Issues & Insights
(YouTube screenshot)

Why Is Joe Biden Still President?

The U.S. recently passed the 1 million mark for COVID-19 deaths, a grim milestone recognized with the lowering of flags to half staff around the country. More than 60% of those deaths have come during the bungling tenure of President Joe Biden, who said in a late-October 2020 debate with Donald Trump that the president should be kicked out of the White House because of how many had died from the virus on his watch. Based on his own standard, Biden should be back in his Delaware basement.

When asked at that debate how he’d “lead this country out of this crisis,” Biden responded with his usual “Big Guy” pomposity:

“220,000 Americans dead. You hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this. Anyone who … is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.”

About three months later, Biden was inaugurated president. By early November 2021, Biden’s death toll had exceeded 332,000. The total for his 16 months in office is now about 600,000, even though vaccines have been available throughout his term and effective treatments arrived late last year.

Compare these numbers to the Trump presidency, during which 400,000 were killed by COVID in about a year, the majority before vaccines had been rolled out.

Though the Democrats and the press ghoulishly held Trump directly responsible for COVID deaths during his last year in office, we think it’s distasteful, and careless, to blame Biden for lives lost to the virus while he’s been president. There’s only so much a White House can do during a pandemic.

But it’s nevertheless important to point out that Biden not only set a standard that he then should have been required to live by, he also promised the American people that “​​I will take care of this. I will end this.” It was a lie no one should have believed, a promise impossible to keep.

Of course there are other reasons beyond his COVID death toll that Biden should not, to use his words, “remain as president of the United States of America.”

He and his party set the inflation fire and have no idea how to handle rising prices (hiking taxes on corporations to bring down inflation might qualify as the most idiotic proposal to fight runaway prices ever floated).

Biden has been a divider rather than a uniter, siding with radical elements over everyday Americans trying quietly to live their lives.

The fading Biden, who is little more than a puppet to the somewhat more sentient beings around him, is a threat to national security.

This president has left the southern border open for anyone who wants to do harm to the people of this country but would otherwise be blocked from entry. His abandonment of his obligations to protect the nation’s borders has also created a humanitarian crisis.

Biden displayed weakness and an uncommon ability to continue to be on the wrong side of international affairs with his disastrous Afghanistan surrender.

Our flap-jawed president has made this country more dependent on other nations for its energy needs, and is directly responsible for soaring fuel prices.

And never forget that Biden has given authoritarianism a boost through his willingness to stand behind the most stringent pandemic restrictions on liberty; has done nothing to relink the supply chain that his policies help break; and wants to cancel student loan debt, which is both poor economic policy and an offense committed against those who have faithfully paid off their loans or chose a more difficult path to a college degree by working their way through school.

Has there ever been a president who has done more harm to the country before his term has even reached the 18-month mark? Not in our lifetimes.

Making this tragedy even worse is that his replacement, Vice President Kamala Harris, would be as lousy – and probably worse. It’s an ugly storm, but our only choice is to ride through it and hope the damage isn’t too bad by the time a Republican Congress beginning in January can begin making repairs.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board

We Could Use Your Help

Issues & Insights was founded by seasoned journalists of the IBD Editorials page. Our mission is to provide timely, fact-based reporting and deeply informed analysis on the news of the day -- without fear or favor.

We’re doing this on a voluntary basis because we believe in a free press, and because we aren't afraid to tell the truth, even if it means being targeted by the left. Revenue from ads on the site help, but your support will truly make a difference in keeping our mission going. If you like what you see, feel free to visit our Donations Page by clicking here. And be sure to tell your friends!

You can also subscribe to I&I: It's free!

Just enter your email address below to get started.

Share

I & I Editorial Board

The Issues and Insights Editorial Board has decades of experience in journalism, commentary and public policy.

34 comments

    • That is an outrageous statement and you should apologize – to all jackasses.

  • “More than 60% of those deaths have come during the bungling tenure of President Joe Biden…”

    The overwhelming majority of deaths due to COVID that have occurred after vaccines became readily available are those who chose to not get vaccinated.

    It is in no way Joe Biden’s fault that that many Americans chose political obstinance over their own interests.

    This article is pure yellow journalism.

    • To this day the Biden administration is pushing vaccines! He wants children from 5 to 11 to be vaccinated. People lost their jobs because they refused his order to vaccinate? Pinhead what are you thinking?

      • They should lose public jobs for not following public health and safety directions. Schools are super spreaders. As soon as our school went maskless, in 2 months we had over 1/3 of the school with covid, which means some of their parents and grandparents also got covid, especially if they too were not vaccinated. At this point, if you aren’t vaccinated, you have only yourself to blame.

    • Not at all. Biden promised he would “fix” it, and that anyone who presided over the death of as many as 220,000 Americans was not fit for office (absurd, but this was HIS statement). Why is it “yellow journalism” to hold a politician to his own words?

      • Because Biden didn’t “encourage” those people NOT to get vaccinated, like the previous President. We lost an extra 300k Americans because Trump didn’t push the vaccines that he and every one of his staff took.

    • Your comment fails to capture the full context of the point being made.

      First, you pull one sentence from a 17 paragraph editorial to conclude that something is ‘yellow journalism.’ While the point being made may, in fact, be misleading, it doesn’t reduce the entire editorial to poor journalism or poor critical thinking.

      Second you have missed the larger point of the sentence you did concentrate on. The thesis of the editorial is questioning why Joe Biden should still be president when by his very own conditions for remaining in office, he should step down or be removed. Biden’s campaign statement contained absolutely no allowance for consideration of external factors. So why should we suddenly give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to external factors that explain deaths under his administration, as you conclude?

      Moreover, a fuller examination of the issue would make the facts even less favorable to Biden. For example, the very vaccine you cite was developed under the Trump administration and he did not get the benefit of trying to persuade people to take it. It almost goes without stating that such persuasion would have failed thanks to people like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris who were already sowing seeds of doubt about the ‘Trump Vaccine.’ Those seeds were well watered once Biden took the oath of office; an effective leader would not have made the intemperate comments about the vaccine before it was out, thanked the former president for his leadership in removing red tape to get the vaccine fast tracked (the kind of red tape that might help in emergencies such as baby formula shortages and/or an energy crisis), and would have maintained the credibility to persuade hesitant people to taking a vaccine which, as you rightly say, would have saved their lives. Once something is politicized it is very hard to take it back.

      Let’s think about this for a moment: what if in February 2021, Joe Biden had gone on all of the networks (from the actual oval office and not a studio) and said essentially the following: “The Trump Vaccine is here. I know I did my fair bashing of the man as president and I stand by virtually everything I said. However, the truth of the matter is that this vaccine developed under his administration is safe, effective in preventing death from COVID-19, and I want to be the first person to take it on live television. What I said about the Trump Vaccine was wrong and it was incorrect. This is a safe vaccine for all Americans and anyone who plays political games with a vaccine doesn’t belong in my administration or in American government.” Do you think vaccine rates would be higher or lower?

      Personally, I loathe Donald Trump. I am a lifelong conservative and have voted Republican 98% of the time. I have never voted for Donald Trump. If Joe Biden were the person he was even 10 years ago and truly tried to unite a divided country, maintained a moderate sensibility and cast aside the ‘slightly more sentient’ far left advisors who are actually making the decisions in his place? I could have seen voting for him in a re-election. As it is, he is the worst president of my lifetime (including Johnson, Nixon, Carter and Trump) and to my mind the editorial stands as a thoughtful and largely spot on essay about his abject failure in office.

      • 3.6% unemployment is the worst President??? Millions of jobs going unfilled is terrible? I mean, we have millions of unfilled jobs and higher production costs, why complain about too much immigration if they fill lower paying jobs??? Vaccination rates accelerated when Biden took office, that is bad? People haven’t had to pay student loans for a long time and that is also bad? NATO is actually cohesive, that is bad? Never would have happened under Trump, who was quite possibly the most inept man ever to sit in the oval office. He did accelerate the development of the vaccine, but they he undermined his success by telling people it was ok not to get it. Ugh.

    • Talk about yellow….. just released data here in MN (dept of health) shows at the height of the Delta variant that more VACCINATED people were hospitalized and/or died than those who weren’t. Facts get in the way of you leftists.

    • Joe Biden said he would “shut down” the virus. By using Biden’s own standards he has failed. Stop excusing Biden from his failed policies.
      Furthermore, Trump did not have any vaccines for the first 9 months of the virus, Biden had vaccines available for his entire presidency.

    • Biden, Harris and everyone on the left was opposed to the Trump vaccine while Trump was in office, and spread doubt at every turn. To suggest that Biden’s abysmal record is “in no way Biden’s fault” is ingenuousness.

  • Elections have consequences. Stolen elections have catastrophic consequences.

  • Why is Joe Biden still President? Because Kamala Harris is Vice President!

  • Why is Joe Biden still President? Because Kamala Harris is Vice-President!

  • “The total for his 16 months in office is now about 600,000, even though vaccines have been available throughout his term and effective treatments arrived late last year.”

    Refresh my memory please, whose voters have made it almost an article of faith to refuse vaccination? Not Biden’s…

  • The next 8 months will be the most dangerous in America history given Marxians will not cede power. Go to YouTube and type in ‘matrix – pamphlet No 1’ and take the time to read what is a distinct and plausible reason Biden was elected…to serve as a placeholder for Obama.

  • Joe Biden was Barak Obama’s anti-impeachment insurance policy. Kamala Harris fills that role today. Kamala Harris must go as soon as Nancy Pelosi is replaced as Speaker. Then President Biden can be Article 25ed and begin his long overdue stay at the Shady Acres Retirement Village.

    • You have no idea of how things work in the real world. Do you really think 67 Senators would vote to convict Heels-up Harris and remove her from office?

  • So, the fact that you are 10x more likely to die if you are unvaccinated and there are millions, mostly republican, of Americans unvaccinated has no cause/effect on the number of covid deaths? Not to mention all the Republicans that refuse to wear masks, which have been shown to reduce viral load by 24x or more !!! Now let’s tackle inflation and the border issue. You don’t want inflation, but you also don’t want to let in more immigrants which often take these lower paying jobs that keep costs down? That and there are more jobs than applicants, how do you square that with not letting in more immigrants? America’s economy has outgrown it’s labor force. Either we get more people or we slow down the economy. You’d think this was an easy point to grasp… Inflation is rising because a) high energy prices due to war, Europe’s dependency on Russian oil and gas, and too few people using nearly free renewables, b) other countries, namely China, have reduced factory and transportation capacity due to covid policies. China is America’s largest manufacturing partner, so reduced supply means, you guessed it, higher demand, and c) in the US, we still have lower relative demand for services compared to goods, so there is higher demand for goods than there has been historically, which means, again… higher prices. The only way out is higher production from lower priced manufacturing countries including China, buying higher cost goods from American factories (Americans simply won’t do that it has been shown), or lowering demand for goods by either reducing net income (taxes or higher interest rates) or everyone getting vaccinated so we can go back to a full service economy (which republicans, and some democrats, won’t do). Hmmm. What Biden CAN do is eliminate subsidies for oil and gas companies and give them to renewable energy companies, allow more drilling and fracking as part of a compromise, and increase immigration to lower production prices in the US.

    • Adam- do you even understand what a vaccine is? This is NOT a vaccine. It changes your molecular structure. It is an EXPERIMENT- and most people -especially lately, are ill ARE vaccinated. I am not. It was my choice. In the span of these covid years, I have taken precautions, eaten well, kept my immune system healthy etc. I flew 3 times back & forth to Texas for family reasons-that is a total of 12 times in the airports (2 planes to & from). My sister in law was very ill just before it was a ‘pandemic ‘- she worked as dental hygienist – my brother (who shares a bed with her) did not ill, I did not get ill (as he watched my pets while away), her daughter did not fall ill either. It’s up to the person if they choose to put a foreign substance that is not proven to do a damn thing into their body. There is scientific proof that each time you get the ‘vax’ it will tax your own immune system. Same as a male taking steroids. His body will depend on the shot and stop production. You should do some research sir.

    • Vaccines are normally created from the “virus” and tested for 5 years. If people have adverse reactions (50-100 people) the vaccine is pulled from the market. In this case these “vaccines” were designated as “emergency” and issued, with the Big Pharma Company getting released from liability from any damages from the US government. People are still getting COVID after being “vaccinated” for COVID multiple times.

  • It is clear Brain Dead Biden and Airhead Harris are not running the country so the question who is? The leaders in Congress must know who is running things. With the passing of the $40B Ukraine Bill that I told my Rep and Senators (all Republicans) not to pass or I would not vote for them in their next election, and they did anyway it is clear they are part of the UNIPARTY. All of Congress needs to be voted out. Only a few Republicans have ever tried to impeach Biden and Pelosi kills it, but all of them should try.

    The country is failing in all areas: inflation, invasion at the southern border, election issues shown in 2020 now confirmed but not having people arrested, vaccine failures causing deaths and health problems, and oil issues the will cripple the country.

  • Let’s hope a GOP congress does materialize, as it’s not a guaranteed thing, and let’s hope the GOP actually does what this country needs rather than waste political capital on petty culture-war nonsense.

    Trump fought the culture wars but also got significant things done, but I worry that figures like DeSantis are so addicted to pumping up the base with performative populism that they won’t actually do anything to improve the lives of Americans.

    There is a major difference between removing Disney’s special status and riling liberals vs actually repairing the US economy, disentangling US manufacturing from China, limiting the growth of Chinese influence, repairing America’s image internationally, solving the crisis at the border, reestablishing American energy independence and all the other things that must be done to undo the damage Biden and his handlers have wrought.

    Yet that stuff, as necessary and crucial as it is, doesn’t whip up the base like prohibiting mask mandates or railing against Disney. Most of the country is so caught up in the left-right arguments that voters will happily ignore what matters in favor of empty victories that “own” the other side.

    Meanwhile China keeps stealing hundreds of billions in IP from us, its sights are still set on Taiwan, Putin grows more dangerous as he grows more desperate, and millions of illegal immigrants have been dumped into American towns with no way to track them and no way to make them comply with the law.

    We need adults in charge, desperately.

About Issues & Insights

Issues & Insights is run by the seasoned journalists behind the legendary IBD Editorials page. Our goal is to bring our decades of combined journalism experience to help readers understand the top issues of the day. We’re doing this on a voluntary basis, because we believe the nation needs the kind of cogent, rational, data-driven, fact-based commentary that we can provide. 

We Could Use Your Help

Help us fight for honesty in journalism and against the tyranny of the left. Issues & Insights is published by the editors of what once was Investor's Business Daily's award-winning opinion pages. If you like what you see, leave a donation by clicking on donate button above. You can also set up regular donations if you like. Ad revenue helps, but your support will truly make a difference. (Please note that we are not set up as a charitable organization, so donations aren't tax deductible.) Thank you!
Share
%d