Don’t count President Joe Biden out
Joe Biden will be 82 years old by inauguration day (January 20, 2025). Whether he will be the guest of honor at that ceremony or a silent witness to history remains to be seen. Lots can happen in eighteen months. Just as lots has happened since Biden became the country's oldest president, two and a half years ago.
Haters have been encouraged by Biden's stumbles and gaffes, which they have used to fuel the flames of division and derision. They've delighted in his failures, such as his plan to eliminate student debt which recently collapsed before the majority conservative U.S. Supreme Court.
That same court also cast aside a number of other articles of faith for Biden and his supporters. It has ruled out, for example, using race as a factor in college admissions and affirmed the rights of a web designer who refused to promote LGBTQ+ messages contrary to her religious beliefs.
Biden's devotees have been disappointed right along with him. At the same time, many of these same fans have been disappointed in him for some of his policy decisions, such as his willingness to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine. They've also been concerned about some of Biden's stumbles and gaffes.
When he fell at the Air Force Academy graduation last month his supporters cringed, as they had done when he fell off his nearly motionless bicycle last year. When he ended a recent speech about gun control with the closing line: “God Save the Queen,” the cringing was combined with bafflement.
Biden is prone to say things he doesn't plan or intend; to mix up his words and to fall down (figuratively and literally). At the same time, it would be a mistake to write Joe Biden off or to conclude that his record of the past two and half years has been one of failure.
Far from it. A common theme in many of his initiatives reflects his opposition to the failed trickle-down economics of Republican orthodoxy.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has labeled Biden's economic agenda: “modern supply-side economics.” He calls it simply “Bidenomics.” Here are three examples of what that has come to mean:
• The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law pumped billions into the economy: $284 billion for transportation, $65 billion for broadband, and another $128 billion for power and water projects.
• The CHIPS and Science Act, passed in August 2022, allocated some $53 billion to manufacture semiconductor chips in the U.S. instead of importing them from China.
• The Inflation Reduction Act provided $500 billion in new spending and tax breaks designed to cut healthcare costs, increase clean energy, and raise tax revenues.
In spite of his frequent stumbles, mumbles and bumbles, Biden's record reveals a master politician at work. The economy has returned to growth (by about 2% per year), real incomes are rising, and inflation has calmed from last year's peak of 9% to 3% last month, its lowest in two years.
Rents have fallen and housing production has risen.
Construction of new apartment buildings hit a 40-year high this year. As a result of continued employment growth (the Labor Department reported that 209,000 new jobs were created last month), new household formation is at its highest level since the pandemic.
You can thank Bidenomics for much of this, even as fears of inflation continue to haunt Biden's re-election campaign.
The Federal Reserve has effected ten increases in interest rates since March 2022; a pattern that has rippled across the economy.
Since housing costs account for 40% of core inflation, home construction trends give the Fed less reason to support continuing increases in interest rates.
The stock markets clearly see and appreciate what has been happening. Year-to-date changes in the three leading indices are up sharply since last year. The DJIA (total stock market) is up 14%, the S&P (100 Index) is higher by 19.97% and the Nasdaq Composite has risen by 30.52%. This, too, is good news for Biden.
If the widespread benefits to younger families hold up, questions about Biden's age and competence ought to diminish as we get closer to the election. Nobody knows what's going to happen in the sixteen months between now and November 5, 2024. What we do know is that Joe Biden, while he may be an old man, is as tough and cunning an old man as there is. Don't count him out.