Biden and his team feeling vindicated by a 2022 turnaround built on the same decades-old principles | CNN Politics
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'Let's spread a little kindness': Biden delivers Christmas message to Americans 07:45 - Source: CNNCNN —
President Joe Biden spent hours during his first foreign trip behind closed doors, attempting to reassure a shaken group of US allies that America was back. It was clear, he later told advisers, just how much work remained to convince them of the durability of that commitment.
Eighteen months after those meetings in Europe, Biden departed Washington on Tuesday for his year-end vacation, riding the momentum of historic legislative success and the defiance of political gravity that has reshaped the expectations for the critical months - and decisions - ahead. It's a moment that Biden never seemed to doubt would come, even as his party - and some inside the White House - questioned or outright urged a change in approach to address political and economic headwinds driven primarily by soaring inflation that threatened to drag down his presidency.
During those 2021 meetings in England and Belgium, Biden found a group of allies genuinely shaken by the January 6 insurrection and the events that led to it. But the president tried to reassure them that the visceral divides that culminated in the violence that day would heal and the bleak moment in US politics would pass.
He was met with polite appreciation from his foreign counterparts. But the deep skepticism served only to underscore his commitment to a belief that sat at the heart of a pledge that was often pilloried during the campaign as naive. The only real reassurance, Biden would note, was delivering on what he'd promised.
"That's why it's so important that I succeed in my agenda, whether it's dealing with the vaccine, the economy, infrastructure," Biden told reporters in Brussels shortly before he boarded Air Force One for a flight to Switzerland and a sit down with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "It's important that we demonstrate we can make progress and continue to make progress. And I think we're going to be able to do that."
The moment provided a brief window into the president's high-stakes theory of the case - one that appeared exceedingly aspirational given his party's narrow congressional majorities and staunch GOP opposition. But even as this year began, Biden and his team were grasping to break free of a series of crises and the cornerstone of his agenda - a sweeping bill that included numerous administration priorities - appeared in shambles.
Biden's anticipated final major action before the end of 2022 serves as an almost poetic coda for his first two years. The $1.7 trillion bipartisan spending package he will sign will lock in key funding priorities and include an overhaul of the law his predecessor cited in the lead up to the January 6 riot.
The turn from aspirational goals to palpable accomplishments - highlighted over the last several months by Biden's travel to major corporate groundbreakings in states like Ohio, Arizona and Michigan - underpins the sharp reversal for the White House. That turnaround serves as evidence of Biden's steely belief in his strategies and policy proposals -an approach deeply rooted over his decades in public service.
"One thing that is foundational with him is if he says he's going to do something, he does it," Steve Ricchetti, one of Biden's closest and longest-serving advisers, told CNN in an interview, underscoring an approach that has been defined by steady, and at times stubborn, persistence.
Simple as it may seem, a campaign promise or commitment has tipped internal debates on policy decisions more than once, one White House official noted.
Biden's closest confidants also stress that it's a perspective that is instructive as the White House prepares for the dramatically reshaped Washington that will confront him upon his return from his family vacation to the US Virgin Islands.
"The whole idea of showing people government can work - we were mocked for that in some corners," a Biden adviser said. "That's literally what's happening now."
There are still clear challenges ahead. Inflation remains high even if its grip appears to be easing. Biden's advisers expect economic growth to slow in the quarters ahead, though they remain cautiously optimistic a recession can be avoided.
Biden's approval ratings, while ticking up, remain low and his age remains a real, if less publicly addressed, concern held by Democrats as they wait for an official decision about whether he will seek reelection.
But Biden's overarching approach has guided the early-stage planning for the legislative and political implications of a new House Republican majority and served as the basis for aides already working through the outlines of the State of the Union address that will come early next year.
It's also a defining element of the structure and message planning of a nascent campaign that has taken shape over the last several months and accelerated. Biden's senior team has become increasingly confident that a reelection campaign will be green lit in the weeks ahead.
White House officials view the political salience of his agenda as both an underappreciated element of their ability to defy the expectations of sweeping GOP gains in the midterms and as a critical piece of what comes next. The prospect of divided government - and the exceedingly narrow legislative pathway it brings - has limited effect on an agenda that is now in the implementation phase.
"It forms the foundation for even stronger achievements as the nation heads into the New Year," Mike Donilon, the White House senior adviser and long-standing member of Biden's inner circle, wrote in a political memo circulated to allies this month.
Biden, advisers said, has laid down strict directives to senior aides and Cabinet officials about the necessity of efficient implementation in the months ahead.
"It's not subtle," a senior administration official said of the message from the top. "We have to get it right and in the moments we don't, we damn well be ready to explain it - and fix it."
Long-held principles put into action in 2022
For Biden's tight-knit and long-serving advisers, this is a moment that both vindicates and validates core elements of a campaign and presidency that at various points were dismissed, underestimated or at some points even mocked.
"A lot of people told him that this wouldn't resonate, or that it wasn't the message, or that it's outdated," Stef Feldman, the longtime Biden aide who served as the 2020 campaign policy director before following him to the White House, told CNN.
Biden viewed his infrastructure proposal, in particular, as a central policy plank of his campaign as Democratic primary opponents raced to outdo one another with transformational progressive proposals - none of which included a viable way to pass a bitterly divided Congress.
Biden and his economic advisers zeroed in on an intensive manufacturing and supply chain agenda that grew more aggressive and transformational as a once-in-a-century pandemic gripped the country. They saw it as the key to reverse the accelerants at the heart of the atmosphere that created the opening for Donald Trump to reach the Oval Office.
"This was the right moment for his theory of the case," Feldman said. "He could apply the principles that have really guided him throughout his whole career."
Those principles have largely stayed with Biden through his time as a senator and vice president and were refined during the critical two years spent out of office as he weighed yet another run for the presidency.
"Ever since I've talked to the president about the economy, he's distinguished between the short-term and the long-term, between consumption and investment," said Jared Bernstein, Biden's chief economist as vice president who now sits on the Council of Economic Advisers. "These have always been foundational to his economic thinking."
The animating principles of Biden's 2020 campaign hardly diverged from the key themes outlined by Donilon, Biden's in-house mind-meld, in the 22-page memo he drafted in early 2015 as the then-vice president weighed jumping into the 2016 race.
From think tanks to business schools to Davos, Biden took the role of a kind of middle class evangelist, pressing for the pursuit of policies that addressed short-term incentives that had driven jobs away and wages down. Those speeches and discussions served as a roadmap of sorts for an agenda that is now largely law. They detailed major infrastructure investments and a incentivizing research and development that had atrophied. There were broad outlines of nascent ideas to connect hollowed out manufacturing centers and communities to new opportunities. Biden proposed changes to the tax code that tracked near where his administration would eventually land as it sought to finance spending plans.
Even the anecdotes from the period - whether the one about Chinese leader Xi Jinping and American "possibilities" or his father's sayings about the dignity of work, or the importance of "breathing room" - are the same that populate his speeches as president.
Ricchetti, who as counselor to the president helped lead the White House legislative effort, pointed to a clear "through-line" from Biden's days as a senator, through his time as vice president and during the first two years of Trump's presidency.
Biden wrote a book detailing his decision not to run for president as he dealt with the pain of his son Beau's fight with, and eventual death from, brain cancer. That process and the book tour that followed are viewed by Biden's inner circle as an essential experience in the eventual decision to run in 2020.
"Much of what we prioritized at that time we took with us and used as the foundation," Ricchetti said of the years leading up to the campaign.
A legislative window opens at the opportune moment
If the effort to turn that foundation into a coherent policy agenda was accelerated and expanded in the final months of the campaign, it was turbocharged during a transition that saw Democrats take control of the Senate majority.
Officials structured the infrastructure, manufacturing, research and development, climate and equity proposals into interlocking pieces, designed to work in tandem even if they were eventually scaled back during the legislative process.
"At the core of this strategy was that the power of it is that these things work together," National Economic Council Chairman Brian Deese, one of the architects of the package, said in an interview.
What the proposals - particularly across industries and policy priorities tied to climate and manufacturing - also represented was a dramatic shift in what had become an entrenched, if not monolithic, economic orthodoxy. Biden would oversee the most consequential pursuit of an industrial policy strategy in decades. He'd do so in many cases with Republican support.
To be clear, subscribing to the term "industrial policy" still isn't universally embraced. Even Deese, who has driven and defined its core elements, prefers "Modern American Industrial Strategy." In its simplest form, it's the idea that "if you do public investment in a thoughtful way, what you'll actually do is crowd in private investment," Deese said.
Deese likes to point out its roots in the American economy can be traced to Alexander Hamilton.
But the convergence of factors that led it to once again gain broader, and bipartisan, traction was in many ways tailor-made for Biden.
A resurgence in research and development funding. Significant public investments designed for critical areas of national and economic security. The elevation of labor unions and a focus on creating the conditions to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US.
On their face, these issues are politically popular and hardly exclusive to Biden. They're also exceedingly difficult to turn into policy. At least until the pandemic.
"There's a cost associated with industrial weakness," Deese said. "The pandemic laid bare something that had been the case for years."
That was true for semiconductors - the tiny chips essential for everything from cars and washing machines to advanced weapons systems - that drove the bipartisan urgency behind the $280 billion CHIPS and Science law. Sen. Todd Young, an Indiana Republican up for reelection in 2022, drove the effort on Capitol Hill - something that underscored the salience of an issue that scrambled traditional political dynamics.
For Young, who had pressed for legislation tied to the issue in the year before Biden entered the White House, it was less about embracing a broader shift in economic policy and more about addressing the fact China had pursued exactly that for a decade or longer.Young was one of 17 Senate Republicans who voted to advance the eventual law that has driven new private sector investment or commitments in the last several months.
The pandemic. The rise of China as key feature of policy making in both parties. A president animated by the idea of long-term economic incentives crafted to connect workers and communities left behind for decades.
"These policy insights might not have come to fruition were it not for a confluence of events," Bernstein acknowledged.
'Better positioned'
Ted Kaufman has a simple explanation for Biden's approach and the places where it paid off after two years.
"There's a confidence that comes from knowing what you're doing," said Kaufman, the former Delaware senator, longtime Biden Senate chief of staff and one of the president's closest friends. "This is a guy who is so incredibly well qualified to be president because of experience."
As to why that experience has rarely been rewarded by voters, Kaufman had another simple explanation.
"It's hard because you have a record," he said.
In a way it's both an implicit acknowledgment of the unprecedented factors - most notably Trump, but in some ways the pandemic as well - that created an opening to the presidency for Biden. Another incumbent, or another moment, and advisers note that it wouldn't be a question of if Biden would win. He wouldn't have even run.
Instead, as he weighs running for reelection at age 80, he enters the final two years of this term with much of his agenda now law. Core elements of that agenda were driven by bipartisan consensus. Even Biden's final bipartisan achievement of the year - the $1.7 trillion spending package - includes an initial $500 million to seed the technology and innovation hubs created by the CHIPS and Science Act in parts of the country outside of traditional tech sectors.
While Democrats narrowly lost their House majority in the midterm elections, the party expanded its Senate majority by a seat.
Perhaps most critically for Biden, the voters sharply reject some of the most extreme voices parroting 2020 election lies in critical races for governor and secretary of state.
In the months leading up to the midterm elections, Biden had started regularly recounting the experience with his foreign counterparts on that first foreign trip in an effort to underscore the stakes.
In the weeks that followed, after his travel to Indonesia for the G-20 Summit, he was ready to provide an updated version as he stood against the backdrop of a new factory in Arizona to celebrate the announcement by a Taiwanese chip maker of what would mark one of the largest foreign investments in US history.
"What was clear in those meetings is the United States is better positioned than any other nation to lead the world economy in the years ahead if we keep our focus," Biden said.
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Today's Lesson in Macro Economics - "Economics is just math" - Bill Clinton
There are damn good reasons John Maynard Keynes is "The Father of Modern Economics"!
Keynes. Yes. US must 'deep six' Supply Side Economics and get back to 'regular-structured' Capitalism.
Surprise Surprise Surprise! Cutting taxes does not result in increasing wages for working people, and damn sure does not increase government revenue!
Exactly, in 2018, top 50% of taxpayers paid 97.1% of all federal income taxes as it always has been.
Mmmmkay...
What percent did Trump pay for 2020?
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What does Trump have to do with the working people that you referenced?
But reducing tax rates do!
Crazy that its that simple and Biden and his team were so spectacularly wrong about transient inflation.
Yet, that transient inflation already subsided!
Do you know what transient means?
do you know was "already" means?
Do you know what the inflation rate is?
Yes, yes and yes but, why don't you tell us?
You obviously don't.
Otherwise you would know why the Fed is still raising interest rates and why more hikes are scheduled. Inflation is going down; but it isn't going away. And with the bloated Omnibus bill inflation the Fed will have to crank interest rates even higher and faster.
Biden is doing the best he can despite the push back from the billionaire autocrat movement in the US and the World.
In my opinion the most important challenge to the US is the situation in Ukraine. It is time to call Putin's bluffs and end this thing once and for all. Nato and the US must use every means necessary to extricate every Russian presence in every area Russian occupied since 2014.
I'm a little confused. The whole article praises Biden at succeeding, without mentioning what he succeeded at.
Getting significant legislation passed, his budget passed, cutting the deficit by a trillion dollars, taming inflation and helping to whoop Putin...
For Starters!
Did I mention Dems had a good midterms?
Outside rightwing bubbles things are good!
So you approve of the 2023 budget?
What significant legislation? I don't see any mention of it in the article.
And I don't see anything about it in the article, either. Maybe I just missed it.
Um, where does it say that? All I see is that it says it remains high, something proven exceedingly well every time I buy groceries.
Not sure that's in there, either, but I'll give him some credit for that, depending on how much of the money he's shoveling at them actually is making it there.
Sorry, JBB. Still only see an article that assumes Biden is succeeding, without mentioning much of what he's succeeding at.
Did you send SCOTUS a thank you card?
Good! Where you were unaware now you know!
Biden had a very good year outside your bubble.
Keep shoveling the BS as fast and as hard as you can. Reality is coming; and Democrats are pulling a Thelma and Louise drive off a cliff; and taking the country with them.
Only in yours and Putin's wet dreams...
last week when JBB was singing the admins praises , the bad news that came out for the admin was that title 42 was being kept in place.
I dont think the bad news for the admin this time will be that the federal debt is up to 31 TRILLION as of oct ( and half way to 32 trillion already ).waittill that inflation reduction plan biden signed kicks in on Jan 1st , all those taxes on Nat gas , crude oil , coal and corperations? guess who will actually be paying for that ? as with ALL taxes like that , those WILL be passed on to the consumer .
almost like a canary in a coal mine , he sings , and things go bad for his chosen ones . he thinks he is dropping a shoe , well if we simply wait for the other shoe to drop .....
sing , baby sing ...( ZIIIIP, this time its the sound of velcro opening )
Full employment, wages up, prices down!
You've got to admit things are looking up!
lol employment is about to tank like it does usually during this season , wages up? being spent on higher cost consumer goods, thank you "inflation " , what "prices " are down ? they have continued to go up actually and will start going up faster . lest you missed it taxes are going up on most everything in the energy sector , and corperate taxes have ALWAYS led to layoffs and restructuring to do more with less, starting on the 1st then there is the "stock tax "in that little inflation reduction plan . we shall see i will see the difference in my bills at the end of the month if there is a difference , keep singing , keep singing .
hell people that arent democrats dont have to waste prayers ( if they pray , i dont ) for that , thats a natural given its going to happen , hell when it comes to biden even obama said never to underestimate joes ability to fuck things up.....allegedly...but i have a hunch its true .
Gas prices are down. Home prices are down. Used car prices down. Best news? Sea bass was $8.99 a LB but now $4.99 in NYC. Sorry y'all are doing so poorly in Wyoming. Red states are always behind.
Again, sorry that you are doing so poorly...
lets see, just got the electric and NG bill for dec electric was $120 rounded , to the nearest highest 10 , and gas was $160 to the nearest highest 10, that with the 40 below in the midle of the month ...
gasoline here never was that high , think the highest was just about 4.50 locally highest i saw in the state was in june at 4.99 , down about a buck here locally and if i go about 100 miles i can find it in the $2 range , Seafood has always been outragious here anyway and questionable about freshness , thats important to someone thats use to buying stuff fresh off the boats in the boston area , but pork beef , chicken is still reasonable here still get much of it for less than $5 a pound depending on cuts . just picked up a 4 pound boston butt cut for $20 , 6 pound pork loin for $17. and thats the Kroeger /albertsons stuff , for a couple bucks more i can go to the local butcher and get fresher . how fresh , yesterday it was still saying Moooo. I am not particular about aging beef or wild game
if your paying almost 5 a gal for gas , nothing i can say , like i said im in the 2 to 3 dollar range here and thats the high test stuff so the engine dont knock ..
i guess your paying for that urbain ambiance and the pleasure of others company on the streets ...
To bad you don't have steam heat there.
Gasoline is $3.19 in The Bronx NY today.
The fish I get are fresh out of the ocean.
grew up with that and forced hot water , dont miss either really, i do get the same radiant heat from the wood stove though, the furnace is forced hot air .
well you have fresh fish , i have fresh beef and pork seems like a decent trade for what i wanted , i eat more of that than fish and if i want fish i go fishing for trout .
That must be mid range cost , gas buddy shows slightly higher for preimium , prem here is in the $2.50 range up to 3 depending on where you are locally ( within 5 miles ) its still in the $3 range , but one always pays more for premium and ethanol free.. nice thing about that ? no gas line freeze and better fuel milage .
It is not a pissing match. I get it. Things getting better does not fit your narrative!
I am still saving money every month, my income has been rising steadily and my net worth is way up from a few years ago. Yes, some things cost more but prices for many things are going down because of the law of supply and demand. The Biden Administration knew that raising rates and cutting the deficit would cause some temporary pain but would stabilize our economy. Between Covid and Putin's War in Ukraine the world's economy suffered major shocks but it appears the US is successfully leading the rest of the world back to normalcy. And also, Whooping Putin's Ass!
( and he keeps singin ....)
well good for you since your still working .
me being semi almost totally retired am not worrying much or being affected , i did think ahead and not count on some of the things others have and are worried about .
should really read some of the overseas news sources about what THEY think about the admin on a daily basis . and i am taking about our supposed allies , not that other stuff.
Yes, I am singing Happy Days Are Here Again as you sing a sad song of woe waving a sign saying, "The End Is Here!"
What foreign news services do you use? Pravda? Isvestia? OAN? I do not know!
I get most of my news from the internet but don't believe shit without verifying it.
I don’t know what fish you’re buying, but it isn’t sea bass at that price.
You are wrong. It was still $8.99 at Shop and Save last week but was $4.99 this week at my most excellent local fish market. $5.99 is normal there. Hunts Point Fish Market is in The Bronx. There are three good fish markets within a few blocks from my home. You?
I also bought two lovely red snappers, cleaned but with their heads still on, for $9.99 a pound. Nothing I buy here has ever been frozen. You?
I get most of my fresh fish from Whole Foods or H Mart. I don’t know what fish you’re calling Sea Bass at $4.99 a lb.
PA fracking really brought your cost down. I use a very efficient heat pump.
i know a group of people that were singing that back in the 1930s , singing it didnt make it so . matter of fact it actually took fighting and helping end a world war for it to start happening . they started singing in the 30s and didnt get it til the mid 50s .
usually the london papers and their opposing publications , LePen in france , and der spegiel(spelling is wrong ) in germany , those are just a few , but i also try and read their opposites in the same countries to get a rounded idea of what they think . i will just say Joe doesnt have the media protections there that he enjoys here in this country .
relatives of yours back in hokiemola ( oklahoma)? i saw people like that when i was there in the 90s and that was before meth and crack .
Yes, Republican Hoover crashed our economy but Democrats Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman won a World War and restored America to world dominance both economically and politically!
So, now you insult my pioneer ancestry?
In Oklahoma those are low down words.
I'm a son of an Oklahoma red dirt farmer and public school teacher. Papa passed but my ancient Mama can still kick your butt!
Got a problem with it? Say when & where!
Are you really reduced to this...
The US average retail price for fresh sea bass is $8.99 per pound. I suppose it must be in high supply in NYC right now because I bought beautiful sea bass filets for $4.99 a pound in The Bronx on Tuesday. You are not showing us your vast knowledge. [ Deleted ]
[ ]
Do you know why they are down? Gas prices are down because Biden is taking oil out of the strategic reserves to deflate the prices and the price of crude has come down since July. Are you claiming that Biden is responsible for crude prices coming down? Eventually, that oil will have to be put back, or should be. Given the Dem mindset, that may not happen, weakening the strategic future of the US.
Home prices are down because everyone who can afford to buy homes at the previous prices have already done so, leaving those who can't afford them. As always, prices will drop until those homes are affordable to the next economic class of people with the money to buy them. That's not the result of anything the Dems have done. Used car prices are pretty much the same deal.
Further, in both home and used car prices, inflation is preventing big expenditures by most people. So, what you are considering good things are actually the results of current negative realities, mainly inflation. Add to that Biden's ironically named Inflation Reduction Act which, per Dem norms probably means the exact opposite, things may become worse, considering the new taxes that the act will impose on the energy sector, which will be passed on to the consumer, as always. The act hasn't even gone into effect and I nearly choked when my brother told me how much it cost to fill the heating oil tank for his house this year.
To my mind, you seem to be praising the band of the Titanic for their selection of music while ignoring the reason they're playing in the first place.
Well, call me a conspiracy nut, but this is intentional. Dems are intentionally sticking it to the consumer through acts like this one all the time, forcing them to pay for them through corporations, which they can conveniently accuse of being greedy exploiters. I think that the Dems hope that one day the people will get so desperate by the situation the Dems themselves caused, that the people will accept anything to get some relief. Of course the Dems are going to blame everyone but themselves and those sheep who keep empowering them.
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That’s a great price, at Aquabest in NYC it’s $13.99 for Black Se Bass.
Branzino or Med sea bass is $15.99.
Which macroeconomic theory said that?
you mean like ......Accept someone like TRUMP over the offered tainted dem candidate ?
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Why would anyone vote for a traitor, under any circumstances?
Are they traitors themselves?
well john , i guess one can only answer that for themselves now so whats your answer for you ?
I know, right? But people keep voting for Democrats anyway. I'm being serious. The average Democrat thinks being elected is a mandate by all the people everywhere to stick their Demmy little hands into everyone's life and rummage around, rearranging everything until it's what that Dem wants it to be. And don't even get me started on the corrective lenses Dems read the Constitution with! Oh, No! Too late! They actually read it as if it were designed by the founders with the intent that government should rule over every aspect of society and a citizen's life. They believe, by virtue of their own supposed virtue, they have the right to redistribute as they see fit what everyone else worked for, to use taxpayer money to fund not simply every program and ideology they have, regardless of whether it is constitutional or not but to use those same taxpayer funds to wage smear and propaganda campaigns against anyone who opposes them. And their superpower, the thing they are really good at is to blame their opponents for what they themselves are doing, only ten times more.
If the actual power behind the Democratic party and other Leftist power bases had free reign to do what they wanted right now, rather than in about 20 years from now, half this country would be in gulags.
“If the actual power behind the Democratic party and other Leftist power bases had free reign to do what they wanted right now, rather than in about 20 years from now, half this country would be in gulags right now.”
Read that again. And then read it again.
If after contemplation, you still believe it, you are just another part of the problem. ‘Half the country?’ Gulags? Really?
Well, for anyone left of center, of course I'm part of the problem.
my, my, my, look who is getting into a "pissing" match , both under equipped , and under armed .....
well after serious contemplation , i dont seem to be able to find a time in history that the left / what passes for todays democratic party today, has had such kaniptions an apoplexies about people not doing as they say since lincoln took away their slaves ......( this single cask select is most excellent )
Seriously? I'm paying around $4.50.
He did everything I voted for him to do on inauguration day. All the rest is a bonus.
no accounting for low expectations , and enjoying chaos , i guess . but with those ideals , its easy to be happy , in that case i too shall be happy for thee, i shall just not choose to go to rome , thus avoiding to do as the romans , and when the romans come to me i shall remind them , they are no longer in rome and to thus trend lightly and cautiously .
You're so deep. It's hard to fathom.
hope y'all have buckled your seat belts and set your trays in the full upright position , i have cracked the seal and popped the cork on a most excellent bottle of single cask select bottle of bourbon ...