Can Joe Biden Save America's Soul?

The president has made historic strides in the face of Republican intransigence, but the real test may be how he grapples with the nation's inner demons

- By Charles P. Pierce

It was a cold and windy February day in south Carolina. Pundits doing live shots in the parking lot of the bar were wearing blankets over the lower third of their bodies, just out of frame. A Democratic presidential primary was going on, and if there was a general consensus, it was that Joe Biden's campaign at least had to cloud a mirror held under its nose to account for what had been to that point a doomed and futile ride into forced retirement.

He'd stumbled badly in Iowa, fallen flat on his face in New Hampshire, and finished far up the track in second in Nevada. This was Biden's third try at the presidential nomination, and he had yet to win a single primary in any of them. A former vice president to a still-popular two-term president, Biden needed to do something in South Carolina or he was headed for the remainder bin.

Almost a year later, after a lot of fuss and bother (and one armed insurrection), Biden was sworn in as the forty-sixth president of these United States.

He'd crushed the field in South Carolina, in no small part due to the endorsement and political acumen of Representative James Clyburn, Democratic whip in the House of Representatives and a force in the state's Black community. (Exit polls indicated that the majority of Democratic primary voters in South Carolina were Black.) Once Biden got rolling, there was no stopping him. Various temporary top rivals-Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar-dropped out and signed on. Biden won ten primaries on Super Tuesday and picked up more than six hundred delegates, which pretty much cleared out the rest of the field.

And although El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago and his parade of brain-wormed sycophants continue to dominate headlines, Biden has doggedly persevered in his governance as he did in his campaign. The result is a tally of accomplishments as ambitious as they are historic.