Biden's Enduring Legacy: Awful. No Worse

It’s time to assess former U.S. President Joe Biden’s legacy. It has been a catastrophe. Or, worse.

Domestically, his most influential legacy is that he turned the country over to Donald Trump, the most repellant, dis-qualified, should’ve-been-easy-to-defeat candidate for president, ever. It is the end of the epoch of liberal democracy and the beginning of an era of oligarchic fascism. Nothing less.

Internationally, he lost the U.S.’ proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, and scarred the U.S. forever as an unrepentant perpetrator of genocide. It is the end of post-Cold War primacy for the United States and the beginning of its persona as a rapacious, predatory rogue state that objectively disdains human rights, democracy, and the international rule of law. Nothing less.

The combination of the two effects amounts to a massive, unprecedented comedown, an unparalleled destruction for the U.S. in its own house, and in the world. It’s hard to see how either will ever be recovered. That is Biden’s essential legacy.

Domestically, Biden refused to prosecute Trump for his public attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The Brad Raffensperger tape was known about on January 3, 2021, more than two weeks before Biden ever even took office. You know the tape, “All I want is for you to find me 11,780 votes.” That is prima facia proof of federal election interference, a felony.

It is the end of post-Cold War primacy for the United States and the beginning of its persona as a rapacious, predatory rogue state that objectively disdains human rights, democracy, and the international rule of law. Nothing less.

Prosecution should have begun on January 20, 2021, the day Biden took office. Instead, Biden waited two-and-a-half years before even opening a formal investigation. It gave Trump more than enough time to run out the clock with his trademark Deny, Deflect, and Delay tactics.

Similarly, the matter of fake electors. They, too were uncovered even before Biden took office, when former Vice President Mike Pence refused to accept them on January 6, 2021. They, too were prima facia evidence of federal election interference, a felony. They, too, were left uninvestigated and unlitigated for two-and-a-half years, an unfathomable dereliction by the only person in world in a place to see that the law was simply enforced.

The damage to the country is incalculable. Trump will never face accountability. If Biden had simply done his job, Trump would now be sitting in an orange jumpsuit in some minimum security federal prison, instead of reveling in his second coronation. Biden ensured that the Rule of Law does not apply to the wily, wealthy, and powerful. In doing so, he undermined the public’s respect for and confidence in that Rule of Law.

Then, Biden’s refusal to step aside for a more able candidate in the 2024 election ensured that no one could mount a winning campaign. The psychotically delusional ego behind it—that he was busy running the world—is insufferable. And it was a conspiracy among all of the top ranks of the Democratic party to hide his infirmity, until it was no longer possible.

Let’s stipulate—with an overabundance of generosity—that former Vice President Kamala Harris did as good a job as she could. The most telling fact of the Democrats’ loss was that Trump won by just over 2 millions votes, while 19 million people who had voted for Biden in 2020 did not vote for Harris in 2024. By a roughly 3-to-1 margin—nearly 6 million people—those who stayed home reported that they would likely have come out and voted for Harris but for Biden’s support for the Israeli genocide.

There you have it. The Democrats’ own supporters would not support the Democratic nominee because of Biden’s unconscionable, barbaric, intractable policy in Gaza. Biden owns all of the dimensions of his party’s defeat and the loss of all of the branches of government to Trump. THAT is his domestic legacy. Nothing else matters.

Internationally, it is just as much of a debacle.

The Democrats began menacing Russia in 1994, when former President Bill Clinton announced the eastward expansion of NATO to include formerly Soviet-bloc countries. They continued it with the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine, in 2014, overthrowing a Russia-leaning government and installing a Western-leaning neo-fascist state. Biden was the Obama administration’s quarterback on that coup.

Biden, on the brink of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, refused to even discuss Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer of a European-wide security framework. It was Biden’s Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, who said that the U.S. wanted “to weaken Russia,” and make this invasion “a strategic failure for Russia.”

And it was the Biden administration that made colossal miscalculations about Russia’s military weakness, the U.S.’ military prowess, and the likely efficacy of economic sanctions. More than 500,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, and almost $200 billion squandered, for that mistake. To put that into perspective, the U.S., with five times Ukraine’s population, quit Vietnam when, after eight years of fighting (not three years), it could no longer stomach the loss of 58,000 men.

The humiliation of the U.S. loss in Ukraine is not yet fully revealed because a formal settlement encoding the loss has not yet been reached. But most of the world’s nations are happy to have seen Russia bloody the U.S.’ nose.

Of all of the damages Biden inflicted on the U.S., none are as egregious, as unforgivable, or irreparable, as the damage to the U.S.’ reputation for his lusty, unremitting, sadistic support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

For a few weeks after Hamas’ October 7 attack, the Israeli response was framed as “self-defense.” But as Israeli officials publicly declared that they were going for expansion of the Israeli state, to Damascus, Syria, and beyond, it quickly became clear that a genocide was taking place.

The International Court of Justice said that a “plausible case” for genocide had been brought. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the minster of defense. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch declared genocide. The Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, stated that ethnic cleansing was underway.

The worst part was Biden’s and Harris’ claim to be “working around the clock” for a cease-fire, when, in fact, he was encouraging the genocide while precisely working to prevent a cease-fire. A more perfidious, demonic pretense could not be contrived.

Thanks to Biden, the U.S. will never live down that it is a savage, predatory, genocidal state, enforcing by mass murder of innocent, defenseless women and children, the imposition of a Western colonial regime into a third world country in order to steal their land and the riches beneath it. All the world sees it. None will forget it.

Finally, lest anybody think I am some kind of crypto-conservative, I have voted for every Democratic presidential nominee since George McGovern, in 1972. It was the rank and file Democrats of Biden’s own party who expressed their revulsion of that party and Biden’s handiwork by staying away from the polls and handing Donald Trump the presidency and both houses of Congress.

If ever there was a searing, sanctimonious self-immolation in presidential politics, this was it and the costs are incalculable. The damage will reverberate for decades and might never be recovered.

It will be all but impossible for the Democratic Party to accept responsibility for the catastrophe it has inflicted on America, through its head, Joe Biden, and the complicity of all of the party’s upper echelon. It will, thus, ensure that nothing will change. We desperately need a new party that reflects the interest and needs of the American people, and not those of the party’s corporate owners. Change cannot come too soon.