Biden’s First Year in Office, A Review

How does one judge a president who follows an insurrectionist? 

By Riley Mulcahy 
Opinion Columnist 


It is hard to believe that we are in the second year of Biden’s term, and one has to question how he has done in the last year and what he could have done differently. In 2020, there was hope after the election that progressive ideals would finally prevail; however, several marks have been missed in a year still plagued by the pandemic and white supremacy. Bills such as the Build Back Better Bill and the Voting Rights Bill are two monumental bills that still have not been passed thanks to moderate voices such as Senator Joe Machin (D-WVA), who refuses to be the Democrat he pledged to be when he took office. This simply makes Biden's job nearly impossible. 

Although there has been a success in getting the infrastructure bill passed in a pandemic, we need more than a commitment to our roads, a commitment to the American voters who are waiting on leadership in the White House. In reviewing his first year, the news publication Politico argues that one of Biden’s first missteps was when he declared “independence from COVID-19” this past summer on the 4th of July. Coupled with two new variants, Delta and Omicron as well as reeling from the understanding that America has always been rooted in white supremacy, a questionable pullout in Afghanistan from the 20-year long war made it difficult for even progressives to get excited about 2024.   

The difficulty in assessing the first year of Biden’s term is that, in large part, his work has been to heal old wounds created by other presidents. Democrats must clean up the mess their Republican counterparts made in this increasingly actual pattern. If Trump had a handle on the pandemic and did not spread falsehoods on election integrity, we would not be in this terrible position. However, Biden has not done enough to ensure that there are safeguards in place to protect democracy, which has become increasingly fragile.