Then-candidate Joe Biden promised to “restore the soul of America” in 2020, in part by focusing on the country’s standing in the world, fighting for “democracy” and preserving America’s promise of prosperity.
Yet President Biden arguably worsened America’s divisions and harmed each of the areas he promised to restore.
Biden’s 2020 Promise
What, exactly, did President Biden promise?
“The core values of this nation, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made America America is at stake,” Biden declared in a 2020 video. He described America as an idea that “gives hope to the most desperate people on earth.” He said it “guarantees that everyone is treated with dignity and gives hate no safe harbor.”
“It instills in every person in this country the belief that no matter where you start in life, there’s nothing you can’t achieve if you work at it,” he said.
Biden’s rhetoric and policies have arguably undermined the three major aspects of this idea.
1. ‘Nothing You Can’t Achieve’
Biden often waxes eloquent about restoring America’s middle class, and his statement about Americans believing we can achieve anything deeply resonates with what many call the American Dream.
Yet the president’s policies have arguably made success harder to come by. While he touts his “Bidenomics,” Americans do not feel better off than they were in 2020.
Food prices have increased about 20.9% since January 2021, when Biden took office. The average price of gas increased from $2.39 on Jan. 20, 2021, peaking at $5.016 in July 2022 before reaching the current price of $3.225 on Tuesday, according to the AAA average.
The price of gas in Annandale, Virginia, on the night of Jan. 20, 2021, when President Joe Biden took office. It hasn’t been nearly that low since. (Photo: Peter Parisi/Daily Signal)
As the Federal Reserve increased interest rates to curb inflation, the average rate for a 30-year mortgage has increased from 3.1% on Jan. 20, 2021, to an estimate of between 6.1% and 6.7% in 2024, down from a peak of 7.79% in late October. Home prices have also increased since January 2021, so the true cost of homeownership is roughly 80% higher, according to E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
According to Antoni, the typical American family needs an extra $11,000 in annual income just to maintain the standard of living they had when Biden took office.
A whopping 88% of Americans said inflation over the past two years has been unusually high, according to a November Reuters/Ipsos poll. Most voters (67%) said they most feel inflation when purchasing food, while 15% said they feel it most when purchasing gas and 12% said they feel it most when purchasing a home. Most voters (62%) said they expect inflation to rise over the next 12 months.
Americans are divided over whether government policies (27%) or corporate greed (26%) most contribute to inflation.
Inflation proved higher than expected for January, according to a report released Tuesday.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Biden has signed legislation to spend $3.37 trillion, surpassing Trump’s pandemic-era spending of $3.28 trillion. This influx of new cash after the pandemic crisis had passed flooded the economy with dollars, weakening their value. Biden has also prioritized so-called green energy policies, banning oil and gas drilling on federal lands in his first week on the job.
2. ‘Our Standing in the World’
Biden framed his predecessor’s time in office as an “aberration” when the U.S. alienated its allies and tarnished the country’s standing in the world. Yet Biden’s presidency saw a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that arguably sent the message to America’s enemies that the country is weak, followed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the devastating Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel, sparking a war in the Middle East.
The Biden administration has also relaxed sanctions on Iran, leading the world’s top sponsor of terrorism to rake in at least $77 billion. This cash has enabled Tehran to fund its proxies in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and elsewhere. Biden also removed the United States’ official terrorist designation from the Houthis, the terrorist group that controls a large portion of Yemen’s territory. The move led Saudi Arabia to withdraw its support for the Yemeni government, giving the Houthis more latitude to control territory without the U.S.-backed government’s interference.
The Houthis have attacked global shipping through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait connecting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, worsening inflation and tensions in the Middle East. The U.S. and its allies have coordinated a response, but the crisis may not have reached this level had Biden kept the Houthis designated as a terrorist organization. He redesignated the Houthis on Jan. 16.
3. ‘Our Very Democracy’
President Biden’s agenda has only given lip treatment to his promise of securing America’s democratic form of representative government. Criticizing Trump’s efforts to contest the results of the 2020 presidential election, Biden has cast the former president as a threat to the U.S. system of representative democracy. Yet during Biden’s tenure, the leading 2024 Republican presidential candidate faces two legal challenges to remove him from ballots before any voting has taken place.
Trump critics mounted the claim that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment should bar him from running for office because he allegedly participated in an “insurrection or rebellion.” Hans Von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, has repeatedly pointed out the flaws in this argument, including the very basic fact that Congress removed the 14th Amendment disqualification in 1898. The Senate acquitted Trump on charges of “inciting an insurrection” during his second impeachment trial in January-February 2021.
Biden has said that it’s “fine” for Trump to remain on 2024 ballots, but he also called it “self-evident” that Trump is an “insurrectionist.”
“Now, whether the 14th Amendment applies, I’ll let the court make that decision,” Biden said in December.
Biden has also demonized efforts to safeguard election integrity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many state officials expanded mail-in voting and relaxed efforts to protect the chain-of-custody for ballots in the name of allowing people to vote amid a pandemic. Yet as states moved to require voter ID and take other steps to restore election integrity, Biden condemned those efforts as racist. He even said of Georgia’s voting law that it “makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.”
Despite this rhetoric, Biden also joked about Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who lost to Republican Glenn Youngkin in the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election, being the “real governor” of Virginia.
While Biden framed himself as the champion of “democracy,” he has demonized policy efforts to safeguard representative government, and he has presided over an unprecedented effort to remove a presidential candidate from ballots.
For all of Biden’s rhetoric, Americans today struggle to afford homes, gas and groceries; worry about the wars and rumors of wars abroad; and wonder whether their elections are secure at home.
America’s soul might be in dire need of restoration, but it seems Biden’s policies represent the disease more than the cure.
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