President Biden’s policy agenda is incredibly popular, much more popular than his opponent’s. But Biden the man? Not so much.
The question now is whom to blame for the approval gap between the president and his agenda: voters, the media or Biden himself.
Democrats have long argued that their policies are more popular than those of Republicans. In a recent blind test conducted by YouGov, that was unmistakably true. The polling organization asked Americans what they thought about major policies proposed by Biden and Donald Trump without specifying who proposed them. The idea was to see how the public perceived ideas when stripped of tribal associations.
Biden’s agenda was the winner, hands down.
Of the 28 Biden proposals YouGov asked about, 27 were supported by more people than opposed them. Impressively, 24 received support from more than 50 percent of respondents.
He is responsible for a lot of policies that resulted in the mass incarceration we have today.
Biden works with far-right Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond and the Reagan Administration to pass the Comprehensive Control Act. The law expands federal drug trafficking penalties and civil asset forfeiture, allowing police to seize a person’s property without proving them guilty of a crime. Two years later, Biden co-sponsors the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which creates new mandatory minimum sentences for drugs, including the notorious 100:1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. A conviction of possession of powder cocaine with intent to distribute carries a five-year sentence for 500 grams, while the same conviction for crack carries a five-year sentence for only 5 grams, so the harshest penalties are enacted on low-level drug sellers and impoverished drug users.
The controversial legislation known as the 1994 Crime Bill is Biden’s most significant contribution to the expansion of policing the drug war. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, written by Biden, increases funds for police and prisons, fueling an expansion of the federal prison population. It also newly applies the federal death penalty to 60 crimes, including large-scale drug trafficking and drive-by-shootings resulting in death. Biden brags after the law passes that “the liberal wing of the Democratic Party” is now for “60 new death penalties,” “70 enhanced penalties,” “100,000 cops,” and “125,000 new state prison cells.”
