When Historic Successes Don’t Move Voters

Today on TAP: Biden's achievements are significant, but don't provide the kind of direct individual aid that people actually notice.

by Harold Meyerson

June 6, 2023

3:00 PM

Jim Watson/Pool via AP

President Joe Biden addresses the nation from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, June 2, 2023.

On Sunday, The New York Times trotted out one of its full-page semi-transcripts of a discussion it conducted with a small focus group. These groups don't carry the weight of the better polls, of course, but often convey enough information to churn nervous tummies, or, if already churning, to inform that churning.

Sunday's was a real churner. It plumbed the sentiments of 11 "skeptical Biden voters," and made churningly clear their inability to cite his achievements. Asked, "What are the things President Biden has done or the issues that he has handled that you have been the happiest about?" the first respondent answered, "Man, I’d have to think about this one for a little bit." Said the next, "I also need a second to think about it." The third then chimed in, "Student loan forgiveness is something that is going to benefit me and almost every adult I know"—a stomach-soother of an answer except that between the time of the Q&A and the piece's publication last Sunday, the student loan program had been axed as part of the debt ceiling deal, and was likely to fall prey to the Supreme Court Six even if it hadn't been. The last respondent did cite a Biden initiative that the Republicans couldn't derail: "infrastructure spending."

More from Harold Meyerson

It should come as no surprise that the first thing the group could come up with was the student loan forgiveness program. Unlike green industrial policy, aid to the semiconductor industry, and the infrastructure spending, the student loan program would have directly and immediately helped individuals. That made it quite unlike the other three, which set in motion the building of projects that will eventually employ construction workers and more eventually employ factory workers and even more eventually bring industries back to the U.S., shortening supply chains and perhaps reducing prices, eventually helping consumers and very eventually slowing the pace of climate change.

It's direct and immediate aid—not projects that will eventually provide aid—that people remember. When Franklin Roosevelt diverted funds from the Public Works Administration, which necessarily took time to gear up to build massive dams (Hoover, Grand Coulee) and bridges (Tri-Borough), and redirected them to the Works Progress Administration, which almost instantly put millions of the unemployed to work paving roads and runways and building parks and schools, he was responding to the immediate needs of people on the verge of starvation—but also creating a project that everyone could see and (unless Republican) appreciate. Likewise Social Security (which also established unemployment insurance), and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a federal minimum wage.

When Biden couldn't get Congress to enact his Build Back Better bill, that meant that virtually every program that would have provided the kind of direct aid that people remember—paid family leave, the Child Tax Credit, affordable child care, free community college—died on the cutting-room floor. And while what is arguably his greatest achievement—the trillion-dollar expenditure on COVID financial assistance that has given us the fastest economic recovery in the nation's history and the only one that disproportionately benefited the lowest-income workers—did provide income to millions who needed it, it has never been heralded in the media for its historic achievement, while the inflation to which it contributed is perceived as Biden's fault, though the costs of oil and housing and corporate profit margins have all soared for reasons that have nothing to do with his presidency.

Still, this brings us to what really is Biden's greatest flaw: his inability (as I noted last week) to deliver the kind of speeches that can actually convince Americans of the merits of a cause, or even of his successful programs. The presidency can be a bully pulpit, but only if the president can deliver the kind of secular sermons that sway parishioners, or even just hold their attention. Biden didn't do that when the Build Back Better bill was becalmed in Congress or when the Republicans took the nation's creditworthiness hostage. Nor was this failing largely a function of age; those were the kinds of speeches that were beyond the young Joe Biden, too. Though, to be fair, making that kind of speech on behalf of the historic investments he's pushed through Congress—investments that will help millions, but indirectly and eventually—would tax the most compelling of orators.

For which reasons, among many others, Biden is no sure thing in 2024—though be it noted that most of the 11 said they’d vote for him again, given the Republicans.

Harold Meyerson is editor at large of The American Prospect.

June 6, 2023

3:00 PM

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