Joe Biden Isn’t Your Scapegoat

Biden failed. So did the rest of us.

Hey fam: I’m doing an AMA on our subreddit this Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. in the East. If you want to hang come over to r/thebulwark.

I’ll remind you on Wednesday.

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(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

1. Prayers

First: Please pray for Joe Biden and his family.

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Second: Biden’s failures have been well chronicled.¹ And yet, in this litany, people usually ignore his most consequential mistake.

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Third: Biden’s biggest failure was that his theory of America was wrong.

He could have governed as a radical intent on destroying the populist project. This would have meant aggressively pursuing criminal charges against Trump and his confederates. It would have meant forgoing normal legislation in order to pursue broad, systemic change.² Such a course would have been risky and—probably—unpopular.

Instead, Biden governed like a normal president in a normal moment. He pursued mostly popular, mostly incremental reforms. He forged bipartisan majorities. He passed a lot of legislation, most of it focused on concrete items to improve the lives of American citizens even—especially—in red states.

Biden’s belief was that the Trump moment was an aberration and that America could return to its liberal equilibrium if he governed normally and gave the Republican party space to heal itself and turn away from its authoritarian project.

Biden’s theory of the case was shredded by events.

There’s no way he could have known it would be. The course he chose looked like wisdom at the time; had he taken the radical path it would have been dangerous and there are no guarantees that it would have worked, either.

But we can say, without qualification: Biden’s strategy for defeating populist authoritarianism failed.

It’s odd that no one talks about this failure, even though it’s infinitely more important than his student loan scheme or the Hunter Biden pardon.³

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Fourth: Instead we focus on his failure to abandon his presidential re-election sooner.

I understand this fixation. Let’s stipulate that:

• Knowing what we know now, Biden should not have attempted to run.

• He and/or his inner circle undermined Kamala Harris’s chances during the race and—to their discredit—have abused her since.

• Perhaps Trump would have been defeated if Biden had declined to run; or pulled the plug sooner; or called for a primary instead of endorsing Harris; or endorsed Harris but then not hobbled her effort.

Yet I don’t think any of that is why we fixate on Biden’s “original sin.”

The reason we—and by “we” I mean everyone who is not part of the MAGA ummah—have made Biden the scapegoat is because the reality is too dark.

It wasn’t just Joe Biden who failed. It was America. All of it.

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2. The Fault Is in Our Stars

Let us list our failures.