Biden saved Nevada. Nevada’s unlikely to return the favor.

"On my watch instead of infrastructure week, America is having an infrastructure decade. Trump just talks the talk, we walk the walk," Biden said during remarks in Southern Nevada Friday. (Photo: Jeniffer Solis/Nevada Current)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

How good a president has Joe Biden been for Nevada?

So good that even the highest ranking elected Republican in the state, Gov. Joe Lombardo, has repeatedly tied himself to Biden’s achievements.

In a couple of instances – applauding a $2 billion federal investment in a lithium battery plant or more than $6 billion in federal grants and financing assistance for the high speed train between Las Vegas and California – Lombardo has acknowledged the role of Biden administration policies in those projects and posed in front of cameras with members of Biden’s cabinet.

But more commonly, Lombardo has embraced Biden administration achievements by pretending he, not Biden, deserves credit for them.

On multiple occasions, the Lombardo aligned Better Nevada PAC has touted consecutive months of Nevada job growth “under Gov. Joe Lombardo’s leadership.”

The Lombardo PAC never acknowledges that all those months of job growth, and an additional twice as many more, occurred under Biden’s leadership.

A couple months ago Lombardo’s office issued a statement saying the governor was “pleased to announce” hundreds of millions of dollars in rural broadband infrastructure investment in Nevada.

The statement from Lombardo’s office neglected to mention that nearly every dime of that money was made available by the federal bipartisan infrastructure bill and the American Rescue Plan Act, the first shepherded into law by the Biden administration with scant congressional Republican support, and the latter with none at all.

And Lombardo is fond of boasting about signing a “historic” education budget during the 2023 legislative session that provides $12 billion in education spending over two years.

What made that possible? After all, merely two years earlier the state was facing severe budget cuts as a result of pandemic-related economic upheaval.

Yet when Lombardo was sworn in as governor in January 2023, no new Nevada governor had ever inherited such a rosy budget scenario.

The plumpy budget was of course all thanks to Biden administration legislation, most notably the American Rescue Plan Act , which provided billions to prop up Covid-hammered state and local governments.

Biden’s recovery legislation was also orders of magnitude larger and far more smartly targeted than the recovery program following the Great Recession (from which Nevada never fully recovered; unlike Biden, Obama did not save Nevada).

ARPA created an economic recovery from the pandemic that was quicker and more ferocious than anyone had thought possible. No state benefited more from that recovery than Nevada, because no state’s economy was hit harder by the pandemic and needed assistance more.

Biden’s  infrastructure bill and the (inadequately named) Inflation Reduction Act will continue contributing to economic growth and a more evenly shared prosperity for decades to come. The IRA is also by far the most serious legislation in history to confront the climate crisis and develop a clean energy economy – no small consideration for a state with two of the nation’s fastest-warming cities.

So what?

Polling suggests a daunting number of voters – and potential voters – in Nevada don’t care about any of that.

Biden hasn’t led Trump in a credible Nevada poll since October .

This week the nation’s preeminent nonpartisan campaign analysis organization moved the presidential race in Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia from “toss-up” to “lean Republican.”

Trying to fend off growing calls for Biden to step aside and let Democrats run someone else against Trump, the Biden campaign Thursday emailed a memo to supporters declaring Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania their “Blue Wall” and the key to victory.

“But we also believe the sunbelt states are not out of reach,” the memo added. Biden is scheduled to campaign in Las Vegas next week, but the memo authored by his campaign chair sounds as if the campaign doesn’t view his chances of beating Trump in Nevada much more favorably than the polls do.

A relatively small number of voters in Nevada and other battleground states are not committed to voting for/against either Trump or Biden. From the start of the 2024 election cycle, they have expressed mostly disgust for a Biden-Trump rematch.

They are also the voters who will decide the presidency.

For months the Biden campaign’s theory has been that once those voters start paying attention, a sufficient number of them will vote, if not for Biden, then against Trump.

In earlier times, given Trump the felon’s myriad profound character flaws, it would be a sound theory. But in earlier times, a freak show like Trump as a major party presidential nominee in itself would have been unthinkable.

Biden’s atrocious performance in the debate, followed by additional less than stellar performances, offer little hope of catalyzing voters who aren’t Trump fans but have grown numbed enough to Trump’s brand of wanton unfitness to consider voting for Trump anyway.

Biden demonstrated in his press conference Thursday that he obviously has a more informed grasp of trenchant policy issues than Trump .

What’s less obvious is how much any of those voters care about that.

Biden has acted like he’s the only Democrat who can beat Trump. Long before the debate fiasco, it was looking like he’s the only Democrat who can’t.

Biden has also portrayed the prospect of a second Trump presidency as an existential threat to democracy, freedom, the rule of law, and national security.

He’s right. He should act accordingly, and step aside.

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