Josh Shapiro is running for President. Look, that’s no secret, and it is literally why Kamala Harris came out firing at him in her book. It’s also why he’s now releasing a book, and firing back. This is going to be a very different process for Shapiro though than anything he’s faced before- because people are going to say bad things about him now. Basically after he won his first State House race, he has been the darling of the Democratic left, the “rising star” that ran for Montgomery County Commissioner and Attorney General, and then the unchallenged candidate for Governor in 2022. In 2024, he took his first arrows from opponents when he was mentioned for Vice-President, and well, we now know how he handled it. According to him, he removed himself from consideration. The heat was too much.

Not everyone is Joe Biden. A guy who took the heat, was chosen as VP, and then won twice in the role, before being elected President. Ultimately, Biden finally took a permanent political fall in 2024, but he is definitely one of the most significant political figures of the 21st century, so far (I’d argue third or fourth, but still significant). He will probably be remembered as one of the two or three most impactful governing leaders of this time period. From his work passing the COPS Bill and larger 1994 Crime Bill and the legislation authorizing the use of force in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990’s, to his re-write of bankruptcy law (probably the thing I disliked most on his record), to his decades of playing pivotal roles in the confirmations of nearly every Supreme Court Justice, to his roles in the Obama Administration passing his 2009 recovery act, helping administer TARP, and pushing through the votes on Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, to his own Administration passing the Covid Recovery Act in 2021, passing his landmark infrastructure bill, and passing the Inflation Recovery Act, not to mention his numerous executive orders and appointments to the bench. Joe Biden was probably better at actually governing than anyone in this time period, objectively speaking, with the exception of Bush and Cheney (who screwed up the whole world). One thing he was good at was making the government do the things he wanted. That might have been part of the problem he had politically on several major issues.

Back to Josh Shapiro though and running for President. I mean, he’s doing it unless he somehow loses to his crackpot opponent in 2026, which God willing, he won’t. Josh is carving out his pathway to national contention, which is understandable, and he’s doing it by creating separation between himself of the Biden-Harris Administration. I don’t blame him there. I loved Joe Biden, but he left office deeply unpopular, and Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg are likely to be opponents of his. We have seen other Democrats, namely Gavin Newsom, carve out some separation on actual policy and his political ability to engage the opposition, which you can like or not, but seems like a fair place to carve out your differences when you were a very loyal and supportive Governor for the former President. Josh Shapiro seems to be taking a different route- he’s saying the former President was ineffective, unlike himself. He’s also carving out a retroactive difference with himself and Kamala Harris by saying he told President Biden to drop out earlier, but I’m going to leave that alone because it’s literally impossible to verify how either actually felt on the matter. His argument on effectiveness is fascinating though, he’s citing that absolutely no one in Pennsylvania actually received any of the rural broadband promised in the 2022 Infrastructure Bill. It is, at best, a reach of an argument, and at worst entirely cynical. You see, that bill was passed into law in November of 2021, going into effect in Fiscal Year 2022. It was meant to run from 2022 to 2026. Highway projects were always going to be the fastest (more on this in a minute). Broadband and mass transit projects were going to take several years to happen. They often require studies and approval processes meant to make sure that the most worthy projects got through. For instance, AMTRAK service from New York City into Northeast Pennsylvania was one of the first projects that got pushed through, and it won’t be finished for years. It’s not uncommon for federal government projects that require state partnership to take years, Obamacare was passed in 2010 and didn’t become operational until 2014 for the public. Dodd-Frank was passed early in the Obama Administration and many of the new agencies (such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) weren’t created until 2011 and later. Government moves slow sometimes, so we can avoid waste and fraud. There’s also that other matter of Donald Trump taking office with two years left in the implementation of the Infrastructure Bill, and immediately freezing some projects and seeking clawbacks. Of course Josh Shapiro knows that’s how the Federal Government works, he’s a smart guy. The Broadband component of the bill that he talks about ran out of money at the end of 2024, but was expected to take longer to actually complete from the start. Now we have a President who doesn’t even want to do a lot of it. That’s a bigger reason why Governor Shapiro’s state hasn’t seen broadband yet than some sort of problem with Joe Biden.

Governor Shapiro wants to show himself as the symbol of impactful governance. He chose to lead off his re-election campaign with an ad about the I-95 bridge collapse and subsequent repair that all got done in a few short weeks. It was incredibly impressive, and he deserves credit for it. But… yeah, he didn’t do that alone. You see, when that bridge collapsed there was this guy, Pete Buttigieg, who was Secretary of Transportation, and that was an interstate highway, and so… yeah, he kind of showed up with big checks. Who did Pete Buttigieg work for? That would be President Joseph R. Biden, the guy who was apparently ineffective and asleep at the wheel. Or at least that’s the line now. Secretary Pete’s money was *the* reason everything could move so fast, and that bridge repair was done in 12 days. Without that money, it really would have taken months to re-open. The Biden-Harris Administration got that done. Now it’s literally being used as a contrast to them.

I find the early jockeying between both Shapiro and Harris to be off-putting. We all know that political campaigns are full of hypocrisy, and I certainly don’t blame the Governor for trying to carve out his own lane. With all of that said, let’s try and be just a little bit honest when we do this? Like maybe 1%? I would never make the argument that the Biden Administration was 100% responsible for getting that bridge back up, let’s be honest, the state is more impactful at spending money, and they were here. But if we’re going to go with the “Biden sucked” argument to prop up quixotic 2028 ambitions for everyone, let’s at least be somewhat in reality.