Former Vice President Joe Biden has been a politician about three times as long as I have been alive. For most of his 50-year career, he was perceived as a moderate democrat. Surprisingly, his presidential platform is relatively progressive in nature. Reallocating resources away from the police, moving away from fossil fuels, downsizing immigration enforcement and border patrol, and promoting the manufacturing of products domestically are all positions the Biden campaign has expressed support for that the Senator Biden of old strongly opposed (The Federalist). All of this raises this question: Should he be elected president, will Joe Biden govern as a moderate, like he often has, or will he fulfill his campaign promises to govern as the most progressive president in US history?

  COVID-19 under a Biden presidency 

              In public opinion surveys, COVID-19 is usually identified as one of the top concerns of the voting public (Pew Research Center). Vice president Biden claims that he can offer a better policy response to the pandemic than the Trump Administration. While the government’s pandemic response contains many dimensions, I will address the dimension most relevant to us as students: what a Biden presidency means for our chances of returning to school. 

      Joe Biden recently announced who he plans on appointing to a “COVID-19 Adivsory Board” when he is inaugurated (Build Back Better). The Board’s proposed membership includes several “experts,” many of whom have expressed strong support for further lockdowns, such as co-chair Dr. Vivek Murthy and Dr. Michael Osterholm. These officials would not be responsible for making policy at the national or state level. However, they would likely influence executive branch proposals, and those proposals would have the potential to influence the policy response of state governments. It is not a stretch to assume that many states would enact COVID-19 policy consistent with the presidential administration’s preferences, especially those like California, whose governments are dominated by the Democratic Party. A federal policy response to the pandemic favoring some type of lockdown would be devastating to the school-reopening process, which has already been achingly slow, despite the fact that multiple studies have already shown that reopening schools with the proper precautions in place will not place students or faculty in danger (WSJ). Following the advice of his advisors, Joe Biden might be inclined to reverse the Trump Administration’s efforts to push schools to reopen safely (The White House).

Will the Biden administration be moderate?

           During the Democratic primaries, Former Vice President Biden pitched himself successfully as a moderate candidate. Upon his election, many conservatives speculate that the more radical wing of his party will attempt to push Biden to the left politically. Senator Bernie Sanders has made his intent to do so absolutely clear (National Review). When asked about pressure from the left, Vice President Biden has claimed that he is the leader of the Democratic Party and he will set its direction. However, there is reason to be skeptical that the 77-year-old former Vice President will have the fortitude to maintain moderate policy positions in the face of pressure from the progressive forces arrayed around him, from his running mate, Kamala Harris, to vocal, young progressive members of congress.

       The pressure of progressive forces within the Democratic Party on the Biden candidacy were revealed during his campaign when his policy positions regarding important topics frequently fluctuated. The most obvious example of his policy inconsistencies involved the controversy over fracking (New York Post). For the majority of his campaign during the Democratic primaries, Biden promised to eliminate fracking and move the country away from its dependency on fossil fuels. However, when he realized that rhetoric of that kind does not sit well with blue-collar voters in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, he began denying that he had ever said anything of the sort. Policy inconsistencies like this one have left many guessing whether a President Biden will act in accordance with the moderate policy positions he adopted during his presidential campaign or revert to the more progressive positions he promoted during the primaries.

Foregin Policy

     One of the Trump Administration’s most important foreign policy achievements has been the facilitation of several peace deals between Israel and Arab countries such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. These agreements are the first steps towards Middle Eastern peace that have been taken since the early 1990’s under the auspices of the Clinton Administration (National Review). Every U.S. president that has served since then has tried to further peace in the Middle East, yet they have all failed. 

      Joe Biden has made it relatively clear that his foreign policy views have not changed much since his days in the Obama Administration. That administration’s most notable “achievement” in the Middle East was the negotiation of the Iran Nuclear Deal. This deal involved removing sanctions from Iran on the condition that they would not further develop their nuclear weapons program for a period of ten years. On its face, this seems like a fair trade, however critics of the agreement alleged that the deal did nothing but empower and enrich Iran’s evil regime, which openly sponsors terrorism in other middle eastern countries. Not only did the agreement not prohibit the production of nuclear weapons indefinitely, meaning that when it expires Iran will once again have the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons, it released a hold on billions of dollars of Iranian assets, some of which were shipped to its leaders in the form of  plane loads of foreign currency (WSJ). In 2018, President Trump pulled out of the agreement, noting that in the end it did nothing but place temporary restrictions on Iran’s ability to manufacture nuclear weapons while at the same time enabling Iranian efforts to further promote terrorism and political instability in the Middle East. Vice President Biden has recently suggested reviving this agreement, which raises the question of whether a revived Iran deal would build on or impede the positive movements towards Middle Eastern peace achieved by the Trump Administration.

     President Trump’s critics often point favorably to Joe Biden’s approval among European leaders as evidence that Trump Administration policies have damaged our relationships with our allies. It’s easy to understand why European leaders were not happy when the Trump Administration forced them to pay their fair share of NATO dues, or when the U.S. left them to deal with the costly and ineffectual WHO (The White House, The New York Post). It is not unreasonable to suspect that their motivations for supporting a Biden Presidency are little more than narrowly financial in nature. If so, the United States’ relationship with its European allies has not been truly endangered by the Trump administration and will not change dramatically under a Biden Administration.

Sources: 

Joe Biden’s Flip-Flops Prove He’s Not Running His Own Campaign – The Federalist

Important issues in the 2020 election – Pew Research Center

Biden-Harris Transition Announces COVID-19 Advisory Board – Build Back Better

Trump hits Germany and other ‘delinquent’ NATO countries for lack of defense spending – Fox News 

The Wall Street Journal:

1. End the School Shutdown – WSJ
2. U.S. Sent Cash to Iran as Americans Were Freed – WSJ

The New York Post:

1. Biden claims at Pennsylvania rally that he ‘never’ opposed fracking

National Review:

1. Trump Foreign Policy Accomplishments: Middle East Accords, Calling Out China Threat
2. Sanders Urges ‘Squad’ to ‘Make Sure Biden Becomes the Most Progressive President Since FDR’

The White House:

1. President Donald J. Trump Is Supporting America’s Students and Families By Encouraging the Safe Reopening of America’s Schools
2. Update on US Withdrawal from the World Health Organization