I’d like to add something.
But I feel like people see things he's done wrong and decide they won't vote for him because of it.
This is half of it, sure. The other half is that people don’t see things he’s done right.
When the DEA lifted restrictions on telehealth prescriptions, it was reported as if they were arbitrarily putting restrictions into place. The fact that they were clearly trying to be as lenient as possible without breaking the law (passed with bipartisan Congressional support in, IIRC, 2016), just straight-up was not part of the narrative. (When I had my own telehealth appointment last month, I specifically asked my doctor about this. That DEA policy was a best-case scenario for telehealth.)
When he put into place a huge funding package to help unhoused people get access to mental and physical healthcare, short-term and long-term housing, and other needs - crucially, as identified by the local community in conversation with them - it just. was not. around the social media web. Except from Fox, where it was reported as “Biden gives millions of dollars to drug addicts, transgender teens” (since access to hormones and therapy is a major need of many homeless teenagers, and since safe injection sites and needle exchanges are a major need of many unhoused populations).
His attempt at student debt relief was blocked by Republican judges, many of whom were appointed by Trump, since Mitch McConnell et al blocked Obama from appointing tons of positions in his last few years in office. I specifically remember begging people to consider the Supreme Court - one vacancy already, Ruth Bader Ginsburg old and not likely to make it another four years - during the 2016 election, and people said it didn’t matter.
When his administration allotted funding to fix the most severely-damaged and frequently-traveled bridges on the highway system, I saw it going around tumblr as “lol, they’re only fixing nine of them” instead of the first fucking time in ages there’s even been an attempt at infrastructure repair.
He’s currently trying to expand Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), or Dreamer, access to healthcare - i.e., allowing undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children to obtain insurance under the Affordable Care Act. I have not seen a single tumblr post about this.
He has vetoed two Republican-led bills, both of which were written specifically to overturn policies they didn’t like because they were potentially good for the environment, or just acknowledged the existence of the environment.
Biden’s first veto was of a law Republicans were trying to pass that would make it illegal for investment fund managers, at least those whose funds include retirement savings, to consider potential risks from climate change. The Dept. of Labor had said it was legal, not even required but allowed, for the manager of an investment fund who has a bunch of retirement savings accounts he’s supposed to oversee to basically decide not to invest in something that’s going to be riskier than the numbers say because of climate change, like beachfront property somewhere the waterline’s been rising by 18″ per year. So, by vetoing that bill, he allows investment fund managers to safeguard retirement savings funds in their care.
His second veto was another Republican-led bill trying to overturn a rule the EPA had put into place. They were restricting agricultural run-off into waterways. It’s been hard to find details on this, because even CNN, the allegedly left-wing source, spends more time explaining why Republicans say it’s overreach than, like, telling you what it actually does. It’s either the EPA rule limiting PFAS, chemicals that cause severe health problems and don’t degrade, in waterways, or it’s the “rule” that was just them repealing the Trump changes that basically just said they didn’t have any real power to regulate waterways.
Part of why people don’t like Biden is, yes, because they disagree with some of what he has done (or, frankly, they disagree with what they’ve been told he has done, which often has only a passing resemblance to his actual actions), but a larger part, IMO, is that - as I keep hearing - he isn’t doing anything, isn’t doing enough, etc. But... he’s doing a LOT.
It’s just very, very difficult to figure that out from social media, because “president issues an executive order to entire administration to expand affordable childcare, specific details include expansions of grants and application processes, expanding and shifting budget for family needs...” etc... does not get the kinds of interactions that make social media algorithms happy, and/because they don’t fit the narratives of “both sides are the same” OR “Biden is useless and old.” An article that says “Biden breaks railroad strike” is going to get a LOT of comments, hiiiiilarious replies dunking on Biden without having read the article, jokes, incredibly angry replies, some of which have merit and others less so, and a bunch of defensive Democrat-or-bust folks, some of whom ALSO didn’t read the article, fighting all of the above.
So on algorithm-driven social media likes, the negative article, true or not, fair or not, is going to be seen by a lot more people, because those angry comment fights and rage-faces keep eyeballs on screens and those eyeballs churn out ad dollars like a perpetual motion machine. But the boring-but-true, good-news-but-complicated, government-functioning-as-best-intentions-hope article above? That’s not gonna get LOL dunks or laugh-cry reacts or angry Republicans or leftists who can score a couple points on The Neoliberal Liberal Shill Dems. Most people won’t read the whole thing. They’ll scroll past it. So not many ad dollars, so the algorithm doesn’t boost it, and even if rad-left tumblr bloggers and influencers and podcasters SEE it, they’re not going to talk about it for the same reason - it doesn’t fit their narrative.
