Politics

Trump is about to take credit for Biden’s accomplishments as president

Published

2 years ago

November 11, 2024

Trump is about to take credit for Biden’s accomplishments as president

In what will be a generous gift to his successor, President Joe Biden beat inflation, brought down gas prices, created millions of jobs, spurred strong growth, boosted retirement savings and revived American manufacturing — just in time for Donald Trump to take credit for all of it.

Any objective assessment of Biden’s tenure would show him to have been a highly successful president.

Any objective assessment of Biden’s tenure would show him to have been a highly successful president, especially on economics (even if no president can actually bring down the price of gas all by himself). The fact that he is widely viewed as a failure shows just how warped our political and informational systems are.

In a perfect world, we’d all have a good understanding of the challenges presidents face, including what it would take to meet those challenges. We’d know what actions the president took and what the results were. We’d have at least some concept of how things could have gone differently — for better or worse.

Because we don’t live in that world, economics is where Biden has received the most criticism, and the overall judgment has been brutal. Most Americans have disapproved of his performance for the last three years (after a brief early honeymoon), and his approval ratings now hover in the high 30s.

Among the things for which Biden gets little acknowledgment is his legislative success. He signed a series of highly consequential bills, including the bipartisan infrastructure bill, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, which was by far the most important bill addressing climate change in the nation’s history.

Biden’s critics would say his approval ratings are low primarily because we went through a period of inflation, which people hate. Fair enough. But inflation happened all over the world as supply chains struggled to restart after the worst of the Covid pandemic. The decision we made in the U.S. to minimize the shock of the Covid recession by pumping money into the economy — a strategy that began while Trump was president — was clearly the correct one, saving the country from an explosion in unemployment.

America has recovered more quickly and more completely than almost any comparable country. As The Economist put it, “The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust.” Real wages have risen fastest for those at the bottom of the income scale. Today, inflation is at 2.4%, compared with the 9.1% peak in June 2022. The fight against rising prices has essentially been won.

But few in the electorate seem aware. Voters punish incumbent parties for inflation, whether or not it was their fault — and even after it’s over. That’s a phenomenon we’ve seen around the world this year. But the fact that voters in other countries are also blaming their governments for inflation doesn’t mean that Biden deserves blame for it, especially given how successful his economic policies have been more generally.

If your answer to that is “But there are still a lot of people struggling!” that’s true — but it is no more true than it has been for decades, and in many ways, it is less so. For instance, the proportion of Americans without health insurance is at an all-time low, thanks to Democrats (and Republicans are still hoping to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would be catastrophic). You can argue that it would be better if Biden had solved the problem of inequality, but you certainly can’t say he did worse on that score than previous presidents.

In the inevitable circular firing squad Democrats and progressives are now assembling, one of the most prominent criticisms is that the party plays too much to its highly educated base, and if it wants to succeed then it must reconnect with working-class voters. As Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said Wednesday, “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

Far from “abandoning” working-class people, Biden’s has been the most economically populist presidency in decades, probably since FDR’s.

Yet, far from “abandoning” working-class people, Biden’s has been the most economically populist presidency in decades, probably since FDR’s. He was the first president to walk a picket line, with striking autoworkers. His labor record has been exemplary: He banned noncompete agreements for most workers, expanded overtime pay and saved the pensions of hundreds of thousands of workers. The Federal Trade Commission is finally attacking monopoly power. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which all but lay fallow under Trump, is protecting consumers again. The bills he signed have begun a manufacturing boom, focused purposefully on jobs that don’t require college degrees.

Vice President Kamala Harris promised to continue and expand on that progress. Did it convince voters that Democrats are the party of the working class? No, it did not. Yet, Trump, whose primary economic priorities are extending tax cuts for the wealthy and imposing huge tariffs that will be brutal for people of modest incomes, is supposed to be the “populist.”

There are many other things we could mention: student debt relief, Medicare’s finally being allowed to negotiate drug prices, Biden’s extraordinarily progressive record on judicial appointments and the fact that despite Republicans’ best efforts to find one, there has been no serious Biden administration scandal. A cynic might say that we can’t expect the average voter to appreciate all this, and while we certainly don’t expect them to, that doesn’t mean not appreciating it isn’t a problem.

If we want government to be responsive, we would hope that good governance would be rewarded and bad governance would be punished. But for that to occur, the public has to understand what’s actually happening. And for the most part, it doesn’t.

It’s partly a problem of inattention, compounded by the fact that policy gets more complicated all the time. It’s also about salesmanship; unlike recent presidents who got re-elected (Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan), Biden isn’t a particularly skilled communicator. To make things worse, voters are swimming in a social media environment that is built to pull our attention to outrage and triviality. And the right is particularly adept at using those platforms to distract and deceive; just look at how Elon Musk turned what was Twitter into the engine of misinformation and far-right extremism that is X.

Biden’s unpopularity was an albatross that Harris couldn’t shake; the fact that it was largely unwarranted is no comfort. But Democrats need to realize that they have less a policy problem than a propaganda problem, one that is evident in both the messages the parties send and the systems through which information is delivered. If Democrats can figure out how to do something about that, they’ll be less likely to find themselves in the position they are now.

Trump will no doubt claim that he is responsible for everything good that Biden did. Worst of all, many people will believe him.

Politics

Trump-backed Jay Feely wins GOP primary in Arizona’s battleground 1st District

Published

18 minutes ago

July 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Former Arizona Cardinals kicker Jay Feely cruised to victory in Arizona’s 1st District on Tuesday, one of the nation’s most competitive battlegrounds.

Feely, a close ally of President Donald Trump, leveraged Trump’s endorsement to topple former state Rep. Joseph Chaplik.

He’ll face a steep challenge defeating the Democratic nominee in November: The 1st District, which spans the affluent suburbs north of Phoenix, is one of House Democrats’ top targets after Trump won it by just three points in 2024. Feely is looking to keep the seat under GOP control amid a midterm year that presents major headwinds for the party.

Politics

Rep. Andy Biggs wins GOP primary for Arizona governor

Published

18 minutes ago

July 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump-endorsed Rep. Andy Biggs has won the GOP primary to face Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in November, setting up a marquee governor’s race in one of America’s most competitive states.

Biggs, a former chair of the hardline House Freedom Caucus and a close ally of President Donald Trump, easily dealt with his only serious challenger, Rep. David Schweikert, on Tuesday. Before the primary results were official, he had already begun pivoting to the general election against Hobbs, who is seen as one of the most vulnerable Democratic governors this fall.

Republicans feel bullish about their odds of flipping the governorship, after Trump carried the state by five points in 2024. But even though Trump won last time, the state has gradually shifted to pure tossup territory over the past few years, electing Democrats to both Senate seats, as well as the attorney general and secretary of state’s offices.

Hobbs had already shifted her focus to Biggs as well. Her campaign has amassed a significant warchest for the race and has already started running ads. Biggs, given his lack of a significant primary challenge, has been able to hold onto more cash than his GOP rivals, but is still behind Hobbs.

The race will test whether Republicans, who are starting down a potentially bruising midterm cycle, can reclaim the top office of a state that has long been a place of success for the party.

During the Republican primary debate, Biggs spent more time talking about his working relationship with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly than he did flexing his endorsement from Trump or highlighting his House record, including his time atop the Freedom Caucus. Instead, he tried to refocus on his bipartisanship in Congress and his leadership in the state legislature.

“I know how to reach across the aisle,” Biggs said during the debate.

But he will still have to contend with many of his past stances, including his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election.

And Hobbs is already working to ensure voters know where Biggs stands on key issues as a longtime member of the House, including his anti-abortion positions and his role in 2020. Her campaign has repeatedly attacked him as “too extreme” for the state and has dubbed him “basement Biggs” for keeping a relatively low profile throughout the GOP primary.

Politics

Trump-backed Mark Lamb wins Arizona House primary despite sex scandals

Published

18 minutes ago

July 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A scandal-plagued House candidate powered by President Donald Trump’s endorsement won a messy primary Tuesday.

Mark Lamb, the former Pinal County sheriff, overcame a late push from self-funding candidate Daniel Keenan in Arizona’s 5th District. Lamb will enter November as the heavy frontrunner in the deep-red Phoenix-area district to replace Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who is running for governor.

Keenan had poured nearly $2 million of his own cash into the campaign and attempted to make Lamb’s alleged sexual misconduct and abuse of power central to the race. Lamb has denied the allegations.

But Lamb — bolstered by Trump and Arizona-based Turning Point USA — managed to ward off the attacks.

The race’s outcome reveals the strength of Trump’s endorsement, and it’s the latest example of how willing GOP primary voters have been to accept scandal-ridden candidates favored by the president.

Lamb, who served as sheriff until 2024, earned national notoriety as a gun-toting critic of the Biden administration’s immigration and border policy. He secured Trump’s backing for the 5th District contest last year.

Then in May, the Arizona Republic launched a multi-part investigation alleging that Lamb engaged in a yearslong pattern of sending sexual images and instigating intimate encounters between him, his wife and others. One woman involved, Jillian Stannard, accused Lamb of encouraging her husband to have sex with other women, including Lamb’s wife. She also alleged that Lamb threatened her, saying there would be consequences, when Stannard raised concerns to religious leaders.

Screenshots the Republic obtained of messages with another woman, Tammy Peacock, suggest Lamb — then a sitting county sheriff — threatened to leverage Arizona’s revenge porn law against her.

In a statement last week, Lamb spokesperson Ed Morabito told Blue Light News that “these allegations are false and come from long-discredited political opponents.”

Lamb did not lose any significant endorsements in the wake of the scandals — Trump reinforced his endorsement in mid-July — even as Keenan made the allegations central to his campaign.