10 reasons Joe Biden should be president for life, or until the end of a second term, whichever comes first

Pundits say there's not much enthusiasm for Joe Biden's second run for president -- but I will be the cheering section! Let' s talk about what Joe's done and how much that depends on where he's from. And why there isn't another presidential contender who can do what he does.

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Transcript

I know what you were thinking when Joe Biden said he's running again. Man, I wish we were still in Afghanistan.

Welcome to the Compass of Power. I'm Adam Wilson. I like to put the police in politics, and I'm a very unusual person in more ways than one. But today, relevant to this podcast, I am a Joe Biden super fan. You don't find a lot of super enthusiastic Joe Biden people, and I'm not sure why I mean, come on. He's so exciting. But the general feeling is like, well, okay, amongst Democrats and of course Republicans are just not going to vote for the other guy, so boo. But today we're gonna talk about why Joe Biden is an exceptional president. In my view. I'm gonna give you 10 reasons why Joe Biden should be President for life or until the end of a second term, whichever should come first. Number 10. Here we go. He ended 20 years of not quite losing in Afghanistan.

Listen, I agreed with Obama when he said, we took our eyes off of Afghanistan, which was home base for Al-Qaeda, the launching pad for the nine 11 attacks, and we focused on Iraq, which turned out to be unnecessary. But despite an investment in Afghanistan that would go on and on and on and on, it never stabilized. And it wasn't until Joe Biden the fourth president during the Afghanistan conflict, he came in and he withdrew troops in August of 2021, which was within months of the 20th anniversary of the Afghanistan war, making it by far and away the longest war in US history. And to do that, I don't think everyone remembers this, how short our memories are, but he had to rebuff both the military hawks who still thought that we were going to be able to wipe out the Taliban. And he had to do battle with the progressives who had to come to believe that Afghanistan was sort of a world making project.

And we were going to totally reform Afghanistan culture, starting with women's rights. And they really didn't want to back out because they thought they were almost there. And the result was a very messy exit. It was not good footage, but we're gone now and we are still dealing with the hangover from that. Not only of course, the cost to the troops we lost, to the folks who fought there for years and wonder what it was all for. And, and culturally, I, you talk about where we are now with talking about the ubiquitous AR 15, a type of rifle designed for military use, but as now, like the, what a whole generation of American veterans grew, almost said grew up, but they, they learned to shoot and to operate with ar 15 rifles. And that technology has since moved on into hunting and sport, shooting and everything else at the same time as we deal with gun violence.

And it's really clouded our culture, I think, and made things difficult. That's just one of the many, many, many lasting legacies of the war in Afghanistan. And I wanna be real clear that I'm passing no judgment on anyone who served there or who was behind the project when it started. I'm just saying that the number of politicians who want to go back zero. The number of Americans who wake up thinking, man, if only we'd given it a little bit more more than zero, but not many. It was time to withdraw. Joe Biden did it. It's done and is actually an accomplishment that we don't even think about anymore. That's number 10. I'll give you number nine. Number nine, Joe Biden wears sunglasses while he eats ice cream. What? But honestly, if that's his shtick, aren't we willing to take that? I think we remember the unbelievable amount of media attention Donald Trump was able to earn.

He worked very hard on it, and it was usually through out outrageousness, or you can go back to the days of Barack Obama in which wait, Donald Trump was also <laugh> after Barack Obama. I just think that Joe Biden's been fairly media savvy in a way that people don't appreciate frankly, his work to define the opponent opposition as mega Republicans or extreme mega Republicans has been stickier with Republican than Let's go Brandon. I just don't think that people have been able to box him in. And instead he has been boxing in the opposition, which means he's a very good politician. I think that he has been effective in driving distance between moderate G o p folks and the far right wing. I think you saw that at the State of the Union address this year, where he got into a live debate with some of the rowdy members of the Republican caucus and used it to his advantage and came away with a win. And if that's just sort of a soft, subjective thing, then I give you the hard quantitative facts of the midterms, which by any account looked like it was going to be a wipe out for the Democrats, historically should have been a wipe out for the Democrats being the midterms after the white House changes hands of parties, and yet the Senate stayed in democratic hands and the mega Republicans used Joe Biden's term lost to Democratic moderates.

Reason number eight, Joe Biden should continue and run again and be president more. He believed Russia was going to invade the Ukraine before Zelensky did. Let us not forget that. Joe called it and called it again, even when Ukrainian President Vo Vladimir Zelensky told him to calm down. It was I looked this up January 28th, 2022, prior to the Russian invasion. Zelensky literally was speaking out in public asking Biden to calm down, don't make this dramatic decision to pull us diplomats out of Kiev. And he just thought that Joe Biden was overplaying the situation. I think you can see now in retrospect, and not only did Joe Biden call it, but that he's been very firm in his support of Zelensky and Ukraine. That is all to the good. He is effectively draining Russian resources making Ukraine a quagmire for a global opponent of the United States.

And he's done it without putting any US boots on the ground. Well done. Number seven, I think Joe Biden knows how to pick a fight effectively. That is when the feds have the power, when his branch has the power, he's offered moderate adjustments that most folks are probably good with. For example, in marijuana, he pardoned all prior federal offenses for simple possession of marijuana. And he's starting to review how marijuana is scheduled because right now it is a Schedule one drug under the same classification as like heroin or L s d. And I think we all at this point think that that's not good. He's not legalizing it, not that he could unilaterally, but he is ratcheting it down in a way that I think most folks agree. When I say most folks, I mean probably just about all Democrats and a good share of Republicans, that's a good call.

He's playing a strong hand. It's easier when you have the power to loosen up a bit like he's doing than it is to try and assert power. You don't have. Another example is dealing with trans athletes in sport. He has a proposal that under Title ix, which stops schools and colleges from outright banning transgender athletes, but would allow teams to create some limits to ensure fairness, which I think again, is where most people are at. The, that we have sort of very extreme polarization on what seems like a very new and complex situation for the public to deal with. 16 states have just straight up band trans athletes. Like, like it was a major threat to women's sports is that a lot of men would say they identify as women now and just go get the gold medal on the girls team.

Which I don't think was the case. On the other hand, progressives were acting as if anyone who had any level of discomfort with this was some sort of rank bigot, which is not true. It's complicated. People are not familiar with the terrain. They don't understand all the issues by saying, Hey, we're not gonna allow total bans, but we're gonna work on fairness. I think again, Joe Biden used the power, he does have to pick a good spot in the lane. Let me contrast that with say, the abortion issue, where when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade Joe Biden doesn't have, or the president doesn't have a whole lot of room to reassert authority there. So while he has taken a action, I know that some folks for this, when this issue is big, he, they say he hasn't done enough, but it's hard to do where he does have the power, I think he knows and he acts, and that's a sign of understanding what you can and can't do as president.

Reason number six, he actually passed federal gun legislation and it was bipartisan. That's right. Joe Biden backed and he signed the Safer Communities Act, which was the first major piece of gun regulation legislation in 30 years. And here's what it does. It requires people ages 18 to 21 to undergo enhanced background checks. It narrows what they call the boyfriend loophole which, you know, a dating, dating couple, one of them isn't supposed to have guns, but they get it from the boyfriend or they give it to the boyfriend. It funded crisis intervention. It made investments in mental health issues which including in our schools, which no matter what you say there has to be part of the school safety equation is talking about mental health. I don't see how you can be seen and do what some of those folks do.

Not that you can do it without a gun, but you can't do it and be seen at the same time. It clarifies who needs to register as a federally licensed gun dealer, and it made a gun trafficking a distinct federal crime. That's all. And this is bipartisan. I think everybody can agree with all those things. Good job. Again, like some of these other topics, these are things where the states are racing in completely different op opera D directions, and yet Joe's able to find something that's clearly a democratic friendly approach, but enough for most reasonable people, if they hear what's in it, to say, oh, okay, fine. Good. All right. Reason number five, the Infrastructure Act. Listen, there's this thing that happens where, you know, the working folks want some stuff to help their lot. And the capitalist class that people who the conservatives will remind us create jobs, want something completely different.

But where they can agree are things like roads, bridges, airports, trains, public transit, the stuff, the pipelines that move things around and people around. And broadband, right? Internet capacity, huge bipartisan investment in infrastructure from Joe Biden and Congress. Now, again, nobody gives him credit because the progressives wanted a huge package bill back better. And the Republicans are not obligated to give 'em credit for anything. Well, I guess they are kind of like in a reasonable person's standard, but we can't expect them to be cheerleading for it. So what ends up is there's not a lot of cheerleaders for it. But again, middle America is winning out here, and I would submit this is huge economically long term. I, I am ready to argue that some of the unbelievable economic growth we've seen over 20 years that just seems to continue on despite all the headwinds, is at least partly due to the investments during the Great Recession, in which there's a lot of infrastructure investment.

Reason number four that Joe Biden should run again and forever, he cut child poverty in half. Now, I'm not kidding, this is actually, this is one something that got measured cause they claimed they were gonna do it, and they did it thanks to the enhancement of the child tax credit. And this is the Census Bureau came out with this, that in 20 21, 5 0.2% of children were in poverty down from 9.7% the year before. That's a supplemental poverty rate for children. And that was the lowest rate on record since it began. They were talking about 5.3 million people were lifted outta poverty because of that credit. Look, it did expire after one year and it was, I think it was in the build back better plan. And that didn't pass. So the enhanced tax credit went away, but to cut child poverty in half, even for a year, that I guarantee you that's going to pay dividends for years to come, because there was, at least for a while, those kids were out of there.

They could get they could achieve more in school. They were in less trouble, their parents were less stressed out. It was a big deal. And had it continued, that might be number one, right? I mean, if you, if that was the only thing you did as president, it was permanently cut child poverty in half in the United States, that would be huge. But I will give you my number three reason that Joe Biden should just keep right on, keep trucking on, and that is his unionism. He likes to say that he's the most union friendly president ever. And that's probably true. He started his 2020 campaign at a union hall in Pittsburgh. And this week when he launched, he went to the North American Building of Trade Union building trade union and gave a speech. And here's a line from their union workers will build roads, bridges, lay internet cable, installed 500,000 electrical vehicle chargers throughout America.

And union workers are going to transform America and union workers are going to finish the job, which is catchphrase finish the job. But he is very, very union friendly. Julie Chavez Rodriguez is heading up his reelection campaign. She's the granddaughter of Cesar Chavez, the union leader. And right now, even supposedly progressive companies on the left coast like Starbucks and NBC Universal are scared of their people unionizing. And it's a historical fact that unions have to have some level of government protection in order to survive. And we don't need to get into the whole history, but I'm talking like over the course of the United States, it, when you have administrations congress gov, state governments, when you have opposition to unions from government and corporations, they do not farewell. It's also a historical fact that when unions are at least left alone by the government, or even better for them, if there is some sort of government support as there is in the Biden administration, their success tends to move out.

And it lifts all boats as the old saying, right? But you will generally see the middle class in America do better when unions are doing better. It's not the case that when we fall on hard times, everyone's like, oh, I need a union now because they're cutting jobs. It's exactly the opposite. When things are going well, when you have a support in the White House, unions expand and more families make more money, get more healthcare, more life insurance, the whole nine yards. And it's just good for America, in my opinion. And I feel like I can back it up with facts. So pro-union all the way, okay, reason number two, we're getting towards the end here. When you put his investments in infrastructure together, his support for unions with his support for manufacturing, what you get is a huge American middle class.

This is a big deal. We've, we talk a lot about like the polarization in America, but what about the just splitting apart of the lower half of the economic spectrum with the upper half? The economic inequality is skyrocketing and Joe Biden's been doing literally everything he can do to bring us back into the middle, which is when I think America said it's best, when the greatest number of people are doing well, that's when you are doing great as a country, not when you have a few people doing great and a lot of people doing poorly. A few figures here in two years, there's been 300 billion invest invested in American manufacturing, and we're talking about not trying to bring back the old, like let's build whatever. What do we used to build? That used to be awesome, but expensive. The Sotos, we're not building the sotos.

We are talking about building higher tech, manufacturing facilities, factories. They obviously don't employ as many people as they used to. Let's get real about this. Like you can't take back the Maytag plant that you moved out of Indiana or Ohio took it to China, and now it's coming back and it's not gonna employ the same number of people, but it's way better to have it here. You're talking about creating good pain jobs. A lot of those yes, are union jobs. A lot of them don't require a four year degree, which means you don't have to go through college and accumulate the debt. And he's, Joe Biden's big on getting rid of student debt as well. Hurry. they're just, this is again, like maybe it doesn't help the people who are on tv, right? The educated pendant class, but these are all great things for the wide swath of the American middle.

Biden will tell you that nearly 11 million jobs have been created since he took office, including 750,000 manufacturing jobs. Unemployment rate is at a 50 year low record number of small businesses have started. And the, here's an interesting stat. 11 states at record low employment and people with disabilities are at record low unemployment, which is great. Okay? Like that's all of that's great. All of it's wonderful. Number two reason, I don't see why we should change course in any way if suddenly not suddenly, but, you know, we are getting jobs for everybody. And I know the jobs could be better. I know the healthcare could better. There's a lot of things we could put on the could be better list, but I am talking about the are better things are better for millions of people. Okay? Reason number one, Joe Biden should keep going.

He's from Delaware. Look, we've talked about this in other episodes, and that's what this podcast is about, is the place in politics. And Joe Biden is from Northern Delaware, which is a very small and specific place in America. But Joe Biden has a read on Middle America because it is both a place and a political position, which is always the case. It's my argument, right? Where you're from shapes your politics. And the politics of Northern Delaware are somewhere in the middle of American politics writ large. Joe Biden is, I would say economically progressive. We talked about his, you know, he likes unions, he likes to in government investment and infrastructure to build jobs. He talks a lot about trying to get people training, vo-tech training, technical training or go to college limit student debt, all these sort of investments that I think, and he's big on healthcare, I think, I'm not gonna get into his healthcare policies, but point is these are things that generally American support, they can get behind that.

And Joe's a hundred percent behind that. He is socially liberal, but not as far out as I would say the Democratic party in general. General is he gets, you know he gets some flack from the progressives on where he is and on some social issues. But as I, for example, the trans athletic issue that I talked about, I think that there, he moved slowly, but he looked at it carefully and came up with some kind of proposal that I think most Americans would recognize. He is slower to get into position than most politicians, but I think the public is slower to get into position than most politicians. And that's because politicians are following the, the political class, the pundit class, the activist class. But the public is like, what is going on? What, this wasn't an issue last year. Why are we talking about whatever this issue is?

And Joe Biden moves slow, and by doing that, he's able to reflect back and bring along more of the American public. He largely ignores the media, which the media hates. And when I, you know, and the media now of course is, tends to be polarized like the rest of us. But he does not do a lot of news conferences. He doesn't do a lot of interviews. I mean, Donald Trump basically watched Fox News and then used his Twitter accounts to stay on top of the reader board on Fox News. He was like a hundred percent in the media. Joe Biden opposite. But again, I think that works out for the broad swath of American people, because while yes, Americans may be polarized, it's still like not everybody here is a complete political junkie. They don't really care that much. They don't need to hear about him that much.

I think that generally helps him, and it's also reflective of where he's from. The Delaware area, if you actually look at northern Delaware, it has like a, a perfect semicircle at the top. It's perfectly round because they literally drew, like took a radius from a Quaker settlement at the top and just said, nobody, this is the, the boundary of Delaware, because they're trying to keep the puritans who live north of there who constitute, as we always talk about the Yankees, the, the Massachusetts and New England types who spread west and are basically the liberal powerhouse of American politics. They were trying to create a barrier between those folks. And Joe's folks in Delaware, the Quakers who also were in Pennsylvania and also moved west, are literally in the middle between the south and the north. And they were generally amenable to what we'd think of as socially liberal things, even back then.

Particularly like women's rights, but they were not big into telling other people how to live, which is like the number one favorite thing of the Yankees. So the, it's sort of the Iowa, right? And Iowa speaking of which, which is entirely, if we're gonna look at the cultural map, would be entirely in this Middle America section. But they've been pretty conservative. And I think a lot of that, if you get down to it, is a reaction against some of the fast moving politics of the north, the upper North, the Yankee North, and the left coast. Being from Delaware, Joe Biden just naturally has an inclination to think and move within something that's liberal, but not super liberal, that is in the north, but not way north. And because of that, he wins and he's able to effectively negotiate with the other side. Let's talk about, I I think one way of pointing, pointing this out, why the number one thing about Joe Biden is actually where he is from, is to think about who else is out there.

Kamala Harris, the vice president is from San Francisco that I think she went to Berkeley. That is in no way like the rest of America, right? Like there's definitely plenty of folks. I live in that same cultural zone. That cultural zone goes from San Francisco up the west coast, actually all the way into BC Canada, but that's why it's the left coast, because it is driven mostly by Yankees who arrive by ship. If you talk about Gavin Newsom, who could potentially run for president in the future, he is the governor of California, also mayor of San Francisco. When you think about those folks, if you follow politics at all, I think you would think that they are definitely different from Joe Biden and definitely not as middle of the road, not as quote unquote middle American as Joe Biden. Well, what about Pete Buttigieg?

Well, again, he's from, he's from Indiana, right? Yeah, but he's from the Yankees section, like the very top tippy, top north part. I mean, not even Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan is as middle America as Joe Biden, although I would give her a close second on the list of people who might run I think she should consider that in 2028 on the Republican side, who do you have? Donald Trump's from New York City. Very bombastic, loud brash. But on the Republican side you have Ron DeSantis from Florida, who's a major up and comer, but he, as everyone's talking about, is facing a hard, a hard task and taking the culture war wins he's had in Florida, and translating that to getting not only Republican base states in the South, but at least picking off Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, some of these places where in theory they could win.

What about Nikki Haley, former governor, governor of South Carolina? Again, she's a softer image than Donald Trump, but can she translate the attitude of South Carolina into something that those purple states, so to speak, can get behind? I'm not convinced. What about Maryanne Williamson? Where is she from? Space <laugh>, I'm kidding. She's from everywhere like Texas, California, Michigan. I think she even moved to Iowa in 2020 to win, but she didn't win. She only, it's just not gonna happen. But she has a fun character. My point is, no one is a better approximation of the average American. If you, if there is such a thing, then Joe Biden and there's not going to be someone like him for a long time to come. I think the Democrats have some issues with that just as the Republicans do the extremes, launch candidates and through the primary system.

And for Democrats, you know, that can mean being far out on politics. It can mean being far out on the coast. I mean, honestly, do you don't run into too many Democrats that have a big winning percentage that aren't like touching an ocean? It can mean embodying some kind of specialized identities so that, you know folks can see that we're moving forward and we're not just electing the, the same old well, what we think of as the same old, I would argue that the presidents actually have much, they have many different backgrounds, but to the degree that they're all like white and male and Christian, right? Well then how do we get out of that? And the Democrats want to see that mold broken. But in order to do that, you have to have somebody who can still speak to the crowd Barack Obama style.

And I think that that's tough for them to do on the Republican side. Again, now you're in that mold and how can you break that mold and still keep people together? Can Nikki Haley win the nomination and go on to win the presidency? Can they take the deep south iso ethos, which is ruled by the people who deserve to rule because they're successful and translate that to Iowa? I don't know. And to be fair, the party faithful, these super politically active folks have passed on Biden every time he ran for president up until including 2004. But then Barack Obama saw that Joe had that Middle America kind of feel, saw him as a balance to his Illinois background and selected him as a running mate. And that's what gave middle class Joe the national credibility that politicos probably would've never given him. So I say, go Joe. We'll never see the likes of you again. That's it. Thanks for listening, everybody. Subscribe, leave a review, do something, tell your family, tell your friends, and we'll be back.