"Biden was not part of the Obama entourage. He was sort of a goofball and windbag. He was a member of an older, outmoded generation."

"In other words, uncool. The West Wing attitude was that Biden should simply be grateful that the Great Obama had handed him a ticket to ride. Biden was viewed as a past-his-sell-by-date pol who needed the president’s guiding hand to keep Uncle Joe from making a fool of himself as vice president.... They trashed him anonymously to reporters, froze him out of meetings and barred him from doing some national media.... In eight years, Biden said in a recent reveal that stunned Anderson Cooper — and left Washington gasping — he and Jill were never invited by the Obamas to their private digs in the White House.... So now comes a delicious twist: President Biden is being hailed as a transformational, once-in-a-generation progressive champion, with comparisons to L.B.J. and F.D.R. aplenty, while Obama has become a cautionary tale about what happens when Democrats get the keys to the car but don’t put their foot on the gas.... Obama’s failure to go big and to send the tumbrels rolling down Wall Street certainly greased the runway for Donald Trump. The paradox of Obama is that Americans embraced radical change by electing him but then he held himself in check, mistakenly believing that he was all the change they could handle.... Obama seems more comfortable as Netflix talent, sitting pretty with celebrities and chit-chatting with Bruce Springsteen...."

Writes Maureen Dowd (NYT).

"For years, Republicans used welfare to drive a wedge between the white working middle class and the poor."

"Ronald Reagan portrayed Black, inner-city mothers as freeloaders and con artists, repeatedly referring to 'a woman in Chicago' as the 'welfare queen.'... And the tension between the working class and the poor was easily exploited: Why should 'they' get help for not working when 'we' get no help, and we work? By the time Clinton campaigned for president, 'ending welfare as we knew it' had become a talisman of so-called New Democrats, even though there was little or no evidence that welfare benefits discouraged the unemployed from taking jobs.... Yet when COVID hit, public assistance was no longer necessary just for 'them.' It was needed by 'us.'... The CARES Act, which [Trump] signed into law at the end of March, gave most Americans checks of $1,200 (to which he attached his name). When this proved enormously popular, he demanded the next round of stimulus checks be $2,000... But the real game changer... is the breadth of Biden's plan.... Rather than pit the working middle class against the poor, this bill unites them in its sheer expansiveness... Over 70 percent of Americans support the bill... The economic lesson is that Reaganomics is officially dead. It's clearer than ever.... Give cash to the bottom two-thirds and their purchasing power will drive growth for everyone."

Writes Robert Reich in "How Bidenomics Can Unite America" (Newsweek).