Thank you, Joe Biden

In these last hours of Joe Biden’s presidency, I want to take a moment to say how much I have appreciated him as our President. Not only for the remarkable things he accomplished on the job, but for his quiet dignity and decency that is such a contrast to the man who is both his predecessor and successor.

I will always regret that President Biden’s last months in the White House, and the last months of a 50 plus year political career, have been consumed with such negative feelings toward him among Democrats for not getting out earlier in the 2024 cycle.

I totally get why a lot of people are mad at him for not stepping down at the beginning of the primary process – things ended up horrifically messy. In retrospect, I too wish he had decided not to run again.

But having worked in a White House and known three presidents personally, I also understand why he didn’t step aside. People who make it to the presidency don’t tend to be quitters. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both had major legislative failures in their first term, got destroyed in their respective midterms, and were both way down in the polls deep into the third year of their presidencies, and never once considered stepping aside.

By contrast, Joe Biden at the beginning of his third year had passed more substantial legislation than any president in at least 60 years, had just had the most successful midterm election of any president in at least 60 years, and was in a dead heat in the polling. He felt good, and his 2023 State Of The Union speech was one of the best speeches of his life.

I don’t say this to start another interminable debate about whether or when he should have dropped out, just to give some perspective on a situation that obviously did not end well. I also want to be clear about one thing: Democrats spending a lot of time and energy blaming Joe Biden for our 2024 loss is pointless. We are never going to have another situation like this again, there are no lessons to learn that can apply to the future. Blaming Joe Biden doesn’t help us get ready for the 2026 or 2028 election. It doesn’t help us build media and story telling capacity; it doesn’t help us in rebranding the Democratic Party; it doesn’t help us in organizing or voter registration or winning legislative battles.

It is time to move on from that point of bitterness, and instead celebrate the incredible presidency Joe Biden achieved:

• $4 trillion dollars of investment in the American people, the biggest package of investment in American history

• A group of appointees who aggressively took on monopoly capitalism and the abuse of corporate power, and who empowered workers and consumers more than any president since FDR

• A historic investment in our country’s infrastructure and manufacturing capacity

• By far the biggest climate change package ever

And all of this with the closest legislative margins since the 1950s, and two non-Democrats (Manchin and Sinema) as part of a 50-50 Senate. Joe Biden’s legacy will someday be understood to have reset the Democratic Party’s culture and brand. Not that some Democrats won’t try, but it will prove very difficult for Democrats in the future to cuddle up to the oligarchy and the top 1% in the way some of them would like.

Biden certainly made some bad policy mistakes, his handling of Gaza being at the top of the list, but as he leaves office, I am grateful for all the great things Biden did in office. I hope Democrats will honor him today and use the remarkable accomplishments in his legacy as a roadmap for the future.