Having started 2021 full of optimism, Joe Biden ends the year having disappointed progressive Democrats like AOC, moderate Democrats like Joe Manchin, Republicans who crossed party lines to support his policies, and the American people (and that’s not to mention the people of Afghanistan).
Other than that, he’s doing great!
Coming into the year, Biden’s only mandate was not being Donald Trump. He achieved this, but only narrowly. Unlike Trump, Biden radiates decency and hasn’t incited any riots. But like the mailman who’s supposed to deliver my kids’ Christmas presents amid supply-chain turmoil, you can’t count on him to deliver.
Let’s start with COVID-19, where Biden has failed to live up to his promise to the American people to “shut down the virus.” Biden’s recent decision to focus on rapid in-home testing is a step in the right direction, even if Tuesday’s speech was defensive, meandering, and repetitive. But this newfound focus also serves as a reminder that America is just now starting to get around to this. Why so late?
Substance aside, Biden’s brand has also been ill-served by messaging mistakes, such as Vice President Kamala Harris’s admission that “we didn’t see Delta coming,” while Biden himself said that “I don't think anybody anticipated” Omicron. Add to those White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s flip answer about why the U.S. lags other countries in providing free in-home testing: “Should we just send one to every American?”
As winter sets in and people are indoors, rapid testing is the obvious way to mitigate the spread while also preventing school and business closures. But good luck finding them. Other countries, by the way, have been sending them to every citizen. There’s plenty of blame to go around between the FDA and the CDC and the Trump administration. But the buck stops with Biden now.
That’s how the year is ending. But Biden’s no good, very bad 2021 began with broken promises, too. I’m thinking specifically about his pledge to work across the aisle to try to work across the aisle. Interestingly, the first test of this involved a COVID-19 relief package.
In case you’ve forgotten, back in February, a contingent of 10 Republican senators trekked to the White House to float a counterproposal to the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion package. On the heels of Trump’s angry, divisive presidency, the gesture was heartwarming. Sen. Susan Collins—who also helped spearhead a similar $900 billion bipartisan deal last December—declared: “It was an excellent meeting and we’re very appreciative that as his first official meeting in the Oval Office the president chose to spend so much time with us in a frank and very useful discussion.”
Unfortunately, immediately after the meeting, Psaki issued a statement that (essentially) said Biden would instead pursue a party-line reconciliation vote.
And that’s what he did.
Despite being rebuffed, Republicans were once again willing to work together with Biden on a bipartisan infrastructure bill over the summer. And once again, Biden threw them under the bus by announcing (as a surprise!) that he would link passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill to passage of a much larger social spending bill via party-line reconciliation vote. “If this [the bipartisan bill] is the only one that comes to me,” he said, “I’m not signing it. It’s in tandem.”
This was a tremendous betrayal to Republicans, who had taken a risk by working with Democrats, and would now be complicit in helping pass a huge progressive spending bill that they did not support. As one Republican aide told Politico, “In endorsing the deal, Biden praised the group for ‘keeping their word,’ but then immediately broke his.”
Still, 19 Senate Republicans voted to pass the infrastructure bill in the Senate.
But then, it languished for months, as House Democrats tried to get their act together. That happened only after Democratic leaders persuaded enough House progressives to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill first, promising that they’d pass the massive social spending bill, now called Build Back Better (BBB), after that. But the House progressives ended up getting the same bait and switch as the Republicans, with Sen. Joe Manchin pulling the plug on their beloved proposal after they lost their leverage by passing infrastructure first.
While many Democrats and media elites are outraged that Manchin effectively killed BBB (at least, for now), he never promised them a Rose Garden (signing ceremony). What is more, the story of how BBB died mimics the way Biden toyed with Republicans twice this year. As Steve Clemons, editor at large of The Hill, writes, White House incivility pushed Manchin over the top.
There is a familiar theme: Folksy Biden puts on a show of getting along great in personal meetings with Republicans (and now, Manchin), until the White House staff and/or progressives intervene with a pointed statement declaring “game over.” This then provokes a predictable backlash, which sometimes muddies the waters regarding where to assign blame.
The president charms, while the president’s men and women bluster and bully. “It’s staff. It’s staff purely,” Manchin said this week, as Mitch McConnell continues to try and convince him to switch parties and flip control of the Senate in the process. “It’s not the president. It’s staff. And they drove some things and put some things out that were absolutely inexcusable.” But that naughty staff is acting on behalf of the nice president.
And, by the way, progressives feel a lot like Republicans and Machin now: let down by Biden’s assurances that things would work out after most of them trusted him and reluctantly signed on to the decision to move the bipartisan infrastructure bill ahead of BBB. Now they are pressuring Biden to take unilateral executive action to accomplish their progressive goals.
By being ill-prepared to deal with the COVID-19 virus and by allowing his reputation as a reliable negotiator to be destroyed, Joe Biden has undermined his brand as a trustworthy and reliable political leader with the American people and with the lawmakers from left to right who represent them.
Biden is who America picked over Trump, but his first-year performance has been far from what voters were dreaming of when they selected him. As it stands, “If we make it through December” is starting to sound like more than just a country song.
If he doesn’t change things—and fast!—in the new year, the voters will change things for him, starting next November.
