With a little less than four months left in his presidency, Joe Biden is seeking to solidify his legacy. His schedule over the last few weeks, and what’s to come before the transfer of power on Jan. 20, 2025, shows the president setting up what he wants his legacy to be.
Reaching out to his blue-collar base
While campaigning, Biden attempted to reach out to progressive voters, but his true values lay with the moderate, blue-collar workers who have supported him his entire career.
Fresh off a vacation in his home state of Delaware, Biden spent the last few weeks traveling to states such as Wisconsin and Michigan, touting his work in creating manufacturing jobs, strengthening labor unions, and building greater infrastructure.
Biden has specifically touted the Inflation Reduction Act, which aims to lower prescription drug prices, invest in domestic energy production, and enact tax reform, and his Investing in America agenda, which has sought to back the nation’s infrastructure and bring back manufacturing jobs.
His administration has invested nearly $1 trillion in manufacturing and green industries across the Rust Belt. On Friday, Sept. 6, he noted while in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that 142,000 jobs were added just in August.
“We’re seeing the great American comeback story,” he said.
Reframing the economic narrative of his presidency
Inflation has been a grave issue for the Biden administration. Prices were up nearly 20% in May from when Biden took office, and while inflation has softened, consumers are still frustrated over prices for goods, such as groceries.
Since the beginning of his re-election campaign (which was cut short in July), Biden has been trying to convince voters that even though prices are still high, this is all a part of a cycle. However, many who see their grocery bills ticking upwards each month haven’t bought the story. In an upcoming swing state tour, Biden will highlight what he has done for the economy in communities that are seeing the biggest differences of his policies, like expanding broadband and investing in climate projects.
The White House is also setting time aside for Biden to speak with individuals who have been directly affected by his policies, meetings that will be recorded and published to social media, according to Politico.
The task will be a tightrope for Biden, as many voters have said his repeated insistence that he’s working on the economy is a way of disregarding their very real concerns about inflation and an increasingly difficult job market. If he doesn’t strike the right balance of reaffirming the challenges people are facing, while praising his own accomplishments, he risks his hopeful-successor’s election chances
One of Vice President Kamala Harris’s major challenges has been addressing issues of the economy, without bashing the Biden administration (which would be bashing herself). She has confronted economic issues more directly than Biden, announcing plans for small businesses and endorsing Trump’s idea to not tax tips for service workers and rallies.
Defining his international legacy
Biden has also faced problems on the international stage. The withdrawal from Afghanistan led to the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemembers, and wars in Ukraine and Gaza have ignited differences in Washington, D.C. With little time to do so, the president is trying to define his efforts across the globe.
On Friday, Biden met with Great Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, where they discussed the possibility of loosening the United States’s weapons restrictions on Ukraine as Russia received short-range ballistic measures from Iran.
Biden said to reporters before the meeting that he wanted to make “clear that Putin will not prevail in this war.”
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said that Iran’s newfound partnership with Russia is concerning that it “now reaches well beyond the Middle East.”
Being able to secure a ceasefire in Gaza has been something the Biden administration has been negotiating all summer long.
The Biden administration‘s stance on the Israel-Hamas war has garnered criticism from members of his own political party, leading to mass protests and over 100,000 Michiganders voting uncommitted in the state’s primary election because the U.S. continues to send arms to Israel. However, Biden’s infrequent criticism of Israel to do more to get a ceasefire deal done has also upset pro-Israel congressional Democrats, as well as Republicans.
The chances of Israel and Hamas securing a ceasefire and hostage deal during his final months in office could be slim after Hamas made a new demand and upended the previous proposal. There is concern that the war in Gaza could escalate into a broader regional war that would forever be associated with Biden’s presidency.
Over the next few months, Biden plans to travel to Germany, sub-Saharan Africa, Peru, and Brazil for the G20 summit, where he could meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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While Biden surely has his legacy top of mind, he also hopes to create a good climate for Vice President Kamala Harris to inherit if she were to win the White House.
While Biden has been sparing in his campaign appearances for Harris, his stops in places such as Wisconsin and Michigan are meant to appeal to what has traditionally been his base: labor workers and older voters.
