Biden deserves his party’s renomination, then reelection

Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024 | 2 a.m.

Republicans love to paint President Joe Biden as a do-nothing president, and thanks to the efforts of conservative extremists in the least productive Congress in recent history, as well as corrupt hyperpartisan judges, some of Biden’s most important initiatives have been blocked. Despite the senseless obstruction by an increasingly violent and extreme Republican Party, Biden took a slim majority in Congress and used it to pursue the most ambitious legislative record — and producing the most results for everyday Americans — of any president since Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society.”

Biden is deserving of the Democratic nomination and another term in the White House.

Biden began his presidency by championing the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion stimulus package designed to help the country recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite staunch Republican opposition that resulted in a total of ZERO GOP legislators voting in support of the bill, the American Rescue Plan provided much needed financial assistance to an estimated 85% of U.S. households.

Assistance came in a variety of forms including direct stimulus payments, extended unemployment benefits and deferred student and small-business loan payments. Americans’ futures were protected, their houses saved, their livelihoods secured. The plan also included funding and support for a nationwide COVID-19 vaccination and testing program that saved lives immediately and helped the United States have one of the fastest and most complete recoveries from the pandemic of any nation in the world. Equally as important, the plan directed spending to the most vulnerable Americans, including seniors, children and essential workers such as nurses, in-home care providers and law enforcement personnel.

With the country on the road to recovery, Biden continued his efforts to rebuild America’s middle class, including fixing crumbling schools, improving child care and senior care facilities, creating more affordable housing and rebuilding the manufacturing sector that was once the engine of the most powerful and resilient economy in the world.

Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and CHIPS and Science Act are driving an unprecedented surge in manufacturing construction and job growth. Collectively, the three bills represent the largest investments in job creation, public transit, clean drinking water, wastewater infrastructure, renewable energy, green technologies and broadband connectivity in American history and the largest federal investment in roads, bridges, rail and sustainable manufacturing infrastructure in half a century.

As a result, under Biden’s leadership, annual investment in manufacturing and infrastructure construction has more than doubled since 2019, despite a global pandemic that crippled supply chains worldwide and had lasting effects on the global workforce that are still being felt today. The manufacturing capacity being built now will help insulate us from future supply chain shocks and is in our national security interests as much as economic interests.

As the world came to cope with the pandemic, there was a significant increase in inflation because of supply chain and manufacturing issues (not unlike the end of World War II). The administration should have anticipated and done more to counter it earlier in the recovery. However, with the passage of the CHIPS and Science Act, which invests in U.S.-based research, development and manufacturing of semiconductors and limits the ability of Chinese manufacturers to manipulate U.S. supply chains, the Biden administration has taken a critical step for our long-term economic security as well as getting inflation under control while avoiding a recession that the GOP continues to wish would arrive.

Our current relative stability and prosperity stands in stark contrast to the Trump administration when private manufacturing construction decreased, both in terms of real dollars and market share.

While Donald Trump promised to bring prosperity and good-paying jobs, it was Biden who delivered long-term and meaningful investments, record job growth, increased wages and a soaring stock market.

Moreover, Nevada and the West are among the biggest beneficiaries of the Biden administration’s policies, with billions of dollars in public and private investment including $6.6 billion in investments in clean energy, hundreds of millions in public and mass transportation infrastructure and tens of millions each for projects like protecting against cyberattacks, upgrading power lines, improving water infrastructure and bringing broadband internet to rural Nevada, among others.

Despite Republican claims that they are the party of small business, it was Biden, a Democrat, who finally delivered the long overdue investments the conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce has demanded for decades and now describes as a “historic victory for the American people.”

From lowering prescription drug prices and strengthening Social Security and Medicare for seniors, to leading a coalition to counter Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and preventing conservatives in Congress from overturning the results of democratic elections, Biden has scored victory after victory for the American people.

This is not to say that every decision was perfect.

There have also been missteps such as the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the failure to successfully pass comprehensive immigration reform or successfully tackle the issues on our southern border. While some of these missteps can be chalked up to misreading the situation or making a bad judgment call, last week’s negotiations over immigration reform and funding for Ukraine shows that in many instances, Trump and his extremist followers simply refuse to negotiate in good faith. The GOP is more interested in partisan politics than working for the American people.

Moreover, even in these moments of “failure,” Biden has remained committed to making at least some progress and shown greater compassion and empathy than his predecessor. Using the border as an example, while Biden has yet to pass comprehensive immigration reform, he has successfully ended policies that separate children from their families, fought against the use of border barriers designed to injure and maim those seeking a better life and created new pathways for asylum seekers from countries where human rights have collapsed and violence has become the norm. None of that is to say enough has been done to address the problems at the border, but by refusing to work in a bipartisan manner for long term solutions, the GOP is holding America hostage.

Biden’s accomplishments are noteworthy, especially in the environment of conspiracy theory driven violence, uncertainty and unforgivable obstructionism led by Trump, his GOP cultists and cheered on by Republican congressmen like Nevada’s Mark Amodei, who voted against every major piece of legislation championed by Biden, even those that were good for Nevada.

In short, while Biden is older than many of us, he is capable of making the hard decisions and has restored a sense of sanity to the White House that simply wasn’t present during the Trump administration.

For those reasons, he deserves an overwhelmingly large turnout in the primary, even when running effectively unopposed. With the third primary/caucus in the nation and the first in the West, Nevadans have the opportunity to send a clear message to America and the world that we still want sanity and commonsense policies in this county. And it also sends a message to community leaders, restive activists and donors on the left that Biden is worth investing in. Perhaps more importantly, we can send a message to Biden’s opponents, on both ends of the political spectrum, that his moderate policies and vision of real American greatness have earned our support, the nomination and a second term in the White House.

As Biden acknowledged in his 2023 State of the Union address, much of what he has achieved is “only now coming to fruition” and he would appreciate the opportunity to “finish the job.”