8 ways that history will judge Joe Biden in Virginia (2024)

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Joe Biden will be a one-term president, more or less by his own volition.

This feels like the plot twist we’ve been waiting for — if the year 2024 were written by George R.R. Martin of “Game of Thrones” fame.

Politically, this makes sense at the moment: Biden has been trailing in one key swing state after another. Polls — including ones in Virginia — have shown his support collapsing among independent voters. The concerns about Biden have come on two fronts — his policies and his age — and it’s been difficult for him to defend his policies when many in his own party have been questioning whether he’s really up for the job at age 81. The wounds those critics have inflicted were probably mortal, so Biden’s decision to stand down simply reflects that political reality. If Vice President Kamala Harris (assuming she’s the new nominee) goes on to lose, we can debate for generations whether this was the right move. If she wins, history will cite this as a pivotal moment in the presidential race, akin to a coach replacing the starting quarterback who wasn’t getting the job done.

While others look ahead to the coming days, weeks and months, let’s use our time here today to look further ahead: How will history regard Biden’s presidency? More specifically, given our audience, what will his legacy be in Virginia?

For that, we must begin by acknowledging several things:

It takes about two decades to get a good fix on a president’s place in history and, even then, rankings are always changing. Harry Truman left office with his administration unpopular and many of his underlings tainted by scandal. Today, those scandals are forgotten and instead we remember his legacy in saving post-war Western Europe through the Marshall Plan. By contrast, John Kennedy died a martyr, but over time we’ve seen historians regard him less kindly. The polls today judge Biden harshly — the recent Virginia Commonwealth University poll showed 58% in Virginia disapproved of his performance, the Roanoke College poll in May put the figure at 61%. All this in a state he won four years ago. We don’t know what the passage of time will do, but history suggests that today’s inflation will be forgotten and we’ll remember Biden for more long-term policies he set in motion. One thing that will weigh heavily on those assessments is whether Donald Trump wins in November. If he does, and his administration results in chaos, Biden will look better — a Horatius-at-the-bridge sort of president. If Trump wins and his second term proves more popular than his first, then Biden’s long-term standing will suffer.

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Another thing we must consider is that all the presidents we regard as great presidents have been multiterm chief executives. In a statement Sunday, Susan Swecker, the chair of the Virginia Democratic Party, declared that “President Joe Biden has been one of the most transformative and effective presidents in history.” History might well come to agree with that, but, if so, he will be one of the few one-term presidents in that category. Perhaps our most important one-term president was James Polk. He came into office with four goals: reestablish an independent treasury system, reduce tariffs, acquire some or all of the Pacific Northwest and acquire California. He accomplished all four, literally changing the shape of the nation.

Let’s see what Biden has done that might have an impact two decades from now. For this, my frame of reference is on policies that may have long-term impacts, not ones that might be quickly reversed by a subsequent administration.

1. Tech hubs

If we’re looking at the economy in historical terms, then what we’ve seen over the past decades has been the demise of the industrial age and the rise of the information age. However, much of that technology industry has been concentrated in a relative handful of tech capitals — Silicon Valley, Seattle and Boston, among them. We’ve also seen that the information age has severed the age-old economic links between cities and the countryside. In the industrial age, if Detroit prospered by making and selling cars, so did the foundries in Gary, Indiana, that made the steel — and so did the coal mines of Appalachia that produced the coal necessary to make that steel. We all rose and fell together. In the information age, those links are gone. Silicon Valley doesn’t depend on algorithm factories in Southwest or Southside Virginia. Parts of the country have prospered beyond their wildest imagination but other parts have been left behind.

Both parties have looked at ways to restore manufacturing, although Trump has done the far better job at talking about that. Under Biden, Democrats tried something different. The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 (of which Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, was a key author) set in motion the designation of 31 “technology hubs” around the country. The goal is to “spread the digital wealth” by accelerating the growth of technology centers beyond those handful of usual suspects. One of those 31 communities that is in line for millions upon millions of dollars is the Richmond-Petersburg area, which qualified for its work in advanced pharmaceuticals. A bid by the New River Valley and Danville qualified for a runner-up award to accelerate growth in the advanced manufacturing and materials industries.

It’s far too early to say whether this attempt to promote the growth of additional tech hubs around the country will be successful. This is one of those things that will take decades to know. If, years from now, some of these places grow into globally recognized tech hubs, we’ll have the Biden administration to thank. If they don’t, then this will just be regarded as another failed government attempt to change the trajectory of the economy.

That CHIPS Act locks in a lot of funding, but one question will be whether future administrations, be they Democratic or Republican, follow up on this initiative. Many presidents don’t like to acknowledge that their predecessors, especially those of a different party, had good ideas, but here’s one thing that even a future President Trump 2.0 might want to keep in mind: Eleven of those 31 hubs are in states he carried four years ago and four others are in states he could realistically carry. (For more on these tech hubs, see the column I wrote when the announcement was made.)

2. Tax-breaks for “energy communities”

Republicans universally opposed the bill that Democrats coyly named the Inflation Reduction Act, but which was, in reality, mostly a climate-related bill. Interestingly, one of the provisions of that act benefits localities that are overwhelmingly Republican — places that the bill defines as “energy communities.” Democrats are right that the transition from fossil fuels to renewables is a job creator — but Republicans are also right that it’s a job killer. The problem is that the jobs being created for renewables typically aren’t in the same places that the old jobs were. More to the point: We’re seeing the demise of coal jobs in Appalachia while the green energy jobs are being created somewhere else.

The Inflation Reduction Act contains a provision that attempts to change that. It offers tax breaks for clean energy companies that locate in these “energy communities.” This is a grand federal experiment to make Appalachia, once an energy capital for coal, into an energy capital for other sorts of energy. Will it work? We don’t know yet. Enterprise zones — and that’s essentially what we’re talking about here — have had a mixed record over the years. We’re finding that taxes (or tax breaks) may not matter as much as they once did. Even the recent CNBC ratings of top states for business (where Virginia ranked first) devalued the weight it’s given to taxes. If, someday, we do see a land rush of clean energy companies to Appalachia, then Biden should get the credit. If not, well, see what I said about tech hubs above. (A previous column of mine examined where those tax-credit zones in Virginia are; not all are in coal country.)

3. The Mountain Valley Pipeline

The natural gas pipeline’s future was in doubt until there was a deal struck to secure the vote of Sen. Joe Manchin, then D-West Virginia, but now I-West Virginia, for the Inflation Reduction Act. The upshot of that deal: Congress would pass legislation that cleared away legal obstacles to the pipeline. The Biden administration supported this and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm urged regulators to approve the line, which is now open and transporting natural gas from West Virginia to Chatham. Different people judge the pipeline in different ways. For those who count the economic benefits, thank Biden. For those who count the environmental damage, blame Biden. He didn’t start the pipeline, but he definitely helped finish it. Irony abounds: Biden’s supporters won’t like this and his opponents won’t be inclined to credit him.

4. The push for electric vehicles

The electric vehicle market grew up under Trump — from 195,680 sales in first year in office to 307,509 his final year — but it has jumped exponentially under Biden, to more than 1.2 million last year. Some of that reflects market forces, but it’s undeniable that the Biden administration has devoted a lot of energy into pushing electric vehicles. Some on the right may think that foolish, but here’s something less debatable: We’ve seen the rise of an EV-related “battery belt” in much of the Southeast. The state with the biggest share of the EV-related jobs that have been created is Georgia, with 38,700 jobs, followed by Tennessee with 20,200 and South Carolina with 18,500. This is full of ironies: The states benefiting mostly from the transition to electric vehicles are conservative ones, not liberal ones. Biden will get no political credit in those states for EV-related manufacturing growth. On the contrary, Democrats may get blamed in the traditional auto-making state of Michigan.

However, what’s important here is that Biden’s push for electric vehicles has helped reshape the economic landscape of the Southeast. Virginia has not been a big state for EV-related manufacturing growth although there has been some, notably in the New River Valley where the Volvo plant in Pulaski County started producing electric trucks in 2021. Just this month it was announced that the Pulaski plant is one of three that will share $208 million to upgrade the facilities where it produces electric trucks. Here we see how all these things are connected: That money came from the Inflation Reduction Act. We’re seeing other electric-vehicle companies spring up in the New River Valley and could have seen more — Gov. Glenn Youngkin nixed a state bid for a Ford EV plant that was eyeing Pittsylvania County out of concern about its ties to a Chinese battery maker. Biden didn’t create the EV hub in the New River Valley, but his policies have no doubt helped it grow. Yet more irony: This growth hub is creating the kind of manufacturing jobs that Trump says he wants to see — and they’re being created in a part of the state that votes strongly Republican.

5. People are now moving into rural areas

We’ve seen demographic patterns switch after the pandemic: We’re now seeing people moving out of many urban areas and into rural ones. In the latest population estimates from the Weldon Cooper Center at the University of Virginia, most rural counties in Virginia now see more people moving in than moving out. Let me caution: Biden may have nothing to do with this. This may simply be a pandemic-induced trend. However, to the extent that wider availability of broadband (something both parties have pushed) make this possible, Biden deserves a smidge of credit. It’s also possible he deserves some blame, as well: The inflation we’ve seen under his watch has driven up housing prices, and made it more expensive to live in more urban areas. We’ve only got a few years of data to go on now, so it’s possible this trend may pass. We’ll need more years of data to fully evaluate this. When we do, though, we’ll want to see what, if any, role Biden’s policies had on domestic migration. If history concludes that Biden’s policies were responsible for inflation driving up housing prices, then we’ll be left with the ironic assessment that Biden indirectly was responsible for economic growth in conservative-voting rural areas.

6. Thousands of Afghan refugees have resettled in Virginia

In the aftermath of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 — Biden ordered a hasty U.S. withdrawal as Taliban forces approached Kabul — some 10,300 refugees were processed through what was then Fort Pickett in Nottoway County, and 5,217 of them were resettled in the state. Most of those went to Northern Virginia, which now has the second-largest Afghan community in the country behind only California. It’s now estimated that the Afghan community in Northern Virginia exceeds 23,000 people. Even in the Roanoke Valley, which took in 135 Afghans after the evacuation, we’re seeing visible signs of this migration: For a time, there was an Afghan restaurant downtown.

Decades from now, as the sons and daughters of this Afghan diaspora grow up as Virginians, we’ll be able to credit Biden with any of their successes — just as Gerald Ford gets linked to the success of any Vietnamese refugees we took in after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

7. Reclamation of abandoned mine lands

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021, which Biden signed, designated $11.3 billion to fund the reclamation of abandoned mine lands over the next 15 years. Much like the tech hubs and the enterprise zones for energy communities, this is a long-term play to rejuvenate the economy of coal communities, many of which are now former coal communities. We won’t know the impact of this for decades yet.

8. Broadband and other infrastructure spending

Every so often, you’ll see a news brief such as this one last year: “A $25 million federal grant will bring a ‘fiber-to-the-premises’ network that will deliver high-speed internet to more than 17,000 residents and more than 1,000 businesses in Wise and Lee counties and the city of Norton, federal legislators announced Monday.”

Others have dealt with funding for Interstate 81, or the low-water bridge in Smith Park in Roanoke, or improvements at airports in Roanoke, Lynchburg, Danville, Blacksburg, Abingdon and elsewhere.

All that is money from the infrastructure law. Ironically, it was Trump who came into office proposing a massive infusion of federal funding for infrastructure upgrades, but no bill ever got passed. Under Biden, it did, and, as the name suggests, was passed with support from both parties. As of last year, Virginia had already received $8.4 billion from the act and stands to receive more — for broadband, for roads, for other forms of infrastructure.

For now, this money is so diffused that there’s no real political credit assigned to it. Someday, though, we may look back on all these projects and put them in the same category as those created under the Works Progress Administration of Franklin Roosevelt or the interstate highway system that Dwight Eisenhower authorized. Eisenhower may prove an apt historical comparison to Biden in some ways. When Eisenhower left office, he was regarded by many as an aging caretaker whose younger successor vowed to “get this country moving again.” In time, we’ve come to see how Eisenhower skillfully kept us out of war and set in motion an interstate highway system that’s truly been transformative. It wasn’t until 1990 — nearly 30 years after Eisenhower left office — that the interstate system was named in his honor, so there’s an example of three decades passing before we fully recognized one of Eisenhower’s great legacies.

We all know now what we think of Biden’s performance, good, bad or indifferent. What we don’t know, and have little way of knowing how, is what future generations will think in two or three decades.

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