A recent article in a Canadian paper claimed Biden had the best start of a Presidency since Roosevelt. That assessment seems generous, but there is no doubt that his style suffered from the previous leader with a little more emphasis on democracy, vaccines, climate and competence and perhaps a little less emphasis on golf and nepotism.
The article talked about immigration, global politics, autocrats, vaccines, infrastructure, climate, advisors and racial relations.
Still, without two houses fully on board, some astute horse trading is needed to elevate the talk to walk. How do Dopers deem the Delaware Democrat is doing?
My PTSD* trained instincts are going to take a while to deprogram. I still cringe when I hear the phrase “Whitehouse sponsered legislation” on the radio, only to remember a second later that I no longer need to.
No real bad moves yet, some are questionable, but like his gun control ideas- I can live with them.
The thing that makes me laugh is the GOP saying “You promised to be bipartisan!” When they unanimously voted down a bill that their constituents wanted, a bill rather similar to two other Covid relief bills. Then “why no Bipartisanship?” Such total bullshit.
Thank goodness Abrams came through on Georgia, or nothing would be passed. That woman is a saint.
Yes, absolutely we must remember that none of this would be happening unless the Dems controlled Congress. Otherwise the world would be laughing at the impotent president trying to beg Republicans to help him out.
Besides all of the above, what fascinates me is that Biden is going so Big without making the changes seem to be Progressive policies. Many of them are but the way they’ve packaged the programs doesn’t assign them to any wing. That’s brilliant strategy that nobody saw coming. Now despite the Fox crazies lying, they are getting majority approval in the polls. Remember all the screaming from our Progressive contingent about Biden being the wrong candidate? You think any Progressive incumbent could have achieved that?
President Biden wasn’t my first, second, or third choice and I’m not a registered Democrat. But for a centrist establishment kind of Democrat, he’s enacting or making a good run at enacting an impressive array of progressive policy. Even more impressed with his political communication skillset, he’s positioning himself and his administration to look good, and I like to see someone who knows how to do the PR / social-messaging stuff effectively. It’s a good combo. He could end up doing something that sours me on him, but so far so good.
He definitely benefits from the comparison to his predecessor, which is unfair. I try to blank that out and compare him to Obama, Clinton, Bush the Elder, and Reagan. Stack him up against actual grownups.
He’s doing fine. He wants to tax the rich instead of the working class, he wants to renegotiate a nuclear agreement with Iran, he emphatically wants to get people vaccinated against covid-19. That’s 3 quick ones that make a huge difference, and that the last guy was on the all the way wrong side of.
My expectations have been vastly exceeded, and I think he is doing a great job. That SOTU speech could have been given by President Sanders. He’s not only raising taxes on the rich but actually giving the IRS resources to enforce it, he’s investigating cultures of white supremacy in law enforcement, he’s pushing for free preschool and community college, he’s proposing a trillion-plus dollar investment in green infrastructure. He’s taking action on gun control, police brutality, and voting rights. He’s making it easier for workers to form unions. So all we needed to do to enact the progressive agenda was elect a moderate old white guy? Who knew it was this easy?!
I think he’s doing great. He’s a bit too protectionist, too pro union and the Buy American stuff is a bit hokey. But those are mild criticisms and he’s definitely from the Truman Democrat post WW II era. He’s appointed a mostly great cabinet, not thrilled about Fudge but Pete has been even better than expected.
Another thing the IRS could do with this money is go after mega churches which are nothing but another arm of the Republican Party these days. There’s an awful lot of money there.
I’m pleasantly surprised by him. I was afraid he’d be naive and be walked on by the GOP like Obama was. But so far he is showing a lot of realpolitik and its nice.
However I don’t expect him to get anything meaningful done for the rest of his term. I think the Covid relief bill was nice, but Manchin said he won’t support anymore reconciliation bills. Also the democrats are going to lose congress in 2022 sadly, just because I don’t see the democrats having high enough turnout to overcome the inbuilt biases in congress that benefit the republicans (voter suppression, gerrymandering, census, rural votes counting more, smaller states counting more, etc).
He may pass some executive actions which would be nice, but I don’t think he will go big with the executive branch like maybe Warren would have. And congress is probably a dead end at this point. The country needs voting reform, health care reform, changes to empower the working class, climate change reform, improvements in systemic racism and prejudice against out-groups, etc. I don’t know if any of those will happen.
But he has been far better than I expected him to be.
FDR had one thing going for him that Biden did not: the country was far less polarized than it is now. There was perhaps regional polarization over the treatment of blacks, but that was an issue that FDR and northern Democrats handled by simply steering away from it. There was some debate over whether America should intervene in Europe’s problems but that changed after Pearl Harbor.
Biden has inherited a country that hasn’t been this polarized since at least the late 1960s, and you could perhaps go back to the 19th Century. As with Obama, I think we have to look at the degree of difficulty he’s working with. It’s extremely difficult to govern with a country so bitterly divided that at least 30-40% of the electorate entertains fantasies of another civil war. Biden’s doing a great job, not only in terms of getting things accomplished but also dialing down the political temperature, even if just slightly.
Remember that despite the massive recession and the hundreds of thousands of Covid dead, Biden barely won. I think that the identity politics strategy that Hilary Clinton and Biden follow has been a massive disaster for the Democrats and this will result in Republican wins in 2022 and 2024. I think that Congress is too conservative to pass most of the progressive legislation Biden is proposing.
When they unanimously voted down a bill that their constituents wanted, a bill rather similar to two other Covid relief bills. Then “why no Bipartisanship?” 
Such total bullshit.