There aren’t a lot of people out there arguing that Joseph Robinette Biden is a political genius. He’s certainly no FDR, but maybe he’s an LBJ after what I found out about his recent 37 sentence commutations.

See, I was a latecomer to the thinking that Biden was going to do anything new or different than most other presidents. We’ve had a lot of things promised to us, and then had to make do with what little we actually got. The most effective Democratic president of my lifetime, Barack Obama, promised us massive health care reform. While I am eternally grateful for not having to deal with preexisting condition stuff anymore, the fact that he took single payer right off the table at the beginning was disappointing.

It’s been that way with a lot of them. I understand opposition, but sometimes it seems like there’s a lot more that can be done. And we actually saw it during the pandemic, which was jointly shared by Trump and Biden. Remember when the sudden realization hit the government that a single month out of work for America would have permanently crippled the country?

They set aside nearly $200 billion to bulk up unemployment checks, Medicaid, and SNAP. They made employers provide paid family and medical leave. Less than 2 weeks after that, they passed another $2 trillion in aid — for Americans. For the briefest of moments, this country learned how easy it would be for the government to really help us in a time of need, and nobody was negatively impacted. Not a single Trump voter turned down a stimulus check.

The rich stayed rich, and the powerful stayed exactly as powerful as they’d always been.

But it ended under Biden. Even if it was because the CDC reduced recommended isolation times, and even if it was employers ordering people back to the office when we’d already seen that they were just as effective (or more) at home, the perception was of all those good things coming to an end during the Biden administration.

Sure, it was the Republicans who fought hard to end it, but there wasn’t much fight. I thought Joe’s political goose was cooked, and I still think it may be a major contributor to why Kamala Harris lost in 2024.

But watching his lame duck period between the election and the inauguration has been revelatory. If Joe can’t get anything real done, he’s sure as hell not going to make things easy on Trump.

Recently, political consultant Michael Dowd was a guest on MSNBC Reports, and what he told host Richard Lu about the tail end of the Biden presidency made me smile. Sometimes it just takes someone else’s perspective for things to look different for me, and I appreciated it.

Lu had just asked Dowd what Biden might do that would have a “lasting effect” during this last, brief window of time in his presidency. Dowd answered immediately.

“I think he’s what he’s trying to do is trying to corner Donald Trump and sort of box him in so he can… I think the Biden administration and the president is trying to prevent Donald Trump from doing as much damage as he possibly could do.”

That is exactly what we need. The country knows that we’re in for a rocky four years, and has already seen Trump following through on some of the nastier things he campaigned on. Ameliorating some of the pain we’re going to feel isn’t just the best thing Joe can do on his way out the door. It’s the right thing to do.

“[He] could do a lot after becoming president. But I think Joe Biden is trying to box him in on this,” he went on. “And speaking specifically to the [37 death sentence] commutations [to life in prison] — which, of course, Donald Trump doesn’t understand, the difference between a commutation and a pardon. Donald Trump in that tweet said they were pardoned, they weren’t pardoned, they’re still gonna serve– they’re gonna still be in jail on this.”

Oh, the Trump camp has weighed in, of course. Spokesman Steven Cheung, in his usual vitriolic way, told the press, “These are among the worst killers in the world and this abhorrent decision by Joe Biden is a slap in the face to the victims, their families, and their loved ones.”

But Trump can do nothing to change it. He’s absolutely powerless. And Dowd went on to explain more: “I think it comes a lot from the president’s Christianity and outlook on the world… Me personally, as a Christian, I’m opposed to the death penalty.” Yeah, the word “Christianity” comes from the last name of a pretty famous guy who opposed the death penalty Himself.

Biden issued his own statement at the time of the pardons:

Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss. But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice president, and now president, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.

But even more importantly, the 3 (out of 40 federal inmates who were on death row) whose lives he didn’t spare committed crimes consistent with what Democratic principles say should be treated differently — guidelines that Republicans oppose. The GOP has fought long and hard to delegitimize the concept of “hate crimes,” but the three whose sentences Biden did not commute to life in prison were the absolute worst — and there’s nothing Republicans can say about it.

How could they possibly argue that Dylann Roof, the white supremacist kid who killed 9 black worshipers at a church in South Carolina, should have been included (if Joe was going to commute any sentences)? They would look like monsters. Likewise, they can’t say a thing about leaving Robert Bowers on death row, after his antisemitic massacre of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

How on earth could they fault Joe for anything regarding Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon Bomber?

On his way out, Joe made a commanding statement about two very Democratic principles — the death penalty and hate crimes — and there’s nothing Trump can do about it. Those things now become bedrock principles, unless Republicans want to risk looking even more horrible than normal.

Here’s the video of Dowd on MSNBC.

Has Biden been plotting against Donnie the whole time? It looks like it, and it looks fine to me. pic.twitter.com/z7uqp4h0iE

— Drewbear (@infuzi0n) December 27, 2024

I personally can’t wait to see if Joe has anything else in store for Trump before he joins the ex-presidents club.