While Biden has made mistakes, his biggest obstacles – such as electoral biases built into the US system – are not his doing
A year into his term, the Biden administration is in shambles. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema’s support for the legislative filibuster has killed the Democratic voting rights effort. Biden’s Build Back Better plan, a massive reconciliation package containing initiatives on issues from the climate crisis to childcare is, for now, dead in the water; Manchin and Sinema will determine whether any of its provisions survive in attenuated form.
Immigration reform and healthcare reform, both central to Democratic intra-party debates during the 2020 primaries, have fallen entirely off the radar. The US supreme court may overturn Roe v Wade in the coming months. The latest wave of the coronavirus pandemic is still ravaging the country thanks not only to Covid denialists and vaccine skeptics on the right, but an administration that has struggled to keep its promises on easy access to tests. Abroad, Biden’s courageous withdrawal from Afghanistan – a kept promise even the president’s harshest critics on the left were willing to give him credit for – has been marred by economic sanctions that have left 23 million Afghans without enough to eat, and the media is already itching to blame Biden for a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist
