AVELLINO: Joe Biden: Our last statesman
This election is going to be really close. Look at a million forecasts and the polls they aggregate, and you will see a million coin-tosses. Nobody really knows what is going to happen on Tuesday. If that makes you anxious, you should still do something because that is all we can do. But I cannot tell you what will happen.
What I can tell you is that I am going to miss President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Biden has had a rough few years, suffering permanently low approval ratings since the U.S.'s withdrawal from Afghanistan, something every president since George W. Bush has presided over.
Part of this is because he is quite old. It was apparent in his speeches and debate performance, and it has driven every right-wing news cycle since Inauguration Day. It does not matter that former President Donald J. Trump is just as prone to these gaffes — they are both ancient — because Trump never got credit for being an old, confused crank the way Biden did.
Part of this is inflation. Voters despise inflation, probably more so than unemployment, and the economy was consistently one of Biden's worst issues. Even when people's real incomes rose, voters never got over sticker shock.
And part of it is college students like us. Biden has had chronic ailments with young people, even before the highly salient Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel and the resulting war in Gaza. Even before campus protests and controversy over the U.S.'s support for Israel, we just never liked him.
I think this is a real shame. In an era where young people tell politicians they must "earn my vote," no one has worked harder to do it than Biden.
We are used to thinking of the federal government as slow, conservative and downright sclerotic. Biden entered office as a creature of Washington, a six-term senator and two-term Vice President. He had the smallest majorities in Congress in two decades and FDR-style aspirations. How did he do?
After a year of Americans pleading for more financial relief from the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden signed the American Rescue Plan into law, which gave billions of dollars in checks to families, $350 billion to our states and towns and $14 billion for vaccine distribution.
After years of Americans asking for better roads and Trump promising "Infrastructure Week" several times throughout his term, Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act into law, which put $1.2 trillion into new infrastructure in the U.S.
After 30 years of no major federal gun control legislation, Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law. New rules in this law include enhanced background checks, closing some loopholes that allow domestic abusers to buy guns and increasing funding for mental health.
Six months after the Supreme Court overturned "Roe v. Wade" and Justice Clarence Thomas suggested the Court should reexamine "Obergefell v. Hodges," the landmark case legalizing same-sex marriage, Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law. Against the opposition of most Republicans, Biden made it mandatory for all states to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages.
If it seems like I am boringly listing off Biden's accomplishments, well, I am. There are a lot. We have not seen such a productive president for progressive policy since former President Lyndon B. Johnson.
No other president in recent memory has signed bills as huge as the CHIPS and Science Act, which provided $280 billion to domestic manufacturing (which has mostly gone to red states) to beat China to the 22nd century.
No other president in recent memory has made so many efforts to eliminate student debt relief. At least three times throughout his presidency, Biden has repeatedly tried to reduce the debt burden of students like us. Even with a hostile Supreme Court, the Biden administration has forgiven approximately $175 billion in student debt. That is an insane amount!
And no other president has successfully packaged so many high-priority progressive victories together in one big bill: the Inflation Reduction Act.
This bill, which Biden fought tooth and nail for against congressional Republicans and some conservative Democrats, was the biggest single investment in climate change prevention at $369 billion, increased taxes on corporations and stock buybacks and allowed Medicare to negotiate the prices of high-cost drugs.
These are just the notable victories, the highly-publicized bills people supposedly pay attention to. A president is not just responsible for signing bills into law. They also staff important agencies that have serious impacts on our lives.
Like Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, who has been waging a war against tech giants like Apple and Amazon for exercising their unfair monopoly power.
Or the National Labor Relations Board that has been acting in a much more pro-labor style than its predecessors and from which Biden removed some of Trump's appointees.
Or the Environmental Protection Agency, which issued a landmark rule on "forever chemicals" polluting our water and making us poorer, weaker and sicker.
In a million ways that I believe progressives never fully appreciated, Biden has been the greatest president of our lifetime. And he never talks about it, not really. And neither do we. The greatest mistake of his presidency was assuming the results would speak for themselves. They never did, but they should.
I can only pray that Trump is not given the chance to reverse Biden's progressive vision that we are not likely to see for decades to come.
Noble Avellino is a senior in the School of Arts and Sciences majoring in economics and minoring in political science. Avellino’s column, “Noble’s Advocate,” runs on Mondays.
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