There’s something of a pattern here, one that freights that statement with irony. Throughout the Biden presidency, the famously moderate president has had his ambitions thwarted over and over by none other than his fellow centrists. From the original Build Back Better Act to the minimum wage hike in the American Rescue Plan Act , Biden has found some of his greatest opposition from his very own.
In 2022 much of Hoffman’s spending via Mainstream Democrats PAC went toward opposing progressive Democrats in primaries. That money ended up going to conservative House Democrats who had opposed and undermined Biden on signature issues. The group successfullyfor Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar, who opposed Biden’s gun control legislation and continues to oppose him on guns. Cuellar also opposed—and continues to oppose—the president on the all-important issue of abortion rights.
Biden, by then left for dead by many of the party’s usual megadonors, made a handful of decisions that helped win a historic Democratic overperformance in November. He embraced abortion rights afterwas overturned, in a much more fulsome way than ever before. He passed a major party-line spending bill in the Inflation Reduction Act. And, critically, he announced that he would be canceling student loan debt by executive order.