Biden's first 100 days: looking good but not great
High marks for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, less success in uniting the nation and overcoming political divisions, and a historically low approval rating.
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LET'S face it: If you had told a Republican or a Democrat in late 2019 that former vice-president Joe Biden would become the next US president, the response would have been a big laugh in your face; at the minimum, a high level of scepticism.
Indeed, at that time, the then-77-year-old Candidate Biden - a politician who has never been known for exciting his audiences - was trailing in the Democratic presidential primaries while President Donald Trump was celebrating a booming American economy, with most pollsters predicting that he had a better than 50 per cent chance of getting re-elected.
Historians would probably spend a lot of time trying to figure out what exactly led to Candidate Biden's reversal of political fortunes in the following months: the spread of a murderous pandemic and President Trump's failed response to it? The ensuing economic downturn? The social unrest last summer? Black Democratic voters falling behind the former vice-president? Public exhaustion, including among Republican voters, with President Trump's presence in Washington? All of the above?
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