A Joe Biden Second Term……

A Look at something NOBODY has talked about because of foaming at the mouth about Donald Trump….

There are tons of pieces written about what a second Donald Trump term would be like, and hardly any about what a second Joe Biden second term would be like. Now, some of this is about Trump, for a variety of reasons. But it’s also a bit about Biden and the Democrats, and for them? The lack of stories is sort of what you would expect.

Which in fact tells us a lot about the party and this president.

What’s a second Biden term going to be like? Very much like those of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, updated for changing situations and shifts within the party. Biden will, as Clinton and Obama did, look for opportunities to find common ground and cut deals with Republicans during a time of divided government — while also spending plenty of time drawing contrasts over those policy areas where Democrats back popular ideas.

Meanwhile, outside of the legislative arena he’ll continue to push party priorities on such things as health care, climate, and more through executive action, which will set up fights in the courts and with Congress, the latter depending a lot on exactly what that branch looks like after the 2024 and then 2026 elections. That “and more” won’t contain a lot of surprises; Democrats typically include a fair amount of detail in their party platform and campaign rhetoric, and those will be solid guides to where a potential second term is headed.

The key to all this is that there’s relatively little of Joe Biden in any of it. And this, too, is not new. To understand what Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, and Lyndon Johnson did in the White House you really do need to know a fair amount about those particular men. But for the recent Democrats (and to some extent for Republicans, but it’s more complicated and we’re focusing on Biden today), party tells us far more than the person in the Oval Office.1

Of course, that Clinton, Obama and Biden have had partisan presidencies (as Richard Skinner put it) doesn’t mean there’s nothing at all of themselves how they did their presidenting. They each had different rhetorical strengths. They had some stronger and some weaker skills, and that can explain some of their successes and failures. Biden so far seems to be, for example, stronger than either Clinton or Obama at legislating — no suprise there given his career in the Senate — while he’s quite a bit weaker at the public speaking part of the job.

But all three were pretty good at working with various party factions, and implementing, or at least attempting to implement, what the party collectively wanted…..

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image…Forbes