. The young people see it because they are living with the consequences of the Democrats putting collegial norms over the huge wealth disparity in this country. Dem leadership continues to believe a centrist path will give them victory but it couldn’t be more wrong. There needs to be a huge wealth transfer back to the 90%, with universal healthcare, the end of predatory student loans with loan forgiveness, universal childcare (or at least subsidized childcare) and a huge investment in low to middle income housing. As long as we keep catering to wealthy donors instead of the needs of the working class, and as long as we keep caving to the GOP’s idea if what is acceptable, no one will ever get credit for their accomplishments.
This is such a dipshit comment. “If those on the left calling him “Genocide Joe” today offered him praise for actually ending a war that was within his power to end, I certainly didn’t hear it.”
1) Chapo Trap House, Jacobin, the Nation, etc were the ONLY people celebrating Biden for withdrawing, calling him the best president of our lives for it. Guess you don’t actually know any leftists.
2) I cannot imagine being such a moral coward that this is the only time you mention the genocide of Gaza in a piece about this disastrous president’s reputation. Fuck you and fuck people looking past his grave crimes in Gaza to pretend he was ok.
Biden could have not blocked a negotiated settlement on Ukraine. He could have taken a position of power with Netanyahu. His administration did no negotiating whatsoever. He looks like a puppet of neocons, or worse, their ally. He is a puppet of Zionists, or worse, their fellow fanatic. He was arrogant toward Russia and let his dogs bite people. He cared more for his son than for the country. He always stood up for credit card companies. He funded a genocide. I don’t think his reputation will rise.
Yeah well maybe if he ever tried to communication anything other than “Only I can beat Trump”, maybe he would have not been screwed, and not screwed the country. Biden did a lot of great things, but he sucked on messaging and he clung to power so hard that he destroyed his legacy and brought down Harris and the rest of us true believers with him. I do feel bad that he has not received the credit for all that he delivered on. But he shot himself in the foot and the rest of us got hit with the stray bullets.
I think — and would love to be able to go back and see if this is true — that there was a subtle, relentless negative campaign waged against him from the very beginning. By Trump, most audibly, but by Russian trolls and other social media denizens who never let up on the age and the dementia and Hunter and the crime family and the idea that they were hiding something. I was hearing mockery from the kids from the get go and all my earnest “most effective presidency since LBJ” lessons were drowned out by hilarious videos of him walking into walls and falling off his bike.
I’m not proposing that that is all it was. I also think the mainstream media took the Afghan withdrawal personally. Too many had guides or translators or others left behind and they wrote as though the very idea of withdrawal was a betrayal. I think they went from that to the “why won’t he talk to us, what is he hiding” resentment and they never came back.
I’ve watched this stuff for a long time and I don’t remember as viscous and vindictive a WH press as Biden had. With the “legacy” media world transfused with what felt like contempt and scorn and with the social media echoing it on a more adolescent level, it was just painful to watch.
And notably, the admin did nothing to try to combat it, sure that the weight of his accomplishments would bring people around. They did *isolate* him although I don’t think they were hiding anything. They didn’t “feed the beast” and the beast ate him.
"I think — and would love to be able to go back and see if this is true — that there was a subtle, relentless negative campaign waged against him from the very beginning. "
It's called "conservative media"
Joined by mainstream media. They literally forced him out of his campaign—an incumbent President with a booming economy.
And it wasn’t “subtle”!
This ^
I was a Biden supporter from before South Carolina and I think he was the best president since FDR. Even better, he had a world class cabinet.
My conclusion is that his problem was he wasnt sufficiently upper crust enough for the media. They hated Scranton Joe and secretly loved Page 6 Trump. They want presidents who have $15 million estates at Martha's vineyard, not houses at Rehoboth Beach.
Think about how Jimmy Carter got treated. Same song, different verse.
Agreed. Best president of my lifetime. When did the American people demonize character? Sad. The press is 100% to blame for 2016 and 2020 being forgotten and 2024.
I think the “when they’re already convinced otherwise” is really critical.
It’s more complex than this, but as long as American voters rely on the narratives others tell them — often without factual basis — and don’t do the work of thinking and understanding for themselves, I’m not sure this democracy can survive. After all, it requires voters to engage and participate in substantive ways that don’t seem to occur now. Did they ever? At a time when more people have the right to participate and have more information available to them than ever before, a decisive number decided to sit this one out and a plurality chose to elect an objectively anti-democratic authoritarian into office. For the second time. Despite an exceptionally productive — if flawed — democratic incumbent candidate. We can point fingers and dissect endlessly, but until voters adopt at least some of the responsibility for democracy, I’m not sure how long they’ll have the choice.
See my Substack. I'm putting my 45+ years of experience to work in an effort to build out the top resource center on the planet for people who want to run for office and/or be well-informed voters. Did detailed posts today on the agricultural economy and then one in PFAs.
I follow you!!
The Republicans have two full years to wreak their havoc on the country and democracy, and one knows they will do what they can. President Musk and Vice-president Trump will lead the charge—well, Musk will; Trump is almost completely mentally incapable of carrying a plan or thought—knowing they have no resistance. Then, when the midterms change things, as they often do, we will have a government that will do absolutely nothing, because the Oval Office occupants will kill anything the Democrats pass.
I was a vocal supporter of Biden's decision to quit Afghanistan, it's a shame he couldn't apply that courage elsewhere in his foreign policy. Also the margin of defeat for Biden in Michigan almost exactly matched the number of people who voted uncommitted in the primary. But yes, I'm sure breaking with Israel would have been just as politically toxic. He might have lost Florida!
Israel is a lose lose issue. Remember aipac supported challengers to incumbent democratic house members and got at least two defeated in the primary.
Excellent piece, by the way. Forgot to mention that in my earlier bloviation.
Until I'm presuaded otherwise (on facts, not rhetoric), I'll continue to go with the explanation that three things predominantly, but not alone, doomed Ds' incumbent presidential administration: (1) Biden's deteriorating campaign skills (which are, as you also note, modest to begin with) and late exit from the campaign; (2) the relentless/clickbait-driven focus of the mainstream media on the downsides of the economy (helping to bake that into the electorate's thinking too thoroughly to change in a short campaign); and (3) most importantly, the globally hostile environment for incumbent governments in the developed democracies: a short list of the rejection or weakening of incumbent administrations: the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, the UK, Italy, Poland, and France. (You can throw Modi's parliamentary losses in there, too.)
Terrific piece. I think he might need $9.50 to buy those Doritos after the tariffs kick in, though.
I can't quite buy that. One notable fact of the Biden presidency was a choice not to talk to the press a lot, so it is difficult to hold him up as an example of the difficulty in telling one's story.
It doesn't help that the story underwent a dramatic reversal, either, because Biden's ambitions led him to try strange things to capture Trump's base (itself a nutty delusion). Biden won, solidly, against Trump calling his policies on migrants cruel and inhumane. Biden won and the rhetoric improved but the policies remained, and nobody seemed to w2ant to make the case for migrants, instead bitching that a public which was not hearing that case was anti-migration. That included a bogus use of public health authorities to block immigration -- on which subject, Biden won while hammering Trump for politicizing the COVID response, and yet we almost immediately saw his CDC try to rejig definitions to make every county in America "green" and to declare the pandemic over when we were still losing thousands and thousands to it every month. He reversed on many of his major campaign themes.
That includes his supposed mastery of foreign affairs. Biden hammered Trump for backing out of JPCOA and making America less safe, then failed to get back in because he tried to use the sanctions regime to wring more concessions out of Iran, thereby accepting Trump's logic. Indeed after running on making Saudi a pariah, he accepted Trump's logic of bypassing Palestinian sovereignty through a deal with MBS (and, OK, the Biden team will not be remembered at all well by history, because, Gaza. I support Israel's self-defense. But Biden's utter inability to even speak compassionately about Palestinians is utterly jarring and that Netanyahu has been able to completely master him, again shows him in a terrible light). Biden didn't touch tariffs imposed by the executive for bogus national security justifications -- thereby infuriating allies! -- and in the process not only hurt manufacturing but eschewed one of his few anti-inflationary tools and gave Trump the only blow he was able to land on Harris at their debate.
I readily accept that Biden will look fabulous next to the administration on either side of him. But he was terrible at his job and that seems far more because of his inability to tell a good story, than because someone else is telling it.
His student loan forgiveness helped my family so much! I am disappointed that his legacy is negative. So so disappointed. I thought he did a good job
I was impressed by Biden for standing up to the haters and the MAGA’s railings. He was a great wingman for Obama. His early mistakes in his carreer haunted him. I also believe the dems stabbed him in the back by promoting Hillary. Trump would have lost that election and goodness knows that our country would not be a caldron of lies, deceptions and graft that it is today. Trump was allowed to take over the news cycle by a changing media world. I was proud to have voted and supported Biden’s his administration. And I was equally proud to have voted for VPHarris now to quote Biden “ Will you shut up man!”
Biden is a fucking lifetime political disgrace. He screwed his own party for the sake of his fantasy ego.
I don’t disagree with most of what you said. But the biggest issue right now with the Democrats is that they are not up for the fight against authoritarianism and oligarchy. The young people see it because they are living with the consequences of the Democrats putting collegial norms over the huge wealth disparity in this country. Dem leadership continues to believe a centrist path will give them victory but it couldn’t be more wrong. There needs to be a huge wealth transfer back to the 90%, with universal healthcare, the end of predatory student loans with loan forgiveness, universal childcare (or at least subsidized childcare) and a huge investment in low to middle income housing. As long as we keep catering to wealthy donors instead of the needs of the working class, and as long as we keep caving to the GOP’s idea if what is acceptable, no one will ever get credit for their accomplishments.
This is such a dipshit comment. “If those on the left calling him “Genocide Joe” today offered him praise for actually ending a war that was within his power to end, I certainly didn’t hear it.”
1) Chapo Trap House, Jacobin, the Nation, etc were the ONLY people celebrating Biden for withdrawing, calling him the best president of our lives for it. Guess you don’t actually know any leftists.
2) I cannot imagine being such a moral coward that this is the only time you mention the genocide of Gaza in a piece about this disastrous president’s reputation. Fuck you and fuck people looking past his grave crimes in Gaza to pretend he was ok.
Actions have consequences
Biden could have not blocked a negotiated settlement on Ukraine. He could have taken a position of power with Netanyahu. His administration did no negotiating whatsoever. He looks like a puppet of neocons, or worse, their ally. He is a puppet of Zionists, or worse, their fellow fanatic. He was arrogant toward Russia and let his dogs bite people. He cared more for his son than for the country. He always stood up for credit card companies. He funded a genocide. I don’t think his reputation will rise.
Agreed! I will curse his name like those dogs Kissinger, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld for his remaining days. He deserves The Hague.
Yeah well maybe if he ever tried to communication anything other than “Only I can beat Trump”, maybe he would have not been screwed, and not screwed the country. Biden did a lot of great things, but he sucked on messaging and he clung to power so hard that he destroyed his legacy and brought down Harris and the rest of us true believers with him. I do feel bad that he has not received the credit for all that he delivered on. But he shot himself in the foot and the rest of us got hit with the stray bullets.