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If It Quacks Like a Lame Duck, However…
History shows Biden future may be better than pundits think
By William S. Bike
Is President Joe Biden a lame-duck just because everything hasn’t gone his way in the first year? Not hardly. And he won’t be even if his party loses the Congress in 2022.
Pundits speculated if Ronald Reagan were a lame duck after his party lost scores of seats in the 1982 elections; if Bill Clinton were a lame duck after his party lost the Congress in 1994; and if Barack Obama were a lame duck after his party lost the Congress in 2010. We saw how those Congressional losses absolutely did not translate into a re-election loss for each of those presidents.
In fact, losing the Congress in 2022 may be the best thing that could happen to Biden. Republicans will try to overreach, starting with an inevitable and immediate attempt to impeach both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and the GOP’s top extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert will feel free to be even more extreme. By 2024, after two years of Greene, Boebert, and their fellow firebrands in the news every day, Biden is going to look moderate, sensible, sober, and competent by comparison.
Plus, Americans’ attention spans are so short these days, and the 24-hour news cycle so chock full, that by 2024 nobody will even remember what happened in 2021. It will be ancient history. Whatever will determine the result of the 2024 presidential election probably has not happened yet. In 2017, COVID did not even exist, yet it was one of the main factors in the 2020 presidential election. Nobody predicted that, nor could they.
What has Biden accomplished? He’s taken COVID seriously. He’s had the US rejoin the Paris Climate Accords and taken other steps on behalf of the environment. He’s had the US rejoin the UN Human Rights council. He ended the war in Afghanistan — messily, but nobody will remember the details by 2024. He created the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, the benefits of which will become more apparent by 2024. He has restored funding to veterans’ health programs. And that’s just in one year. By 2024, he’ll have other accomplishments to run on.
A rough first year is not unusual for even the greatest presidents in history, and has never determined whether a president gets re-elected or not. As much as mainstream and right-wing media would like to pretend that the Biden Administration is over, it’s no more over than the Reagan, Clinton, or Obama Administrations were after their first years. Stay tuned. You ain’t seen nothing yet!
William S. Bike is the author of the book Winning Political Campaigns, a how-to on all aspects of political campaigning. See www.centralparkcommunications.com.
