The full effects of the President’s economic policies won’t be felt for years. That might be too late to benefit Kamala Harris and other Democrats. By Nicholas Lemann Pete Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation, at center. | Photograph by Carolyn Drake for The New Yorker Among Joe Biden’s afflictions and miseries, his wormwood and gall, there are the insults (about his diminished capacities), and then there are the compliments unpaid (about his achievements). We are exposed to more of the first, but it seems that to him the second are more painful. In his first interview after he withdrew as the Democratic Presidential nominee, Biden—wounded, proud, self-pitying, defiant—said, by way of defending his record, “No one thought we could get done, including some of my own people, what we got done. One of the problems is, we knew all the things we did were going to take a little time to work their way through. So now people are realizing, ‘Oh, that highway. Oh, that . . .’ ” He trailed off for a moment and then recovered. “The biggest mistake we made, we didn’t put up signs saying ‘Joe Did It.’ ” He ended this with a bitter chuckle. Biden isn’t wrong. Objectively, and improbably, he has passed more new domestic programs than any Democratic President since Lyndon Johnson—maybe even since Franklin Roosevelt. . . . |
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