The Biden Presidency At 2 Years: Halfway Point Of A Forever War

As he hits the halfway mark of his term, how has President Biden fared in terms of his promises to the American left?

by Belén Fernández, Al Jazeera

In 2020, during his campaign for president of the United States, Joe Biden pledged to make Roe v Wade “the law of the land”. While the 1973 landmark ruling that legalised abortion nationwide was of course technically already the law of the land, its protections had been successively sabotaged in accordance with the national predilection for trampling on human rights.

Fast forward to June 2022, a year and a half into the Biden presidency, and the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade – a move that disproportionately harmed poor minority women and effectively aborted any pretences to progressivism on the domestic landscape.

Then in October, Biden promised to push to codify Roe into law if Democrats retained both houses of Congress in the November midterm elections.

Oops.

Now, as Biden hits the halfway mark of his term in January 2023, how has he fared in terms of his other promises to the American left? Granted, this can be a tricky subject for consideration, since any minor deviation from the dominant right-wing US discourse and devotion to neoliberal dystopia is often cast as radical leftism.