Opinion

The White House is coming off a year of approval rating declines, thanks in large part to Republican obstruction and attacks, but President Joe Biden, Democrats, and the nation now have a lot to celebrate.

“We now have a presidency where the president has delivered the largest economic recovery plan since Roosevelt, the largest infrastructure plan since Eisenhower, the most judges confirmed since Kennedy, the second largest health care bill since Johnson and the largest climate change bill in history,” White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, not known for bragging, told Politico's Ryan Lizza. “The first time we've done gun control since President Clinton was here, the first time ever an African American woman has been put on the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The Los Angeles Times reported the results of a new survey that found that most Californians would prefer neither the current president nor the former president reruns for office in 2024.

The LA Times poll followed similar polling in July by Gallup, Politico and others. Each found much the same thing. Voters thought the old dudes were old. They’d had a good run. Let’s see some new faces.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is a sweeping achievement for Joe Biden and Democratic legislators. As I discussed earlier, the bill is the most consequential effort to address climate change in our history.

It controls prescription drug prices. It strengthens the IRS to address rich tax cheats. It makes our country more equitable. It’s a huge win.

The president said the other day that “MAGA Republicans” are “semi-fascist.” The punditariat has since tied itself into knots trying to look fair. Rightwingers say it’s worse than anything Donald Trump said. (Ha!) Liberals say it’s unbefitting for the office. Anti-Trump conservatives say Joe Biden has to give Trump supporters a way out.

I suppose there’s utility to this cramped debate, but I don’t see it. What I do see is a veteran politician who has always searched for and found the ideological center in order to plant himself there. What I do see is a president who believes that it’s useful to do more than brag about his and his party’s many considerable accomplishments.

One of Joe Biden’s signature achievements was passing the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC). It pulled millions of children out of poverty.

Yet no sooner had the policy proven effective than it lapsed.

Here’s the simplest way to describe Ken Starr. When it fit his interests to talk about “morality,” he did so. When it fit his interests to defend the greatest moral reprobates in this country, he did so.

That it was always Democrats whom Starr found morally deficient and Republicans he defended maybe isn’t so surprising.

“Biden and Democrats are responsible for our shrinking economy, and they’re only trying to make it worse,” Ronna Romney McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, insisted at the end of July. Republicans have consistently claimed that Biden’s policy initiatives — covid aid, money to fight climate change, student loan forgiveness — have harmed the economy and increased inflation.

Fact is, the US economy has performed strongly under Joe Biden. That’s especially true when you compare it to European economies.

As a historian of racism and white supremacy in the United States, I’ve become accustomed to callous actions like those of Republican governors who organized transportation for Latin American migrants to states run by their political opponents.

Governors Greg Abbott in Texas and Ron DeSantis in Florida are following the playbook of segregationists who provided one-way bus tickets to Northern cities for Black Southerners in the 1960s. At that time, the fight for racial equality was attracting national attention and support from many white Americans, inspiring some to join interracial Freedom Rides organized by civil rights groups to challenge segregation on interstate bus lines.

On Sunday’s 60 Minutes, Joe Biden declared the covid pandemic was over. He said, “The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with covid. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over.”

That pronouncement was news to the president’s healthcare staff who scrambled for explanations after Biden's comments went viral on social media and prompted a hashtag #TheCovidIsNotOver.

Monday’s post was about two definitions of “politics.” The first was war by other means. That’s what the Republicans do. The other was solving our collective problems. That’s what the Democrats do.

Contrary to popular belief, politics isn’t bad. Politics is how normal people change the world. The Republicans know this. That’s why they simplify all politics – using propaganda and lies – to matters of white racial identity. In this way, politics as problem-solving looks like war.

Two months have now passed since Salman Rushdie was attacked at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York (not far from where one of us grew up). Assailant Hadi Matar, who has pleaded not guilty, ran onstage and stabbed the novelist multiple times. The author of Satanic Verses sustained serious injuries, including to an eye.

Fortunately, Rushdie was taken off a ventilator shortly after being hospitalized. (A friend said he even cracked jokes.) Unfortunately, nearly all public debate has focused on Matar’s motive in what prosecutors called a “targeted, unprovoked, preplanned attack.”

Over the summer, there were record numbers of migrants who had attempted to cross the southern border. We know this because border authorities regularly reported the numbers taken into custody. The Republicans often used them to hammer the president. They claimed Joe Biden was ignoring what they call a “border crisis.”

The liberal reaction tended to zero in on what liberals tend to zero in on – external falsifiable reality. Fact is, there was no “border crisis” on account of border authorities doing what they are supposed to do. Seizing migrants who have crossed the southern border did not indicate an emergency. It indicated a system working as it should.

We tend to recall 1984 as an easy romp for Ronald Reagan, because he could run on a clear record of economic recovery.

But that record was actually a mirage, the message a con.