BIDEN 100
A while back, I posted my wrap-up assessment of Trump’s POTUS record. I usually also post my feelings about the new incoming admin, but in this case I decided to wait until the traditional 100-day mile marker, if only because my writing schedule ain’t what it used to be.
And yes, I know, 100 days is a completely arbitrary measurement, but then so is any other number, so why not?
So, let’s talk about Joe:
1. To get the obvious out of the way, Biden’s first 100 days will inevitably be compared to the preceding administration, which was essentially four years of gibbering egotistical white-supremacist fascist-adjacent word-salad alt-reality rage-tweets. So honestly, that’s a really low bar to clear.
2. As for how he’s doing so far, it’s about what I expected - a mix of reversing Trump’s more egregious executive orders and dealing with the COVID train wreck and resulting economic devastation Trump personally created and left for him to fix. And again, when you think about how things would be going now if Trump had won re-election (or successfully stolen it) Biden can only look good in comparison - unless you ask the GOP, of course, in which case, well, they’ve been inhabiting an alternate universe for years now, so who really cares.
3. There are of course plenty of people in the liberal camp who are happy that Trump is gone but unhappy that Biden is not Bernie and are angry that he is not doing everything that they imagine Bernie would be doing if he’d won, etc. And while I think it’s unrealistic to expect Biden to fix all the damage Trump did on Day 1 (or even Day 100), I would agree there are some things on Biden’s priority list that should probably be higher than they are at the moment (policing and the border crisis come to mind).
On the other hand, I do think that COVID-19 and an economic stimulus plan that helps the people that need it most should be the top priority. And sure, Biden is capable of doing more than one thing at a time, but these are deeply rooted and complex problems that will take more than a bill or an EO to deal with, and anything he does is going to make some people unhappy (and that’s excluding Republicans). It’s good to put pressure on him to keep these issues in front of him, but I don’t expect him to do it all at once.
4. Nice speech - and by “nice” I mostly mean “coherent”. Which was a nice change, as was hearing a POTUS both acknowledge the problems we face and express reasonably believable optimism that we can overcome them by working together.
That said, it's worth mentioning that Biden’s speech had its share of exaggerations and untrue statements, and he needs to be called out on those. But again, compared to the egregious firehose of lies Trump unleashed on America literally every single time he opened his mouth, Handsome Joe comes out looking pretty good.
In terms of the content … all I can really say is that it sounds good in a speech -now he has to deliver on it. As a political realist, I think that if Biden implements everything he wants, the results won’t be as good as he promises, if only because that’s been true of almost every Presidential promise ever. In any case, the GOP (especially those in the Senate) seem jolly determined to derail as much of his policies as they can. So I’m not too optimistic on that score.
And of course, the batshit GOP opposition runs deep down to the state and local govts, so I expect plenty of street-level resistance. When you’ve got close to half of the population determined not to wear masks or get vaccinated for the sole and simple reason of pwning the libs, expect things to go wrong. There’s a lot of debate over whether bipartisan compromise is advisable when one side is operating in bad faith - I don’t really have any wisdom to share on that, but I do think it’s difficult to reach a reasonable compromise with a party that bought Trump’s election fraud nonsense and openly supported Trump’s self-coup attempt until it was clear it wouldn't succeed (after which they started pretending it was no riot, or it was Antifa in disguise, or whatever).
Anyway, Joe has a lot to prove, is what I’m saying. I fully expect him to succeed in some ways and fail in others. But the outcome will still be better than a second Trump term.
5. Tim Scott’s rebuttal: lol sure.
6. Conclusion: Considering Biden has a full load just dealing with the mess Trump left behind whilst contending with a wilfully obstructionist GOP minority that delights in repeating QAnon conspiracy theories and making it even harder to vote in future elections, I think he’s doing okay. As I’ve said elsewhere, while Biden was far from my first choice in the 2020 Demo field, he’ll do. And one of my top 3 choices is his VP, so close enough. If nothing else, it’s nice to have a POTUS who seems to actually like people and care about them. Whatever you think of his politics, Biden has always struck me as an amiable and empathetic guy. If he’s faking it, he’s a master at it.
Time will tell if he blows it. But for now, he’s off to as good a start as you could hope for under the circumstances.
Steady as she goes,
This is dF
This entry was originally posted at https://defrog.dreamwidth.org/1659575.html. Please comment there using OpenID.