Biden 2024 is Extremely Hard to Rebut
Biden 2024 is Extremely Hard to Rebut
According to the data, Joe Biden absolutely deserves another four years.
I hope you all had a blessed Holy Week. Before I took a little break, I wrote a piece on Evangelicalism, which felt good to put into words. But I’ve also had another piece on my mind that isn’t related to religion or esoteric legal stuff: Joseph Robinette Biden.
Well, wait one more second: This post is apparently too long for email. But that’s probably because it has pictures. A lot of pictures.
I want to lay out a few guidelines before I jump into this post, which (as the title suggests) will be about Joe Biden’s case for reelection. But, just in case anyone misinterprets that purposefully narrow description:
This is not me trying to convince you that Joe Biden will magically adopt your specific policy preferences. Ergo, if you think Joe Biden is a bad President and he will only become a good President until he nukes Israel and gives the land to Palestine, Joe Biden is not the President for you. In the same way, if you want Joe Biden to dismantle the Federal government and hand all its administrative power to Jared from Subway, you should probably give your vote to someone else (and take a shower).
Many readers will say: “We do not need an argument against Joe Biden because we know who his opponent is in November, and that is reason enough to vote for him.” I hear you, but all the arguments I’m making here would apply if Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis were Biden’s opponent later this year (Yes, that is code for me saying both of them are qualified to be President).
Doing a “good job” as President doesn’t mean that Joe Biden has not made a single mistake, nor does it mean he will never make another mistake ever again.
Wishing for Joe Biden to magically become 55 years old is not really feasible, so if you want someone younger to be President, you can write in Taylor Swift.
With that out of the way, let’s get to it.
“Joe Biden’s vibes are off, no cap, fr fr.”
A few months ago there was a super interesting Twitter “debate” between Will Stancil - a Democratic activist now running for office in Minnesota - and Nate Silver, the data-centric political analyst. I use the term “debate” loosely, because it was more like an argument. They called each other names and it ended with Silver blocking Stancil. But at least it was interesting!
I say that not only because the bar for what is “interesting” on Twitter is super low nowadays, but because it genuinely captured my attention. To summarize: Stancil argued that the reason a lot of Americans were down on the economy (which is objectively super strong) is because of consistent GOP messaging that it is bad, despite the data saying otherwise. In turn, the media is put in the awkward position of trying to “both sides” its way into explaining away positive economic news. Silver took exception to this and basically said people hated inflation.
In the end, I think Stancil won the argument because everything he said is backed up by data and everything Silver said was backed up by…vibes (we’ll still address Silver’s argument below). Perhaps the most important data point in the entire discussion is one that is super relevant to Joe Biden’s reelection (and Stancil pointed this out repeatedly): When you ask Americans if they are personally better off than they were four years ago, the overwhelming majority of them say, “Yes.”
If that’s the case, then why do so many Americans express negative sentiments about the economy in general? It really makes no sense. To further illustrate this point, here is how Americans feel about the economies in their own States:
That is truly wild. But the responses from many Americans suggest that a media narrative has something to do with it: They say that their perception is that other people are doing poorly, which results in them saying the overall economy is in bad shape.
That was all true up until a few months ago. Now, consumer sentiment is the highest it has been in years, and fewer and fewer Americans are predicting a recession is coming. The “Vibecession” is beginning to fade, just in time for Stancil to take his victory lap.
Related to that, I think, is the “vibes” nature of Biden’s reelection arguments. For whatever reason, a lot of folks in centrist or even some left-leaning media circles frame their arguments around the idea that Joe Biden is a mediocre president. Or, they at least half-way concede it. The argument from Stancilville would say that the reason for that is constant GOP narrative-pushing about Joe Biden’s “terrible” presidency. When one side consistently says, “Joe Biden is terrible,” to take a middle ground, you have to say, “OK, Joe Biden is not great.”
But just because something is “in the middle” doesn’t mean it’s true. In baseball, an opposing team is always going to argue that a ball that is just on the outside of the strike zone is a ball, and maybe they are going to do that a lot to constantly get in the umpire’s head. Maybe it doesn’t work at first, but by the seventh inning, it is possible that they’ve spooked the umpire into calling a legitimate strike a ball. That doesn’t make the umpire right! It happens in soccer too: Players on one team will chirp in the referee’s ear and say, “Hey, that guy is fouling a lot. That’s his third foul. He needs a yellow card.” The “guy” in question lunges in for a clean tackle, but the ref calls a foul and gives him a yellow card. Why? It’s only natural for him to be somewhat pressured by the players on the other team.
Stancil’s case is that the media has essentially done this to Joe Biden, and I think it’s probably correct. A good example is Robert Hur’s report from a couple months ago (I wrote about it here). Hur’s comments on Biden’s memory were a big deal in the media, and even spooked a few Democrats. I mean, Ezra Klein did a piece in the NEW YORK FREAKING TIMES about replacing Biden! But Democrats ultimately chose to go on offense, puff up Biden, and allowed him to get aggressive and partisan in his State of the Union speech. The result since then? Biden’s approval ratings are up and he is now leading Donald Trump in 16 different polls. Ezra Klein said he did an oopsie. It’s all coming up Biden, thanks mostly to a shift in vibes.
So, my argument will be vibes-free. This Jackal is vibe-less. Vibes are nowhere to be seen, even with binoculars. I will only be saying this:
When a President runs for reelection, he is making one argument: I have done a good job and you should allow me to continue that job for another four years.
When you look at how Biden has actually performed and what America has done since he took office, it is unquestionable that he has a strong argument to make.
Let’s get to it.
Joe Biden has done a good job.
A few weeks ago, I linked to this piece by Jonathan V. Last, who convincingly argues that Joe Biden has not been a disaster and has, in fact, done a good job. But Last does it in the context of Biden getting the “big stuff” right, like defending Democracy from Trump and the war in Ukraine.1
Those things are important, but I think Last overlooks a lot of things about Biden’s overall performance. For one, the American economy is roaring. That isn’t some Democratic talking point; it’s just data:
In 2021, Biden’s first year in office, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth was off the charts at 5.9%. To find a number that high, you have to go back to Ronald Reagan’s Presidency, which had a wild 7.2% growth number in 1984. But even Reagan’s later years - which were high - did not reach 5.9%. To find another year that compares to Biden’s number, you have to travel all the way back to 1966:
Still, GDP growth slowed to 1.9% in 2022, and then finished at 2.3% in 2023, both numbers that are comparable to Trump’s years in charge. But, it’s worth noting that Trump’s economy is often hailed as our “strongest ever” by his supporters. It’s even more impressive when you look at how we performed compared to other countries:
Note that this is all before you consider Donald Trump’s arguments, which allege that the economy is a “cesspool of ruin.” That is objectively false.
Maybe you also want to say that it is normal for the U.S. economy to bounce back from a recession with a “boom” period. Sure, I think that’s fair and often say that myself. But that ignores our current prolonged period of stunning economic growth, and there are more ways to measure that than just GDP.
Job growth under Joe Biden has been stellar.
On the first Friday of every month2 the government releases the jobs data from the prior month. Fox News - as a super legitimate news organization - covers that data release every Friday morning and tries to convey what it means to their viewers. Their inability to explain away Joe Biden’s strong job growth numbers every month became a running joke on Twitter until Fox stopped covering the numbers altogether (their “business” network still does the spin).
But it really is true: America’s job growth under Biden is historic.
The U.S. unemployment rate is currently 3.8%, and has been under 4% for 26 straight months. I’m not kidding when I say Biden is making history: To find a streak that long you have to go back to the 1960s. Pretty incredible.
I remember throughout the entire Barack Obama Administration, that whenever a positive jobs report came up, the opposition would focus on some esoteric detail within the report in order try and “spin” the good economic news into bad news. People who had never heard of the “labor force participation rate” were citing it every month, for whatever reason. But you can’t even do that with Biden’s reports because…they’re just that good:
Today’s report was another blockbuster: 303K jobs created, the unemployment rate ticked down, and wage growth continued. And the data show that our economy is not slowing down:
Not only are people able to find jobs pretty easily, they are able to stay in them too:
This doesn’t mean that every jobs report we get between now and November will be overwhelmingly positive. They are, after all, snapshots of what happens in a single month (and are often subject to revision).
But over the past three years, a consistent picture has been painted, and it is one of an incredibly strong economy. There is an argument to be made that if you were born towards the end of Reagan’s first term, this is the strongest economy you have seen in your lifetime.
OK, I get it. The economy is strong. But what about inflation? That cuts into any growth we are seeing.
I think any hardcore Biden supporter is going to start this section out with a true, but annoying point: Inflation has come down a ton. It really has, and some people are taking a victory lap:
To translate, Paul Krugman - an economist who writes a column at the New York Times - argued that all the inflation we were seeing from 2021-2023 was “transitory,” and would eventually recede.
I’ll say this about that: Sure, maybe he is right and price increases are slowing down. But if you had told me in the middle of 2022 that “transitory” meant two years of high prices, then I would have hit you with a wet sock.
With that out of the way, I do think it’s important to say two things:
It is absolutely true that there was an inflation crisis that was missed or underestimated by experts and when voters got their first taste of serious inflation in 40 years, they absolutely hated it.
Inflation was a global problem and one that obviously cannot be pinned on Joe Biden himself.
Point two is the really central argument here. Because we live in a globalized economy, a lot of things fall outside of the President’s control. It would have been nuts, for instance, to blame for Trump COVID’s emergence overseas. But Trump was regularly criticized for how he handled COVID while in office, and Americans consistently gave him low marks.
So, if inflation was a global crisis, the question then becomes: How did the Biden Administration handle it? Again, the data are pretty good:
The “G7” is a group of countries that are usually compared because of their similarly-sized and modernized economies. The U.S. is, for a lot of reasons, the biggest one on the list.3 Therefore, it’s a little unfair to compare the U.S. inflation rate (currently hovering at around 3%) to Argentina’s, which is currently around 13%. But compared to Europe, we are doing really well.
Last makes a comment in his piece that I also think is worth considering. He says that the Biden Administration spent too much money in early 2021. Although he concedes it did juice the economy and steer us away from a possible recession, doing so made inflation more likely.
I am not an economist, but this is tough for me to fully buy into. You see, the U.S. did spend a lot of money during COVID relief. But countries that spent less than us actually had higher inflation:
The U.K. really stands out to me, but Brazil is also pretty shocking, because their inflation rate has consistently been higher, and it’s still high! Looking at the data, you can grade the Biden Administration one of two ways:
Maybe they spent too much a juiced inflation, but then they were able to bring it down faster than other countries with the same problem.
Maybe the spending had nothing to do with it and it was just supply chains getting their streams crossed after a global pandemic. Instead, the Biden Administration faced a global problem and dealt with it well.
Whatever you want to say about inflation, I don’t think you can blame it for happening on the Biden Administration. If you want to be fully neutral and fair, you can probably say Biden barely handled the inflation problem at all, and most of it was left to Jerome Powell at the Federal Reserve.
Then, if you want to be really funny, you can say that it was really Trump who handled the inflation problem well, because he appointed Powell. Remember that if/when the Fed cuts rates later this year, and you hear people say Powell is doing it to “help Biden.”
It is undeniable, at this point, that the economy is in a really good place. This isn’t just reflected in GDP reports or in the jobs numbers, but the actual stock market (a thing Trump used to tout all the time while he was president) is up like crazy since Joe Biden took office:
Dow Jones
January 22, 2021: 30,996
April 5, 2024: 38,904.
S&P
January 22, 2021: 3,841
April 5, 2024: 5,204
NASDAQ:
January 22, 2021: 13,543
April 5, 2024: 16,248
I hope everyone who has a 401K or a retirement account is personally thanking Joe Biden. In fact, you should write him a letter right now.
Fine. The economy is good, but it’s not everything.
This is a true statement. The economy isn’t everything, and it’s not the only thing the President runs on when they are asking to stay in office. What about things like the border? Polls regularly show that Americans are concerned about the immigration crisis currently happening, and that they really don’t trust Biden to handle it.
Again, I think “the vibes” color our discussions on this topic. Donald Trump is always going to say the border is a disaster under anyone else but him, and people in conservative media are going to echo him. In reality, the Biden Administration has handled immigration in a similar manner to previous Administrations, including Trump’s.
Trump and his backers in conservative media often talk about the “record” number of encounters we are seeing at the border. It seems like Elmo Musk sends a tweet every other day now, talking about how people are just walking into the country, opening up grocery stores, and skinning human cats alive just a few hours later.
While it is true that a record number of people are coming to the U.S. border, that doesn’t mean border patrol is just letting everyone through. In fact, the overwhelming majority of them are being turned around immediately. Here’s what’s also going to blow your mind: Before Title 42 expired,4 the Biden Administration had a higher deportation rate than the Trump Administration:
You’re reading that right: While Trump did, in fact, see fewer encounters at the border, his Administration was more likely to release them into the U.S. than the Biden Administration. How’s that for a narrative buster?
I will let you in on a little secret: Basically every Administration since Ronald Reagan’s has had to deal with an influx of people at the border, and all of them - from Democrats to Republicans - have had a mixed bag of results. While Barack Obama was President, conservatives similarly said that he had an open border policy and allowed in millions of illegal immigrants. Now, Obama is routinely called the “deporter-in-chief” because his Administration aggressively booted people out of the country.
I would personally like to see more immigration into the country, because the U.S. is aging and it will desperately need more workers to compete with emerging economies overseas. I do not like the proposed border bill by James Lankford because I think it is too harsh, especially on those seeking asylum. But it is a compromise, and importantly gives additional funding to border patrol and the Department of Homeland Security.
I doubt Joe Biden really wants to sign the bill, but if it came to his desk he probably would, given the election coming up. Instead, Trump instructed House Republicans to kill the bill so that he can run against Biden on immigration in the Fall, which is a gutsy move in the age of the Internet. Take a lucky guess how swing voters will react to Trump’s brazen political maneuver (spoiler: They don’t like it).
Overall, you cannot feasibly say that the Biden Administration has done nothing on immigration. For one, he has signed the most Executive Orders related to immigration in American history (not kidding). For another, Biden’s predecessor was not the “enforcer-in-chief” that he made himself out to be, and even had fewer deportations than Obama.
What is generally happening under Biden is that we are returning to a status quo immigration policy, where we try to push for more legal immigrants while focusing our deportation efforts on violent criminals. I think the crisis at the border has completely sidelined Biden’s plans, and now that it’s an election year, he is going to be mostly focused on security and hitting Trump for not supporting the border bill.
OK, fine the border is always going to be an issue. What about foreign policy?
A weird thing happened under Donald Trump: Republicans used to be the foreign policy Party. If you had to choose which Party would reflect strong, American, big burly macho man strength on the world stage, in the past most people would have chosen a default Republican over, say, John Kerry.
But now Republicans don’t care about foreign policy. They’ve swung super, super far to the left (or maybe they’ve just returned to their roots) and are hitting Biden from that position on Ukraine.
So, I can’t say this clearly enough: Biden’s handling of Ukraine has been one of the most masterful executive foreign policy actions in modern American history. Let’s go back to Last’s piece:
But the bottom line is that Biden has imposed a strategic defeat on Putin at the cost of zero American lives. Consider:
Putin was forced to drop the mask and become an open authoritarian, making his regime increasingly brittle.
Russia has been exiled from the Western economy.
Western Europe has broken its dependence on Russian energy.
NATO has expanded to bring Sweden and Finland under the umbrella, increasing Russia’s border with NATO to a degree which will further stretch Putin’s resources.
American surplus materiel in the hands of Ukrainians has killed nearly 7,000 Russian tanks, 13,000 armored vehicles, and 425,000 Russians soldiers.
The NATO alliance is stronger than at any point since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Our European allies are closely aligned with American goals. And Russia has suffered such catastrophic losses that even if it manages to claim some sort of “victory” in Ukraine, it will be hollowed out for a generation.
I don’t think this can be overstated. I also don’t think it has been missed by our foreign allies; under Trump, global confidence in the U.S. tanked. Joe Biden has been able to largely restore it:
You will not catch me defending Biden on the withdrawal from Afghanistan. I also think the Administration should be more aggressive when confronting Bibi Netanyahu’s policies in Israel (there are some signs of pushback lately). But overall, U.S. foreign policy under Biden has been pretty stellar. I would like to see the Administration say things like, “Taiwan is a country,” but, baby steps.
Fine. But is “doing a good job” enough to get someone reelected?
I get that some people out there think that America is on this dark path and that the only way to get us off of it is for some sort of collapse and/or revolution. People on the Left think this when they say it is impossible to buy a home, corporations take all of our money, and Israel is destroying Palestine with Genocide Joe’s help. Then, people on the Right think that because Anthony Fauci hasn’t been thrown in jail and eggs now cost $2.50 instead of $2.25, we have to elect the guy with 91 felony counts.
I want to shake everyone violently and take them to a hybrid brewery/dog park here in Denver, where the sun shines so cleanly on your face as you drink a Hazy IPA in your Patagonia. Life in America is good. We are not perfect and we could do a lot better, but everyone should go look at the list of countries above who all seem to like us.
I don’t think enough Americans understand the fragility of democracy. Major countries and seemingly solid governments collapse all the time. We just assume that because we are big and rich with strong institutions, everything will work out in the end. But at 248 years old, we are at a prime age for turnover.
It takes a lot to keep America going, and while I think we are incredibly lucky to have a good pool of talented leaders to pull from, when you look at the data and steer clear of the vibes, I think the dude currently occupying the job has a strong argument to make.
Sorry this was so long. Maybe next week’s will be shorter!
Last also says Biden did some things wrong, like the student loan debt relief plan, which was an “unconstitutional” executive action. I’ll disagree with Last and say this clearly: You can say that Biden’s debt relief was bad policy or a cynical ploy to grab some voters before the Midterms, but it was not unconstitutional and the Supreme Court embarrassed themselves by overturning it. It was 1000% constitutional, and John Roberts knows it. Anyone who says otherwise knows nothing about the law and can fight me in a cage match. Or we could play Twister.
Almost always…sometimes the Department of Labor makes us suffer if a month starts on or close to a Friday.
Lots of caveats allowed for the different ways to calculate the European Union’s economic output.
Data from after Title 42’s expiration is hard to parse, but ICE claims that their removal numbers doubled.