My theory of the problem with America is that we are paying so much attention to politics that it’s fried our brains. I see it on both sides, people are absolutely hyperventilating about what Trump is doing or not doing, what the democrats are or are not doing about whatever Trump is or is not doing. Liberal women taking to TikTok to tell other liberal women to buy “cute winter boots” (read: firearms to hold threateningly near ICE agents). Honestly, I think most of this will eventually blow over and mean nothing. We aren’t going to take Greenland or Panama. I doubt we’ll do anything substantial in Gaza. The purge of government employees won’t change anything substantially, and might make things more efficient, maybe (I don’t think it will, it will mostly make a giant mess). I don’t think this is anything the liberal side fears. Trump isn’t ending democracy, and he likes Jews too much to be Hitler. It’s actually somewhat amusing that people believe in the End of Our Democracy— by a guy who has never bothered to pay attention in briefings. As far as the Covid response, I don’t see how Biden did all that well. At best, his success was being elected after the virus had burned through the population. By the time Biden was in position to do anything in January of 2021, the virus had been around for five years, most sane people were vaccinated, and often had a couple of boosters, and the virus had weakened enough to be a glorified flu bug.
By "Pandemic recovery" I mean "economic recovery from the pandemic" which, yes, was far more Congress than Biden. Nonetheless, presidential elections are referendums on the past four years and the past four years were much better for Americans than pretty much any other nation. The problem with America is the Republicans have grown comfortable with their permanent minority status and have consolidated their platform around demagoguery and the lunatic fringe. When one party is 100% wedge issues 100% of the time, you're effectively at one-party government vs the chaos agents.
Even that, from my understanding comes from the same place. Once you stop forcing the economy to slow down by lockdowns and vaccination mandates, just saying “you can go back to working and buying stuff in stores now” is going to end tge artificially created recession. Wages didn’t go up because the government did something, it was an enticement to get people back to working in restaurants and warehouses and retail stores because people who were doing those jobs found other work.
"From my understanding" doing a lot of work there. The United States pumped more cash into the economy than any other, which led to more employment, more investment and a faster recovery. It also led to greater initial inflation, but that inflation also cooled faster than any other country. Economic statistics are notoriously obscure and net price changes are a function of inflation over time, rather than a rate of inflation, so there's hay to be made about the truly uneven nature of the pandemic recovery. But you can't wave your hands and say "from my understanding" and pretend that global pandemic recovery had nothing to do with economic policy.