Objectively going by the data, It's undeniable. President Joe Biden's policies have been a success. For all Americans. Republican districts did as well or better under Biden, than Democratic districts have.
The Facts: In policy terms, Joe Biden’s presidency has been a resounding success.
Biden failed to win the working class. Democrats might want to stop trying.
Fareed Zakaria
And yet, in political terms, Biden has failed. He leaves office with among the lowest presidential approval ratings in history and his party having lost the presidency, the House and the Senate in the 2024 elections.
Biden’s presidency has been an important test of a powerful theory that has animated Democratic Party elites for almost two decade...
...Take the Inflation Reduction Act, which is the largest climate-related investment program in American history. Of the $346-billion-worth of clean energy investment that had been announced between the law’s passage and last March, almost 78 percent had gone to Republican congressional districts, according to a CNN study of data from the nonpartisan Rhodium Group and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The infrastructure bill has been less lopsided, but much of that spending funds jobs in fields typically seen as working class, such as construction. And the Chips and Science Act has resulted in a huge spike in manufacturing investment in the country.
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Ever since Bill Clinton’s presidency, Democrats have moved left on economic policy. As Ezra Klein has noted, Barack Obama was to the left of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton campaigned to the left of Obama, and Biden was to the left of Hillary Clinton. And yet, during that period, Democrats’ working class support has cratered.
This is not simply a Trump phenomenon. In the 2022 midterm elections, when MAGA candidates did badly and Democrats did surprisingly well overall, Democrats lost White noncollege educated voters by 34 points nationally in House elections — 10 points worse than in 2018...
Democrats have many electoral advantages. They have a solid base of college-educated professionals, women and minorities. Many of the swing voters who have helped them win the popular vote in seven of the past nine presidential elections are registered independents and suburbanites. Perhaps they should lean into their new base and shape a policy agenda around them, rather than pining for the working class Whites whom they lost decades ago.
A few snippets tell the story.