Sounds good to me
This piece by JV Last should give you a lift today:
What Are People Going To Complain About Now?
Joe Biden is still good at politics. We’ve talked about this before, but I just want to restate a summary of the Biden administration’s first 20 months:
Passed the American Rescue Plan.
Fixed the vaccine rollout and gotten us to a post-COVID normalcy.
Passed a bipartisan infrastructure bill.
Passed a bipartisan CHIPS act to boost domestic semiconductor production, which is important both for economics and national security.
Passed a modest, bipartisan gun reform law.
Nominated an overwhelmingly popular and historically important judge to the SCOTUS.
Killed Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Kept job creation booming. (Unemployment is 3.5 percent.)
Gotten the Respect for Marriage Act, which will codify same-sex marriage to take it out of the hands of Clarence Thomas, to the 1-yard line.
Passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which will control prescription drug costs, fix the ACA’s subsidy cliff, and make healthcare more affordable for seniors, in addition to helping the environment.
Is six months into managing the most successful American response to a foreign policy crisis in (at least) two generations.Oh, and then there’s this:
That last is a bit of a joke, but sort of true nonetheless. And I would add today’s announcement of student loan relief which I would guess Last, a former Republican Never Trumper, thinks is a mistake. It is not. It is a vital fulfillment of a promise.
Am I leaving out some debits from the other side of the ledger? Yes. As just a few examples: The Afghanistan withdrawal may be done, but will always be shameful. Inflation is slowing, but still a problem. Gas prices are declining, but are still high.
The Afghanistan withdrawal was not shameful. It was a terrible necessity. The rest is correct.
But I’m also leaving out some of the intangible good stuff.
Joe Biden is not in your face pronouncing on every matter under the sun. You could, if you wanted, go weeks without seeing or hearing him.
When the administration makes mistakes, they are not based on presidential impulses.
Policy is not being made by 1:00 am tweet.
The president is not engaging in the culture war and antagonizing authoritarian-leaning Republicans.
There are no scandals emanating from the executive branch.
Let me throw two ideas at you:
(1) Biden has had the most successful legislative session of any first-term president in living memory. He was not transformative. He did not pass one giant, course-altering bill. Instead, he passed a bunch of modest bills, all of which were aligned with popular sentiment and most of which had bipartisan support.
(2) Democrats may do okay in the midterms. Not great. They could lose a Senate seat. Or they could stay at par or maybe even pick up a seat. In the House they could lose in the neighborhood of 30 seats, and control of the House. But compared with first-term midterm elections in the recent past, this is shaping up to be the best showing for a president’s party since George W. Bush’s 2002 midterm, which was driven almost entirely by the aftershocks of 9/11.
Just as an objective matter: How could anyone ask for more?
Biden hasn’t been perfect. There have been mistakes and errors of judgment already and there will be more of them in the offing.
But net-net we’re living in something close to the best-case scenario that reasonable Americans hoped for in January of 2021.
The headwinds he’s faced have been significantly, not the least of which is a super closely divided congress filled with obstructionist Republicans. It’s a miracle the Democrats have gotten anything done at all.