Unfortunately, we — meaning the entire political world, but especially those of us on the left — have spent far too much time in the 2024 campaign talking about Joe Biden’s personal strengths and weaknesses. For example, you may have heard that the president is somewhat elderly. But Biden is more than an individual. He oversees a government with hundreds of agencies and millions of employees. He sits at the head of a party that represents tens of millions of voters and is affiliated, closely or otherwise, with a panoply of left-leaning movements, organizations and activists.
All of these people, groups and forces will have roles to play and influence to exercise if Biden is re-elected. Democrats ought to depersonalize the campaign away from Biden himself and encourage everyone to see the bigger picture. Because a broader system, not just one man, will be on the ballot in November.
The administration has moved aggressively to provide relief to millions of Americans, even if most voters probably have no idea.
To understand what I mean, consider the White House’s announcement that the government will be forgiving $1.2 billion in student loans for an additional 150,000 borrowers. It’s the latest installment in a patchwork of initiatives and programs that, according to the administration, has already discharged the debts of nearly 3.9 million borrowers. Another 7.5 million borrowers now enjoy small or even $0 monthly payments on loans that can eventually be entirely discharged. Though the Supreme Court’s conservative majority torpedoed Biden’s far more sweeping attempt at student loan forgiveness last year, the administration has moved aggressively to provide relief to millions of Americans, even if most voters probably have no idea.
This is not a lament that Biden is not getting enough credit for the good things he has accomplished, though that is certainly the case. Rather, the point is that this extremely positive development — along with many others of the last three years — didn’t happen because of the particular person sitting in the Oval Office.
Though Biden is clearly committed to student debt relief, something similar probably would have happened if Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren or many of the other candidates in the 2020 Democratic primaries had become president. Biden almost certainly did not personally design the collection of debt relief moves the Department of Education is implementing; like most presidents and most policy initiatives, he likely signed off on the broad outlines, then let the rest of his administration handle the details. Even though he’s old.
There are, to be sure, moments when a president’s own preferences, history and personality become important; the president enjoys a great deal of unilateral power, especially in foreign policy. But given how much time Democrats have spent arguing about whether Biden is too old, you’d think the entire U.S. government — one of the largest organizations on Earth — was staffed entirely by one man.
It’s useful to think of the government as a machine with a huge number of inputs and outputs, virtually none of which are determined by whether the president remembers who the vice president of South Korea is. Another Biden term will mean that the things you don’t like about him could affect policy, but it will also mean more progressive judges (where Biden has been by far the most liberal president in history), expanded health care access, stronger protections for workers’ rights and climate progress, among other things — even as Biden continues to age!
To make this effort even more complicated, Democrats should want voters to focus on Trump.
If the actions of a second Biden term in all those areas don’t go far enough — and they probably won’t — then activists can and should fight for more. But at least they’ll have a chance of succeeding because another Biden term will have progressives either in positions of power or in a position to influence those with power. The Environmental Protection Agency will be run by environmentalists who won’t shut the door in activists’ faces. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will be led by people who care about protecting consumers and have relationships with consumer advocates. And so on.








