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19 minute read Members-only

Reviewing Joe Biden's presidency, Part 1.

How he delivered on his core promises.

Reviewing Joe Biden's presidency, Part 1.

This is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”


Note: This is part one of a two-part series. You can read part two here.


The improbability of Joe Biden’s presidency can be easy to forget. His 2020 campaign began with a stumble, announced by accident at a dinner roughly one month before he would officially declare. His strategy in the Democratic primary was premised, in part, on the belief that the party was older and less progressive than his opponents thought — an audacious gamble in the political climate of 2019. He failed to place in the top three in either the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary, pushing his campaign to the brink from the start.

Then, the flip. A strong showing with black voters propelled him to second in the Nevada caucuses, and Rep. Jim Clyburn’s endorsement helped make his victory in South Carolina’s primary a landslide. Soon after, the Democratic establishment coalesced around him, and Joe Biden became the presumptive nominee in early April. 

As Biden was hurtling to the top of the ticket, the Covid-19 pandemic was shutting down the United States and the world, upending expectations for the 2020 election. The New York Times wrote that Biden was “seek[ing] the presidency from his basement,” as he ran a mostly remote campaign.

What followed is far fresher in memory: the multi-day effort to determine the election winner between Biden and then-President Trump amid a surge of mail-in voting, Biden’s eventual victory, Trump’s claims of election fraud and refusal to concede, the January 6 Capitol riot, and finally, Biden’s inauguration. 

Four years later, Trump is again president and Biden leaves office with an uncertain legacy and a leaderless Democratic Party behind him. So much has changed in that time, most notably the formal end of the pandemic and the onset of issues like inflation and new wars abroad. In Tuesday’s edition on Trump’s second inauguration, we wrote that the country feels like it is “at a hinge point amid shifting political allegiances and global backlash against incumbent leaders.” 

With the start of a new presidential administration, it’s natural to look to the future; and at Tangle, we’re doing just that. But before we start giving all of President Trump’s moves their deserved close reads, we wanted to conduct a thorough review of President Biden’s term in true Tangle fashion by taking a deep look at whether Biden fulfilled his core promises and how he tackled the key challenges he faced (we did the same for Trump’s first term). 

Since there’s a lot to cover, we’ll be releasing our overview of Biden’s presidency in two parts. This is part one, where we’ll cover promises Biden made on the campaign in 12 different areas. Part two will be released at 2:00pm ET later today.

While we aim to be as thorough as possible in this analysis, capturing all of the nuances of an office as vast as the American presidency in a single piece is impossible. We’ll undoubtedly miss some aspects of Biden’s record or fail to capture the full essence of some of his decisions, but we’re confident that you’ll come away from this edition with a holistic understanding of the issues and policies that defined his term. 

As always, if you disagree with our analysis, think we missed the mark or want to discuss the piece further, don’t hesitate to write in. 

With that, let’s jump in.


Biden’s core promises.

Joe Biden — like all presidents — made a lot of promises on the campaign trail and after he took office. For this section, we identified 12 core areas where Biden made promises based on a review of his campaign materials and speeches, the 2020 Democratic Party platform (which was developed from a report organized by the Biden and Sanders campaigns), and the Biden-Harris administration’s “Immediate Priorities” list published shortly after their term started. From there, we evaluated how Biden performed on each promise using both objective and subjective metrics, which we’ll explore for each issue. 

That assessment was then boiled down to a “promise meter” — on a scale of 1 to 10 — with 10 being the highest rating for a promise kept (promise was completely fulfilled), and 1 being the lowest (promise was not fulfilled in any way). We are not trying to evaluate whether these are good or effective policies, but simply whether Biden accomplished what he said he would.


Covid-19

What was promised: Biden featured increased testing, reopening schools and businesses, and launching a national vaccination program in his pandemic response strategy. The 2020 Democratic platform likewise said that Covid testing, treatment, and vaccinations would be free for all Americans and vowed to work with private-sector manufacturers to scale up the United States’ domestic manufacturing capacity for personal protective equipment and essential medicines. Broadly, Biden promised to get Covid under control and put the country back on a path to normalcy. 

What happened: In a basic sense, Biden delivered on the thrust of this promise. Most of U.S. society has returned to what it was before the pandemic — we go about our daily lives without government restrictions, masks are largely a thing of the past, and hundreds of millions of people have been vaccinated at least once. In Biden’s first year, he struggled to contain the virus as the delta and omicron variants caused surges in hospitalizations and deaths. In January 2022, The Washington Post’s Dan Diamond reported on how Biden’s 200-page pandemic plan was falling short with the groups it was meant to support: healthcare workers, nursing home residents, teachers, and young families. Still, the U.S. did make tangible progress against the pandemic as vaccines were rolled out, and approximately 70% of the population was fully vaccinated in November 2022, a significantly higher percentage than the global median. 

The U.S. was one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic, but it’s difficult to pin that outcome solely on poor management, especially on Biden’s part. A 2023 Brown University study identified a vast array of issues with the country’s pandemic response, ranging from deficiencies in the U.S. healthcare system to existing preparedness capacities not functioning as expected.

Biden took over at one of the darkest points of the pandemic, so he was working from a deficit on day one. Furthermore, Trump’s handling of the early days of Covid has aged progressively worse, which also compels us to give Biden some additional leeway in assessing his early response. Overall, he came through on some aspects of his plan; he did roll out a vast (and free for much of the pandemic) vaccination program and secure funds to support states and localities dealing with public-health expenses and tax shortfalls from shuttered businesses. We’ll discuss the impact of the American Rescue Plan on inflation in a later section, but relative to the pandemic, the bill provided massive support for individuals and institutions, also fulfilling one of Biden’s signature promises.  He also set the country on a path to a robust economic recovery that has significantly outpaced peer countries. Other promises, like re-opening schools in his first 100 days and maintaining widespread access to testing, fell noticeably short. 

Promise Meter: 7 out of 10.

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