To the editor:
Although I did not support Joe Biden during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary season, I have come to admire and respect him enormously for the job he has done as president and the many things he has accomplished.
Because of his leadership, a truly bipartisan infrastructure bill, something Donald Trump talked ad nauseam about for four years but did nothing to make a reality, has created tens of thousands of decent paying jobs across the country and begun the work of repairing and updating the country’s long neglected physical infrastructure.
He, also by reaching across the aisle, got the micro- chip bill passed, which has given the US manufacturing sector a much needed shot in the arm.
Joe Biden managed to restore our NATO allies’ faith in America after Donald Trump alienated them and praised and emboldened our adversaries.
Joe Biden’s policies have restored an economy brought to its knees by the Covid pandemic, slowly but steadily tamed much of the inflation the pandemic stoked, and fueled a stock market that has enriched the retirement portfolios of millions of Americans.
He, knowing the situation at the border had become untenable, agreed to sign, much to the anger and disappointmnt of the most liberal elements of his coalition, a bipartisan sponsored bill that objective immigration experts have called the “ …most conservative, restrictive, even punitive…” immigration reform legislation put forth in decades.
Donald Trump, however, ordered his MAGA groupies in the House and Senate to torpedo the bill, not because he had a better proposal to offer, but because he believes keeping the “border crisis” alive works to his political advantage.
In short, Joe Biden has accomplished much in his not quite four years in office, yet gets very little credit for much of it
All that said, I find myself thinking it is time for Joe Biden to truly become the “transitional president” he spoke of in 2020 and withdraw from the race.
He needs to release his convention delegates and allow for a younger generation of Democrats to vie for the nomination in Chicago next month.
He needs to explain to the American people, as the elder statesman that he is, the number one priority before us is to defeat Donald Trump in November, and the best way to do that is to put a forth a younger, more vibrant Democrat who can speak to the hopes, aspirations, and dreams of the majority of Americans.
Doing so would cement Biden’s place in history as a public servant who put the best interests of the nation ahead of his own and further demonstrate what a fundamentally decent man he, unlike Donald Trump, really is.
Michael Cook,
Gloucester