Presidential candidates usually win elections by talking about the future and promising a better one.  Joe Biden won by talking about the past and promising to take us back there — back to normal.  Biden’s idea of normal is the pre-Trump era — the last years of the Obama administration.

Since his election, Biden has been making plans to do what he promised.  He has begun to stock his cabinet and administration with veterans of the Obama administration — the same people who brought us the many failures and disappointments of those years.  He’s shown no sign that he has any vision for a better future or an interest in progress — in moving the country forward.  He seems to have no plans to appoint progressives to key roles in his administration.  We seem destined to spend the next four years repeating and wallowing in our past mistakes.

Below is a reminder of what the Obama administration wrought and what we’ll have to put up with  until at least 2025:

— President Obama’s signature legislative achievement was the Affordable Care Act.  The Affordable Care Act was modeled after a Republican healthcare proposal authored by the conservative Heritage Foundation which also served as a guide for Massachusetts’ healthcare program authored by its Republican governor, Mitt Romney.  This was not Medicare-For-All or even healthcare for all.  This was Republican healthcare.  The Affordable Care Act did little for most people and left millions of Americans without healthcare — a number which grew rapidly during the Trump administration.  Joe Biden intends to keep the Affordable Care Act, and has no intention of even attempting to pass a genuine government option or Medicare-For-All.  Healthcare and access to healthcare will continue to decline under Biden’s administration.

— The normal of the Obama administration saw a worsening of the many problems with America’s healthcare system as it remained the most expensive and least effective healthcare system in the developed world.

— Other destructive trends which began before the Obama years went unaddressed and were allowed to worsen, including decades of stagnant wages and a rapid widening of income inequality as all economic gains went to the country’s wealthiest.

—  Add to that the continued deterioration of the labor union movement and protections for workers, and the failure to even propose any meaningful labor legislation.

—  Add to that the decades during which the country’s social safety net was shredded.

—  Add growing food insecurity and an increase in the number of adults and children in the U.S. who regularly experience hunger.

—  Add the restrictions many face in finding decent housing and decent schools to which to send their children.

—  The Obama administration’s immigration policies matched the cruelty of those of the Trump administration in their brutal devastation of families and communities at the border and in the interior.  The xenophobic and bigoted cultures of the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement went unchecked by the Obama administration, and led to rampant abuses by those organizations supported by the impunity and lack of accountability President Obama allowed them to enjoy.

—  During the Obama administration, the Democratic Party abandoned working people to cater to corporate and wealthy interests.

—  It saw a growing corruption in politics by big money which contributed to maintaining an economic system rigged by and for the wealthy.

—  In 2010, the Republican Party began an active, aggressive, and successful program of nationwide gerrymandering and suppression of minority votes to which the Obama administration never responded.

—  Hyperpartisanship and the hyperpolarization of the country took hold of all politics during the Obama years.

—  That period also saw a rise in overt white supremacy and a widening of racial divisions across the country.

—  A dramatic worsening of police brutality and police killings is also a product of the Obama years.

—  And, of course, no meaningful steps were taken by the Obama administration to combat climate change which is now verging on catastrophe.

Barack Obama was a cool guy who enjoyed being president, but who hated politics.  At the end of Obama’s second term, Democrats held fewer elected offices nationwide than at any time since the 1920s.  During his two terms, there was no party building, no organizing, no grassroots work to register voters and build party infrastructure.  The normal of the Obama years was the weakening of the Democratic Party to the point where in 2016 it couldn’t mount a successful campaign to defeat Donald Trump.

If Joe Biden is going to take us back to those days of normal, there is no reason to believe the Democratic Party will be able to defeat Donald Trump again in 2024.