Members of the Democratic and Republican parties had a rare moment of bipartisan agreement on Sunday evening. Many came together to denounce the decision by Joe Biden to pardon his son, Hunter Biden, for crimes stretching back a decade. Colorado Governor Jared Polis wrote that, “when you become President, your role is Pater familias of the nation. Hunter brought the legal trouble he faced on himself, and one can sympathize with his struggles while also acknowledging that no one is above the law, not a President and not a President’s son.” Donald Trump and personalities at Fox News made similar comments, with Trump hinting that the decision would give him the political capital to pardon January 6 rioters.
Some pundits agreed with these politicians. Nate Silver said that it was an unconscionably selfish act that “kicked salt in the wound” of his defeated party. Jonathan Chait derided the move as creating a “double standard” between Biden’s family members and the rest of the country. There were a raft of other complaints as well, many from thinkers who had been critical of Biden in the past. It mostly played out as a continuation of the Biden age wars that ravaged the Democratic Party from 2023 until Biden dropped out in July of this year.
The decision by Joe Biden to pardon his son was not good or defensible by any means. But the idea that it will doom Democrats to defeat in 2026 or 2028, as some extreme critics have suggested, is laughable at best.
The pardon was a mistake
There are two key reasons why Biden’s pardon of his son was a mistake. The first, and most obvious, is the effort that Biden has made over the past five years to argue that no American is above the law. He has hammered the Trump administration constantly for criminal behavior and disrespecting the nation’s norms and values. As Matt Ford wrote in The New Republic, “The president’s long-standing refusal to intervene on his son’s behalf was a powerful testament to his civic virtue and his commitment to the rule of law..” Biden’s pardon undercuts that rhetoric substantially. While he makes valid points about the vindictiveness of the upcoming Trump administration, he did not pardon James Comey, Robert Mueller, or any of the other potential investigators that Trump has pledged to come after. He took this extraordinary move, as of this writing, only for his son.
Second, the claim of hypocrisy has actual power among voters. It is a major reason why conservatives turned against George H.W. Bush in 1992. The Trump movement has convinced many liberals that politicians can lie with impunity and get away with it in every instance. But it is clear that Trump can do this, while the Mark Robinsons of the world cannot. Joe Biden lied for months and then reversed his position the moment it could not hurt him or his party politically. This sort of behavior is exactly the kind of self-dealing that so many people say they hate in politics and wish Trump could excise.
Democrats aren’t doomed
Despite these arguments, the idea that Democrats are doomed because of an action Joe Biden took in December of 2024 is patently absurd. The Hunter Biden pardon is a discrete event, one that will not be repeated and thrown in the face of voters again and again for the next several years. Most pardons end up forgotten in this way; with the exception of Richard Nixon’s pardon in 1974, almost every other has played a negligible role in a president’s legacy. Much of the political world has already started to move on, distracted by Trump’s cabinet choices and events in global politics. Two years of these events will have pushed the Hunter Biden pardon far to the back pages for the occasional anniversary op-ed.
Furthermore, the first election that Democrats will face will certainly be a referendum on Donald Trump. Midterm elections are almost always devastating for the president in power. The phenomenon is even more pronounced in a president’s second term, when the “six year itch” is almost unavoidable. Democrats will have plenty of other scandals and overreaches by Trump to distract Americans from any lingering concerns over the Hunter Biden pardon.
Democrats do not need to endlessly argue and attack Joe Biden for the pardoning of his son. It was wrong, but it was not illegal and did not change the country on its own. The pardon may, however, be just what the party needs to fully move on from aspects of the Biden administration it would like to leave in the past. In that way, it may do some good for more than just the Biden family.
