Why I believe Biden is the worst Democratic president since Buchanan
I am writing this as someone who donated to his primary campaign in 2019 pre-South Carolina and of course voted for him the next year.
On economics, any achievements he has had have been minor or with mixed results.
However, he has been an ardent protectionist, which we have known is stupid for 200 years and is against the universal consensus of economists for good reason.
He has even pursued protectionism against clean energy productions like solar panels. In fact he has done almost nothing effective to address climate change, and even some counter-effective policies as mentioned.
His protectionism has made Americans worse off and worsened inflation. This isn't the only way he significantly raised inflation, much of it is indeed his fault.
Obama's former economic advisor heavily criticized the American Rescue Plan at the time as as the “least responsible” economic policy in 40 years given the predicted effects on inflation and how the economy was already mostly recovered.
Indeed recent studies have found it significantly contributed to inflation in the subsequent 2 years, this study estimated inflation would have only reached ~4% without it, as opposed to nearly 8% in actuality. Here is link to full study.
If Biden not only avoided his own protectionism but eliminated some of Trumps, and didn't egregiously deficit spend in an unjustified manner, perhaps inflation would have only reached 3% instead of nearly 8%. Given how much Americans have been shown to hate inflation this might have completely changed the results of the 2024 election, it seems to be what voters hold him accountable for the most.
You can argue "well other countries had worse inflation" and that is true, but certainly not because of anything Biden did. Biden only had policies that made it worse.
Biden has egregiously deficit spent during a boom until the last day of his presidency, the complete opposite of the recommendation of Keynesian or mainstream economic policy. Not only did this contribute to the inflation, but forced the the Federal Reserve to jack up interest rates. The result is its now harder for people to buy homes (interest rates are higher), harder for businesses to invest for the same reason, and given our balooning debt interest payments on US government debt are now so large interest payments on the national debt now are ~equal to the total amount spent on the entire military, medicare, or other healthcare. This is absolutely absurd and Biden has done absolutely nothing but kicked the can down the road, and unless something is done this could be a SERIOUS problem in the next 15 years as we are heading down a fiscally unsustainable path.
Biden's foreign policy has been milquetoast and weak. He has done the bare minimum in Ukraine, the bare minimum with the Afghan withdrawal, and alienated allies with the denial of the Nippon steel deal and protectionism.
I do not need to say how he shouldn't have run in 2024 and is an awful communicator seemingly out of touch with the values of the American people given his approval rating and the 2024 election results.
His appointment of Garland has been a massive failure to hold Trump accountable
There are other more minor issues with his presidency I won't elaborate on further. He has done some good things, but they are relatively minor to the big achievements of other Democratic presidents. Even Wilson, while being a piece of shit, he didlower tariffs, started the Fed, had major foreign policy accomplishments, and got antitrust legislation going which were all much bigger accomplishments than anything Biden has done.
None of this is to say Trump is better (he is not), but Biden has been a failure.