Americans Think History Will Rate Biden Presidency Negatively
Americans Think History Will Rate Biden Presidency Negatively
Fifty-four percent of U.S. adults expect that Joe Biden will go down in history as a below-average or poor president, while 26% say he will be remembered as an average president and 19% as outstanding or above average.
I think that if tomorrow's world is run by people that are actually interested in factual history, the history books will reflect poorly on all of our world leaders in this current age. Their legacy is going to be global warming, allowing advertising and marketing to enshittify every aspect of life and mostly sitting back and watching while society tears itself apart with misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Biden’s legacy isn’t going to be about what he did. It’s going to be about what he, and by extension, the Democratic Party, which as president and a member of said party, he is the de facto leader of, didn’t do:
- “fixing the economy”, but not actually paying attention to or addressing the actual problems and lived experiences of anyone lower than “upper class” on the social rungs
- appointing the most absolutely limpdick AG who could not be bothered to meaningfully prosecute any one of the primary players in a fucking coup attempt
- breaking his promise to not shoot for a second term
- refusing to step back from the campaign for far, far too long, when it was clear to everyone on all sides of the political spectrum that he was far too old and senile to effectively campaign anymore
- ignoring the fact that a ton of Americans - particularly younger ones, and left leaning ones - are absolutely and completely sick of the gerontocracy he’s a central part of
- failing to lean away from neoliberalism and corporate-friendly policies that are pissing the vast majority of voters off
- refusing to stop supplying the apartheid - and now, openly genocidal - leadership regime in Israel with advanced military supplies
- being mentally unable to break away from a very ossified and outdated view of Russia, and appeasing Putin instead of meaningfully supporting Ukraine
- we can keep going, but I’ll stop here for now
Overall: Biden will be remembered as a mashup of the worst moments of Neville Chamberlain, Paul von Hindenburg, and Herbert Hoover (except there’s no FDR waiting in the wings, and who knows if we’ll actual get another free fucking election from here on out). Yes: he did a lot of good stuff, but at the same time, he dropped the ball so badly on so many other fronts that were and are absolutely fucking crucial. He’s going to be remembered for the latter part, not the former.
Also the more charitable thing he didn't do:
- Communicate effectively the good he has done
The Dems (Obama) bragged about not putting their name on the pandemic relief checks FFS.
We now know whether you voted for Kamala or Trump was widely a function of whether you consume political news. Biden failed to use the pulpit of the presidency to break through to "low-information" voters. Sure we can blame the average person for not being masochistic enough to wade through the news, but where do you go from there?
I agree with a lot of these points, but the one about the gerontocracy; I don’t understand how people have a problem with biden’s age but are seemingly fine with trump, who will claim the title of oldest president ever in this next term assuming he doesn’t die in office. (Not saying that I’m inferring that this applies to you from your post btw, just an observation about how everyone says Biden is too old, but the argument hasn’t been effectively used against trump for some reason.)
Yes both are old, that doesn't mean we should have two old fuckers running for president. Old white dudes running for president suck.
Trump's base don't actually like the man on a personal level. Two of the biggest reasons people vote for him:
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They're conservative Christians who would vote for Satan himself if it meant appointing more Republican judges.
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They view him as a giant middle finger to the establishment, elites, and existing party leaders.
Note, Trump being old as fuck doesn't subtract from either of those core values.
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People are not a monolith. Those without standards have no reason not to vote Trump. Those with standards have reasons to not vote for either.
He failed to defend the country from a fascist takeover.
He failed to even try.
"Neglected" is the word you're looking for. "Failed" might imply that an attempt was actually made.
He's going to look pretty damn good compared to the president immediately before and after him.
But then again a pineapple pizza would look pretty good compared to two piles of dogshit tooThat's an insult to pineapple pizza and I love pineapple pizza. Let's just pretend some people really like him and everyone else is crazy like Chicago deep dish.
But Biden said he saw polling that makes him think he should have stayed in the race and won. The party won't learn anything meaningful from this exercise.
Which was a lie. His own internal polling showed Trump pulling 400+ electoral votes https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/biden-polling-trump-votes-harris-election-b2644079.html
I expect Biden to rate below average. But not much. On the other hand, I expect Trump to end up in the "Three Worst" list.
The average person is simple as fuck and can’t think further back than their last shit.
His legacy is now intrinsically linked to Donald Trump's next term. If anything we're afraid of happening comes to fruition, it will be Biden's fault for enabling another Trump term.
All people will remember is 9% inflation, the failed withdrawl from Afghanistan, and attempted policy changes that kept getting reverted by the courts.
If we're really lucky they'll remember earmarking $7.5 billion for 500,000 charging stations that still haven't materialized. Oh, sorry, they made 8. So 499,992 that haven't materialized.
and attempted policy changes that kept getting reverted by the courts.
And attempted policy changes that kept getting killed by members of the president's own party.
I've kind of wondered about something. Manchin kind of represents what Republicans should be. He opposes more liberal policies but wants to work with us for America's benefit. He approves judges that will uphold the constitution, will negotiate instead of obstructing. However, we only got that with him labeled as a Democrat. On paper, this is better than him just being another GOP member.
But, now we're left with Democrats not being able to get shit done when really it was a conservative blocking progress on key issues.
So my question, would we be better off if Manchin or Sinema were labeled independent from the beginning? Would Democrats be blamed less for what "they" couldn't get done?
I mean you can easily flip those things.
America recovered faster and stronger from Covid than pretty much every other nation (without a recession), he's the president who was finally able to get us out of Afghanistan (something the past two president's tried and failed to do), and the infrastructure bill has been seen as a success I thought from most perspectives.
Not saying this is the right way to look at these events, but just that historians won't be tied to knee jerk reactions. However, like most president's I think opinions about Biden will largely be defined by what his actions led to down the road more than his impact during his presidency. What happens with Trump and onward will have an outsized impact on how Biden is written about in the history books.
As someone who travels for work, everywhere is redoing their roads with that infrastructure bill money. It's kind of funny because right now everyone is also complaining about all the construction... Biden did a lot of good, but his legacy will be torn apart by enabling Trump 47. I will remember Biden as the guy that worked with the racists while in the senate, protected Clarence Thomas, ran several times for president not getting the hint, got picked as VP for Obama to signal to racists that Obama was "one of the good ones", then convinced the DNC to rally behind his presidential run to stop Bernie Sanders, then still not getting the hint tried to run again giving Trump basically the easiest path to victory he could have ever had.