How will the Biden presidency be remembered?

Here’s Biden’s farewell address:

Hindsight is 20/20, but in retrospect it’s easy to conclude that for all sorts of reasons Biden’s presidency would have ended up being evaluated far more favorably if he had announced in the spring or summer of 2023 that he wasn’t running for a second term.

My own view is that the first two years of his administration were extremely successful in policy terms, and may even be remembered as such in historical perspective, although such things are very difficult to predict in the moment.

Unfortunately the second half of Biden’s presidency will likely be remembered as a full-scale political disaster, that ended with the re-election of Donald Trump, while the Trumpist party seized the trifecta of the elected branches, and consolidated its ongoing corruption of the judiciary, for a kind of nascent fascist grand slam.

That’s why my farewell address tonight, I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern. And this is a dangerous — and that’s the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked. Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. We see the consequences all across America. And we’ve seen it before.

More than a century ago, the American people stood up to the robber barons back then and busted the trusts. They didn’t punish the wealthy. They just made the wealthy play by the rules everybody else had. Workers want rights to earn their fair share. You know, they were dealt into the deal, and it helped put us on the path to building the largest middle class, the most prosperous century any nation the world has ever seen. We’ve got to do that again.