Mr. Book just finished Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden, by Branko Marcetic.
Surprisingly, at this moment Joe Biden has been the best president of my 53-year lifetime—not that there have been many good candidates for that top spot. But, throughout the entirety of his political career, he has had a terrible record. This book, originally published in 2020, is on that subject.
Even Biden’s narrow electoral college victory in 2020 showed what a terrible record he had. I said it at the time, and I’ll say it again: a mediocre Democratic candidate would have won that election in a landslide. A good Democratic candidate would have won between 400 and 500 electoral votes. The fact that Biden’s victory was so narrow showed how he was a terrible candidate who couldn’t even rise to the level of mediocrity.
The author did an excellent job summing up Biden’s pre-presidential record: “Rather than appealing to the material, class-based interests that unite voters across racial, gender, religious, or other lines, Biden has instead sought to find a nonexistent middle ground between working-class Americans and the rich and powerful, often leaning toward the latter. Rather than offering a bold alternative, Biden has spent his career reflexively adopting his right-wing opponents’ positions as his own. Genuinely believing in consensus and bipartisanship for their own sake, he has repeatedly worked with Republicans to advance the lion’s share of their political goals, dismantling the legacy of the New Deal in the process. At the same time, whether it has been crime, drugs, terrorism, or something else, Biden has tended to get swept up in every right-wing panic of the last few decades, often going even further than Republicans in his response. All of this has supposedly been on behalf of the “middle class,” a group Biden defines as white, suburban, and largely conservative voters, whose interests alone he sees as essential to political success.”
Biden would later claim that Vietnam and civil rights was what prompted his political career. But, in his memoirs, he told a story of walking across Syracuse’s campus on his way to get to Varsity Pizza (a walk that I made far more often than I can count), he looked up at an administration building to see war protestors occupying it. According to Biden “They were taking over the building. And we looked up and said, ‘Look at those assholes.’ That’s how far apart from the anti war movement I was.”
Biden was accused, by multiple women during the 2020 campaign, of incidents that would constitute sexual harassment, at best. His sexism has always been there. He acknowledged early in his career that his wife, Neilia, was the brains of the operation, but he insisted that she stay home and “mold my children” and “I’m not a keep ‘em barefoot and pregnant man. But I am all for keeping them pregnant until I have a little girl.”
Just like Barack Obama had correctly insisted, prior to his election, that he was no liberal, Biden described himself the same way. Following his first victory to the Senate, Biden privately admitted, “The liberals thought I was holding back. Little did they know I’m not that liberal.”
In the Senate, Biden started off with anti-busing rhetoric, but voted in favor of busing the majority of the time. But, as soon as he started to realize that would hurt him politically, he voted against busing 19 of the next 20 times. Even a former KKK recruiter, Senator Byrd, thought that Biden had taken his opposition too far.
By the time that Reagan took office, any chance that Biden could still pass as a liberal were quickly destroyed by his actions early in his presidency. Biden even considered Reagan’s victory to be a positive thing for him, since he moved in rank in his committee memberships, thanks to losses of Democratic colleagues—including him rising to Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee. In the wake of Biden’s 1986 reelection, his defeated Republican opponent said, “Win, lose or draw, Joe Biden isn’t a liberal any more … I think that’s a victory.”
His 1988 presidential campaign was destroyed not only by his plagiarism in his stump speech, but also by plagiarism as a law student and lies about his personal life. Biden claimed that he and a group of classmates went to a local restaurant with the only black student in their class, but left when he wasn’t allowed to eat there. The Philadelphia Inquirer tracked down the classmate, now a doctor, who said that Biden and his friend not only didn’t leave the restaurant, but they also didn’t even realize he had been thrown out until after they finished eating and let. And, after he claimed to have been an opponent of Vietnam, an old friend of his and his first wife revealed that he was “for a long time pretty much a supporter” who only changed his mind on the issue when it was time to run for the Senate.
Finally, during that campaign, when asked by an audience member at a campaign even which law school he attended and where he ranked, Biden said he “ended up in the top half” of his class, graduated with three degrees, was “the outstanding student in the political science department: and had gone to law school on a full academic scholarship. Every one of those statement was proven to be lies. He was in the bottom of both his undergraduate and law school classes, he had a single degree with a double major, had only been nominated for the political science award and received a partial scholarship based on financial need. He explained his lies as “I exaggerate when I’m angry.”
Biden was the one of the two leaders in the Senate for the draconian drug and sentencing Crime Act of 1986. He combined forces with Strom Thurmond, the racist segregationist that Biden fondly eulogized after his death. Decades later, Biden would say that was a huge mistake—but only to serve his own interests after the political winds have shifted against the law.
Biden was an enabler of both Reagan and George H.W. Bush in their packing of the federal courts. While Biden leading the defeat of Robert Bork was the highlight of his time in the Senate, it is important to note that Biden had personal issues with Bork. And it is only when something matters personally to Biden that he has any interest in the fight.
Then, after Bork was defeated, Biden had an influential role in convincing the White House to appoint Anthony Kennedy to the seat. While Kennedy did occasionally defect from the right-wing, his reputation as a moderate is laughable. As the author correctly pointed out, “Kennedy, who voted with Rehnquist and Scalia 92 percent of the time, helped the firmly right-wing Court rule that racist harassment didn’t count as discrimination, workers had to prove intentional racism to bring discrimination lawsuits against employers, and courts couldn’t force integration in cases where segregation was the product of residential patterns—something that Biden, fittingly, had long been insisting on. Kennedy was ‘Bork without a beard,’ complained a bitter Tribe, who had testified in support of him; conservatives, who couldn’t believe their luck, whooped and cheered. By the time he retired in 2017, he was easily one of the most conservative justices in the Supreme Court’s history. ‘At least as conservative as Bork was expected to be, Kennedy has moved the court’s center much farther to the right than observers on either side of the ideological divide expected,’ wrote the Washington Post.”
Biden then used his position as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to prevent other accusations of Clarence Thomas from being aired at his confirmation and for taking a hard line against Anita Hill. I used to defend Biden’s actions by saying it wouldn’t have mattered at all, since the sexist Senate of that day would have found the votes to confirm either way and would never have set the precedent of a woman’s accusations taking down a man. While I still believe that to be the case, I now have the position that I would have wanted to see that Senate have gotten all of the other information in order to at least been given the opportunity to rise to the occasion and prove me wrong.
Biden “cruised to reelection in 1990 through his tried-and-true playbook of outraising and outRepublicaning a mediocre opponent, demanding a ‘freeze [on] all government spending until we get it in order,’ which would require the ‘straight-up courage’ to cut everything—including Medicare and Social Security. When he got the chance to do so one week later, however, he backed away, voting against a Medicare-cutting Bush budget.” Biden then spent the entire 1990s speaking out of both sides of his mouth when it came to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Biden was the “Senator from MBNA.” Biden has always been in the pockets of corporate interests. He killed legislation that would have made more difficult for corporations to evade responsibility through bankruptcy while making it much harder for individuals to get bankruptcy protection. One of Biden’s donors, the chief marketing officer of MBNA, even bought Biden’s house—for twice its value, to thank him for his services.
A bankruptcy judge called Biden’s legislation, “Unquestionably, this is the most poorly written piece of legislation that I or anyone else has ever seen.” Another judge accused Congress of working with the credit industry “to make more money off the backs of consumers in this country”—efforts that Biden was a major contributor to.
Biden was a big proponent of, and a leader in the fight for, the balanced budget amendment that would have achieved nothing but result in tremendous cuts to social programs that both the Republicans and the dominant conservative wing of the Democratic party dream of. He then assisted Clinton’s betrayal of liberals with his support of NAFTA, welfare reform and other neoliberal policies.
Biden then helped pass a subsequent bill that ACLU layers called “far worse from a civil liberties perspective than any that has ever been considered by the Senate.” The Washington Post said it was “not so much to combat crime as to convince the public that legislators are tough on criminals.” Over the course of the debate over its passage, he showed it wasn’t just current senile old Joe who has been out of touch with facts, as he repeatedly disparaged all statistical studies that contradicted his position—while not offering any facts of his own in support.
For more than a debate afterwards, he touted what he called the “Biden crime law” as one of his proudest accomplishments. Again, it wasn’t until political winds changed that he view on that law switched.
I give this book an A+. Goodreads requires grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A+ equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).
Mr. Book originally read this on February 25, 2020. Now that the effective Biden has been replaced by a senile old man determined to destroy his legacy, it was time to reread it. It also needed to be reread since, under the Rules for the Hall of Fame, any A+ given prior to 2023 is only considered a presumptive inductee and would be be inducted until it is reread.
And even though it’s outside the scope of this particular book review, I also have to say that his ranking as the best president of my lifetime is now contingent on one thing: either he gets reelected or, in the unlikely at this point event that he is replaced on the ticket, the D’s retain the White House.
If that doesn’t happen, then not a single one of his accomplishments will mean anything. Instead, he will be the president who was responsible for an embolden treasonous criminal to return to power. It won’t be just the recent events: it will also be the appointment of an awful Attorney General (who would have made a lousy Supreme Court justice too, albeit better to have a lousy justice than the terrible one we got) who enabled the criminal in chief to evade justice by delaying for years.
He will instead take his place as the third worst president of all time, ahead of only Trump and George W. Bush.
I am glad that I reread this book. I needed the reminder that his successes over the past few years have made my whitewash the level of hatred that I have towards that man.
This review has been posted at Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews
Mr. Book reread this on July 16, 2024.
