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Biden’s Legacy In Tatters

Posted on Friday, November 15, 2024
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by Andrew Shirley
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55 Comments
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Over the past week, Democrats have scrambled and struggled to articulate how they suffered such a resounding political defeat to former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. While opinions vary, one of the most consistent (if misguided) criticisms is the “arrogance” of Biden to seek a second term in the first place.

This criticism elucidates just how far Joe Biden’s political favor – and by extension his legacy – has fallen in the wake of this historic loss. Following the 2020 election, Biden was hailed by the media and Democrat establishments as a hero who “saved” the country from Trump. Now, he will be remembered as the man who paved the way for the left’s worst nightmare – Trump’s return to the White House.

For the American people, of course, Biden’s legacy was sealed long before November 5. Crippling inflation, chaos at the border, overseas fiascos, and Biden’s obvious cognitive decline were always destined to define the 46th president as a failure in the minds of everyday voters. Biden’s one hope to salvage his reputation was to keep liberal elites happy by ensuring Trump did not return to the White House.

To that end, Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as his vice president – and natural successor – doomed him from the start. Even against a more competent politician, Biden’s failures likely mean Trump would’ve won re-election. Harris’s glaring flaws only helped pave the way for Trump’s historic comeback.

When Biden first ran in 2020, he billed himself as a “bridge” candidate – someone to defeat the hated Trump and pass the torch to the next generation. He asserted that the “steady hand” of an “elder statesman” would end the COVID-19 pandemic, reopen the economy, and heal the brutal national partisan divide. While Biden would focus on legislating as a center-left president, Harris, a younger, diverse, aggressively progressive vice president, would be free to focus on liberal issues and ultimately run in 2024.

Yet, shortly after the 2022 midterm elections, Biden suddenly shifted course and decided to run for reelection. According to MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, Biden took the “better than expected” election results “as a sign that they were on to something and that they didn’t need to course-correct as much as polling was actually telling them to.” But a February 2024 poll found that 86 percent of Americans thought Biden was “too old to run for a second term.”

Once his intention was clear, the party quickly fell in line. Despite multiple gaffes, public falls, and a tendency to wander aimlessly, Democrats accused anyone critical of Biden of “ageism” and promoting “disinformation.” A litany of pundits reassured Americans that Biden was “sharp,” and Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dismissed videos that clearly show Biden in cognitive decline as “cheap fakes.”

These pivots and dismissals came crashing to a halt on June 27. Following Biden’s disastrous first and only debate against Trump, questions about his cognitive decline became the dominant political narrative. A July 17 poll found that “almost two-thirds” of voters wanted Biden to drop out and that only 3 in 10 Democrats were “extremely or very confident that he has the mental capability to serve effectively as president.”

Biden remained defiant, insisting he was the only candidate who “could beat Donald Trump.” Nevertheless, on July 21, amid intense public and private pressure, Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed Vice President Harris as his replacement.

Biden’s announcement was met with unprecedented fawning and praise from legacy media and Democrat leaders. Pundits who only days earlier were blasting him as a “stubborn old man” now hailed him as a legendary leader. A week after his announcement, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) called Biden “Such a consequential president…A Mount Rushmore kind of president…You have Teddy Roosevelt up there. And he’s wonderful. I don’t say take him down. But you can add Biden.”

In a Forbes op-ed, pundit Eli Amdur drew a direct comparison between Biden and George Washington. Revolutionary War professor Rebecca Brannon proclaimed that Joe Biden was “America’s second Cincinnatus.” Former Obama advisor David Axelrod posted on X that “history will honor” Biden for his sacrifice. CNN contributor Van Jones said tearfully of Biden, “It’s kind of like when your grandpa… you got to take the keys.”

Historian and presidential biographer Jon Meacham, a close friend of Biden who had previously encouraged him to stay in the race by telling the president that he is a “historically consequential figure in the fight to preserve American democracy,” also penned an op-ed lauding Biden for his decision to withdraw. “His decision is one of the most remarkable acts of leadership in our history, an act of self-sacrifice that places him in the company of George Washington,” Meacham wrote.

Yet this grand narrative, dramatic as it may be, was always an egregious insult to Washington’s legacy and reeked of more spin than sincerity. George Washington led a ragtag army to victory over the greatest military power in the world, was offered the title of king for life, and turned it down to return to his family farm. While Washington resigned despite the entire country clamoring for him to remain in power, Biden clung to power despite the entire country clamoring for him to leave. Only when a cabal of Democrat elites, including Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, held his feet to the fire did he back down.

Less than four months after lauding him as the second coming of George Washington, Biden’s most vocal supporters have abandoned their one-time faultless leader. In an interview with the New York Times, Pelosi directly blamed Biden for the Democrat loss, saying that if had he “gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race.”

Rolling Stone Magazine, meanwhile, accused Biden of “squandering his own legacy.” Business leader and political pundit Scott Galloway, who once agreed with Pelosi that Biden should be added to Mount Rushmore, now asserts that Biden will go down in history along with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Dianne Feinstein as leaders whose legacy will forever be tarnished by their unwillingness to relinquish power until it was too late.

Many questions abound as to why Biden insisted on holding power for as long as he did. Had he fulfilled his core campaign promise, only running for one term and focusing on unity, his legacy may have endured even if Harris lost. Perhaps there would even be those who said he should have stayed in.

Somewhere along the line, Biden abandoned his pledge to be a “transitional” president and decided he wanted to be a “transformational” president instead. And he was transformational – just not in the way he had hoped. He transformed the country into one that rejected his far-left agenda and embraced Trump’s America First movement.

Should Harris have won, Democrats could likely have kept the façade up a little longer. Indeed, Biden’s popularity increased slightly when he dropped out. Now, as of November 5, it stands at 38.7 percent, dropping by the day. At this rate, he will end his presidency as the least popular president in history.

Biden’s legacy was never going to be Build Back Better, “restoring the soul of the nation,” or “passing the baton.” For Democrats, his legacy would always be his ability to defeat Donald Trump. He may have prevailed in 2020, but now Trump is ascending to office more popular, more powerful, and more beloved than ever before. By that metric, his legacy will forever be one of arrogance, intransigence, and failure. Not even his most strident allies can spin that.

Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.

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Joe
Joe
21 days ago

He should be tried for treason and accessory to murder for the deaths of Americans at the hands of ILLEGAL ALIENS, and the deaths of our 13 servicemen and women in Afghanistan. I don’t care how old or demented he is. Blood is on his hands.

GMK
GMK
21 days ago

Please…He is handing President elect Trump an absolute mess. What is he doing? As the face of the Biden Family Crime Syndicate, he is retiring to his beach mansion with the millions of dollars he acquired in his 50+ years of “public service”. Biden is laughing his you-know-what off.

PaulE
PaulE
21 days ago

The Obama legacy (Biden / Harris were just the useful puppets assigned to carry out the latest phase of the Marxist agenda for the big money, globalist donors who bankroll the Democrat agenda in the first place) was going to end up doing significant damage to this country. If not outright completely collapsing and destroying the country from within through home-grown, subversive means. What stood in the way of all this was Trump, who in 2016 stopped Hillary from being the next political puppet to continue the agenda of the last 35 years and in 2024 Trump stopped first Biden and then his designated replacement Harris from finishing the job initially kicked off by globalist G.H.W. Bush.

In 2020, the Democrats and the so-called Deep State that runs Washington, D.C. were so committed to getting Trump off the world stage and getting their Marxist agenda back on track, that they perpetrated a soft coup which was allowed to stand by the American people. That brought about 4 years of one man-made disaster after another for this country and the world as a whole. Thankfully Trump was so upset with what he saw being done to this country and the world, that he opted to try and save this country once again by running for the presidency yet again.

No one will be crying that the so-called Biden legacy, as the author calls it, will soon be dismantled and wiped from existence. The best can be said for what the American people and the world had to endure for the last 4 years is that it was a hugely educational learning experience in what happens when you allow the destructive ideology of global Marxism to run virtually unchecked in the country that is last best hope for freedom and human rights in the world. Hopefully it is a lesson than the American people will NOT soon forget. Now the hard work begins once again to clean up the mess left in the wake of people that should have never been allowed anywhere near any seats of power in the first place. The American people have to remain both committed and vigilant, and NOT become either apathetic or lazy again in overseeing and protecting their rights and freedoms.

Leslie
Leslie
21 days ago

His legacy will be “Worst president (that actually wasn’t) in US history! He has NEVER been in charge form Day one and most of us know that. His running again was absolutely ridiculous and the blame lies with no one but Pelosi, Schumer and whatever man behind the curtain has actually been running the actual government. Cuz it was not Biden, or Harris.

Bob L.
Bob L.
21 days ago

O.B.A.M.A. ( One Big A$$ Mistake America ) applies as much to Biden as it did to Obama.

michael hess
michael hess
21 days ago

his “legacy” is that of a lying, demented, traitor who stole from the American people almost all of his adult life.

Keith Hallam
Keith Hallam
21 days ago

This man should never have been president! I’m still amazed that millions of people voted for him in 2020. To call him a “consequential president” on par with George Washington proves just how ignorant many on the left are. If you want to label him with anything label him “leader of chaos” for that is what the last four years have been. Thank God the historical Biden presidency is almost over!

Reese
Reese
21 days ago

I’ll bet Jimmy Carter is feeling better about himself.

uncleferd
uncleferd
21 days ago

Joseph Biden was never fit to be Vice President or President of the United States. He was chosen as Obama’s VP, because Obama knew that he could never be upstaged by Biden. Biden’s intellect and level of personal maturity have never approached same league as those of a legitimately-elected head of state.

Richard
Richard
21 days ago

What would they put in his presidential museum? All his failures??

Jeri
Jeri
21 days ago

What legacy? Asking in all sincerity.

anna hubert
anna hubert
21 days ago

We will be feeling his legacy for a long time and it will take even longer to fix it if is to continue to live at our expense it should be in federal prison, the whole lot of them.

Chuck Hill
Chuck Hill
21 days ago

Excellent article-really summed up recent events well.

Grady Pickens
Grady Pickens
21 days ago

Every time I see that Beady Eyed Snake in the Grass Shiftless Skunk of a face, I want to puke!! I don’t understand why no one else could see the Outlaw behind those conniving eyes. I would have avoided that man on the street as I would any other Hoodlum. He never gave me good vibes or an air of confidence beyond “How can I screw you over”. I’m glad he’s gone and good riddance to his “Sloppy Second in command”.

Dan Klingberg
Dan Klingberg
21 days ago

Dear Andrew Shirley:
Your article is exactly our experience with Biden and accurately articulates his four year disaster. This article should be posted at the White House.
Thank you!!!

Marie Saqueton
Marie Saqueton
21 days ago

Democrats lost because their candidate Kamala insulted Jesus Christ. When one of her rally audience cried out: “JESUS CHRIST IS LORD.” Kamala laughed at him and yelled back: “You are at the wrong rally, go to that small rally down the road” then she started laughing. Does she have any religion? She had no respect for the name of our Savior and that defined her more than anything else. All Christians, Democrats & Republicans alike who saw her on that video, dumped her like a hot potato.. See what happens when you disrespect the Lord our Savior? Who is she to disrespect Jesus Christ? Her arrogance led to her demise in politics. I hope she has earned her lesson.

Kitty
Kitty
21 days ago

Senile old fool puts USA in danger!

Robert Zuccaro
Robert Zuccaro
21 days ago

Joe Biden, Kamala Harris’, and all of his administration’s legacy is being show on Fox News as I type: it’s on Sgt. Kenneth Maxwell’s body cam footage when he found Laken Riley. Unfortunately, she isn’t the only one. After Trumps victory last Tuesday, its a sobering answer to the lingering MSM question: “How could Kamala lose?”

Lisa
Lisa
21 days ago

Never should have been in the office to begin with. Nuff said.

FedUp
FedUp
21 days ago

I think his legacy of incompetence, ineptitude, ignoring Supreme Court decisions, failed DEI hires, bad decisions, and criminal activities is still very much intact!
Did I miss something?

Shellback1181
Shellback1181
21 days ago

His legacy is being a complete failure.

zeke
zeke
21 days ago

he dragged his “tatters” in from January 3,1973. there was no shock about anything he did when he was shoe-horned-electioned in in 2020.

EJMINC
EJMINC
20 days ago

Biden’s legacy has always been in tact. A do nothing who’s acumen was best summarized by Bob Gates and concluded with over taking Jimmy Carter as worst ever. His decisions were all bad for the country as evidenced by 45s landslide.

Rick
Rick
21 days ago

Good article except he didn’t beat Donald Trump. The Democrat machine stole the election from Donald Trump and the American people. No way under the sun did Biden get 81 million votes, the most ever cast for a president.

PapaYEC
PapaYEC
21 days ago

The CCP worked with the DNC to STEAL the 2020 and 2022 elections, after they worked together to develop and release the CIVID-19 virus to destroy the historic Trump economy..
Imo

kit
kit
21 days ago

biden killed 13 troops in afghanistan. period. the end

granky
granky
21 days ago

Biden on Mt. Rushmore……please???? How about putting him on the tallest peak in Houston, TX, the landfill, dump on Beaumont Rd. Put Biden, Obama and Carter up for starters.

Mitch
Mitch
19 days ago

Legacy? What legacy? Being the worst president, ever?

SAW
SAW
20 days ago

Joe Biden deserves every thing he has reaped…

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