Crashing Out in the White House
Joe Biden was willing to risk it all for Hunter, but not the rest of us.
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On December 1st, 2024, after years of saying he would do no such thing, outgoing president Joe Biden released a statement announcing he would be pardoning his son, Hunter Biden. In the statement, Biden says, "I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process, and it led to a miscarriage of justice — and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would make this decision.”
The political world is rumbling with reactions to Biden's decision, and while many people seem to understand and even empathize with the situation the president was in, even more, find this decision to be baffling, a betrayal of trust, or the final confirmation that he and the Democratic Party are who Trump and the right have consistently said they were. In truth, I don’t have a dog in this fight, so I believe I can see both sides. The idea that Biden pardoning his son is such a breach of trust feels silly. The rules of politics went out the window in trumps first term. There is a laundry list of unethical things he did in office. Republicans stood by him, and the legal system backed down as he prepared for a second presidential term. On the other hand, President Biden gave his word, and while the rules may have changed, someone's word should mean more than just a sound bite, and clearly, it didn’t.
That breach of trust might not influence the Trump administration. The donald and his band of billionaire egomaniacs and reverse dei hires didn’t need this decision to justify poor behavior. They were always going to break or manipulate the law to meet their needs. But for those of you who are still confused as to why the Democrats got their ass beat on Election Day, this spells it out clearly. With only a few weeks left in office and the realization that a right-wing strongman with an axe to grind against his political enemies was coming into power, Biden took drastic actions to protect his son. Whether Hunter did anything wrong is irrelevant; Trump, the far-right and conservative institutions have unfairly targeted him, and he would continue to be a target if nothing had been done. Biden and his team decided to take action instead of trusting a system that was clearly going to be rigged. But what about the rest of us?
When Biden and the Dems took over in 2020, they pushed hard to raise the national minimum wage to $15 an hour. They almost had the votes to do it, but at the last minute, an obscure rule from the parliamentarian stopped them. At the time, Biden and leaders in the Democratic Party urged people to “support the rule of law” and committed to finding another way, but they never did. When Biden rolled out his student loan forgiveness program, it was almost immediately undercut by lawsuits from conservative groups and delayed in courts.
To Bidens credit, he has approved over 170 billion in student loan forgiveness, but thousands of people who qualified under his original plan will not see relief. Advocates tried to push the administration to do more, but there wasn’t an appetite to try a justice system that right-wing forces had co-opted. Democrats had a majority for two years and didn’t vote to protect abortion rights. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe V Wade, democrats used it to campaign but didn’t have an answer. I want to be fair: Biden and Dems have done many good things during their four years in office, but their biggest failure has been governing as if they had nothing to lose when our democracy was at stake.
Now that Trump is celebrating his latest victory and appointing the most incompetent people he can find for federal roles, Biden claims he is compelled to “take action,” I think this is a lie. Biden and the Democrats have always known what was at stake, but the ultra-wealthy's influence on politics isn’t just on the Republican side; they are comfortably at the table of our democratic leaders as well. Raising the minimum wage for everyday workers and implementing a price freeze while taking a more aggressive and public approach towards corporations driving inflation would be a direct shot at his and the party's main constituency, the ultra-wealthy.
Biden and Democrats in power weren't willing to do that, just like they weren't willing to stop sending weapons to Israel, even though they have killed 40,000 Palestinians and starved even more. Democrats made real efforts to address the issues, but almost always at the edges, and always while touting the strength of a system that was consistently failing regular people. So after years of being told that “this election was the most important one of our time” and that the “Democrats are the party of working people,” this time it fell flat. Voters didn’t believe Dems cared, nor did they trust that Biden or Harris would be willing to break away from the current system. And now, the one time they do it, it’s for personal gain; no one watching is surprised.
Congratulations—you made it to the end. Do you have thoughts on it? I would love to hear them. Let me know in the comments.
How do you feel about Biden pardoning his son
Some blame the Democrats' “hard shift to the left” for their loss. Do you agree?
Were you satisfied with what Biden and Dems did while in Power?
Why do you think trump won this election?
1. I think the real plan was for Kamala to do it. But since she didn’t win, what was he left to do? I think it was an unfair question for the media to have asked him. He got boxed in. Had he said yes, I will pardon my son, imagine the frenzy.
2. There is no justifiable reason to vote Trump.
3. Yes they did a lot. I think the failure in Gaza put a dark cloud over everything.
4. He lied and people believed his lies.
1. No issues with pardoning Hunter. It would be an unrealistic moral high ground not to before losing power. It’s basic family protection and common sense. The reactions could be somewhat of a projection of (1) how easy it is for Biden to take action and not doing more for everyone else and (2) people feeling like he let them down on other things he vowed to do or not do.
2. Democrats are not far left. The far left hates the Democrats. Democrats lost because they have alienated the far left, and have for a long time. Which has only made the far left more extreme. It’s the Republicans that associate the far left with the Democrats (and it works).
3. I didn’t really pay much attention to what was done but I feel like it was a snooze fest. I agree with what was stated in the article. They’ve always maintained the status quo which looks like stability aka no changes.
4. I was shocked that Trump won by so much and I still don’t know why. It’s a humbling and somber reminder. I think it’s a lot bigger than just the Democrats failing. Thats a tempting oversimplification. We have bigger issues.