・Jobs: Achieved the greatest single year of job creation in American history, more than 6 million in 2021, a decrease of 16 million receiving unemployment benefits, and the biggest drop in the unemployment rate in history.
・Manufacturing jobs: The biggest yearly increase in US manufacturing jobs in nearly 30 years. Democrats’ new incentives for key industries have already led to announcements of thousands of new manufacturing jobs.
・Healthcare: Democrats’ new tax credits drove a record 14.5 million Americans signing up through the ACA, including 5.8 million new people getting coverage. They forced drug companies to negotiate prices for the elderly and capped costs at $2,000 per year. This will save elders thousands annually.
・Poverty: The Dems’ child tax credit created the largest-ever one-year decrease in childhood poverty in American history, about 3 million kids. Households saying they didn’t have enough to eat dropped by a third.
・Safety: Passed the biggest anti-violence measure in decades, including the Gun Safety bill and strengthening the Violence Against Women Act.
・Supporting police: Democrats passed four bills on supporting both police and crime victims.
・Covid: Biden executed the most successful American vaccination program in history – from under 1 percent of adults fully vaccinated to over 75 percent, with over 500 million shots administered – and from less than half of schools open to almost all of them.
・Roads, bridges, energy: the bipartisan infrastructure bill will finally fix America’s infrastructure. In 2022 alone, repairs are starting on 65,000 miles of roads and 1,500 bridges, with thousands of jobs created.
・Protecting America and our allies: Biden kept the NATO alliance together in support of Ukraine following the Russian invasion, brought in two new countries and took out the world’s number one terrorist, Ayman al-Zawahri.
・Veterans: Dems allocated funds for hundreds of thousands sickened by burn pits in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
・Climate: The Inflation Reduction Act includes the largest investment in history to address global warming. Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Accords and the EPA established strong new fuel economy standards.
・Diversity, equality: Democrats made lynching a federal hate crime, made Juneteenth a federal holiday and Biden appointed more Black women to the US Court of Appeals in one year than any president in history.
・Budget: The Inflation Reduction Act reduces the deficit by $300 billion.
In a highly partisan America, facts can be easily drowned out by hot-button shouting. Or, as longtime Democratic strategist and 2020 Biden ad-maker Cliff Schecter observed, “the gulf in perception of Biden’s record vs reality exposes the challenge posed by rightwing media, rampant disinformation, and a mainstream media trying to play it straight with both sides but actually just playing dumb.”
We can’t entirely fix that problem right now. What we can do is ask voters to remember the
flaming dumpster fire that was America two years ago at the end of the Trump term: an economic and public health calamity, massive abuses of power and the ultimate culmination – an insurrection fueled by an American president.
