In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.
“Nobody elected him to be [President Franklin Delano Roosevelt], they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos,” then-Rep. Abigail Spanberger harshly said of then-President Joe Biden in 2021, after her Democratic Party lost the governorship of Virginia. Her point was that Biden had followed a radical agenda that betrayed how he had run and how the media had presented him: as a moderate.
Biden’s sudden radicalism in his first year in office, she seemed to be saying, lost her party the election.