Biden at his best was on display at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner April 29 —witty, energetic, and not bad with the occasional ad lib. The launch of Biden’s run for a second term was also excellent.
His administration has also done almost everything right, managing to get some $5 trillion of needed spending out of a Congress despite a nonexistent working majority, restoring needed regulations and the defense of working people, and taking seriously the need for a drastic green transition. With a Democratic Congress, he could do a lot more.
Biden benefits from a Republican Party that keeps hitting new lows of thuggishness blended with clownishness. And whether the issue is book banning or abortion or defending democracy, public opinion is on his side.
So what’s the problem? Where’s the love?
There are really two Joe Bidens. One is Biden, the Administration. The policy people are excellent, and the political operators are more than good enough. The speechwriters and makers of TV spots, as we’ve seen in the week after he announced his re-election campaign, are also first class.
Biden, the administration, is very effective. But it’s a construct. The other part is Biden, the person. For better or for worse, Joe Biden is not just the leader, but the face of his administration.
Most Americans experience Biden as too old, certainly too old to run for a second term. Whenever he is off-script, Biden supporters and advisers hold their breath, waiting for the likely gaffe or stumble, which then reinforces the image that his cognition is not what it once was.
That’s why he does so few press conferences, which can only be rehearsed and scripted to a point. That’s why his campaign will have as few impromptu moments as Team Biden can get away with.
This is all unfair. But then aging is unfair.
The other reason is also unfair, and just as damaging. Not a lot of Biden’s accomplishments reach working class and aspiring middle-class voters, many of whom defected to Trump, where they live.
Unemployment is low, and wages are up slightly on average. But the once-Democratic counties of the industrial Midwest, which neoliberal Democrats let go to ruin for four decades, are still hollowed-out economic husks.
Biden’s rejection of globalism in favor of re-industrialization is exactly the right remedy. But unlike the overnight recovery created by the far more potent WWII industrial buildup, Biden’s programs will take many years to have dramatic practical impact.
Even for a young voter of liberal tendencies seeking to start a life, the bleak reality is a gig economy with too few good payroll jobs and impossible arithmetic when it comes to affording a decent place to live. So there an appreciation gap, based on lived experience, when it comes to valuing Biden.
And as our friend Stan Greenberg keeps pointing out, Biden is justifiably proud of his record and naturally wants to run on his accomplishments. But if you tell people how great things are when their own lives are crappy, that creates a kind of cognitive dissonance that in turn breeds distrust. What else about this leader can’t I believe?
I haven’t even mentioned Kamala Harris, or Republican states meddling with the 2024 election, which will be close at best.
All this said, Biden can probably defeat either Trump or DeSantis, assuming no further display of cognitive or physical deterioration. But as in 2021, we will all be waiting until Jan. 20, 2025 to exhale.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect (prospect.org) and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. Like him on facebook.com/RobertKuttner and/or follow him at twitter.com/rkuttner.
From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2023
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