Because he simply used lists from the Federalist society. I like the lower corporate tax rate and hope any future increases under dems will go nowhere close to 35%, but there’s not much else of use in his tax reform IMO. I think he further complicated the tax code with his “tax simplification” effort. He also has real foreign policy accomplishments, especially in the Middle East. He wants to make like UAE and Bahrain are Arafat, The Sequel, which of course they are not, but they are something to build on. Lastly, he rolled back regulations, which needs a more granular look for people to subjectively judge. People will disagree about that.

Arrayed against those are the endless, daily wedges driven into our society, the strain on the post WWII peace and prosperity machinery from the nationalism Trump leads globally, the 10s of 1000s, or more, of unnecessary Covid deaths purely from his dishonesty and incompetence, and ultimately, a several month coup attempt that amounts to the first ever in our history, culminating in the first terrorist attack on the country ever led by a sitting president of the US.

In the end, the country is massively worse off than it was 4 years ago. Trump left a shambles where he initially found an amazingly robust recovery beyond anyone’s expectations after 2008. Not entirely his fault because of Covid of course, but he literally could not have done any worse with that, especially now that we see the trademark stamp of Trumpian incompetence on the vaccine rollout. The effects of Covid make this reality very, very tangible, whereas absent Covid, the economy may still be going strong (although yield curves inverted months earlier in what generally amounts to a recession predictor), and all the negatives would be more subtle, like a foundation of a large building developing unseen cracks that will soon lead to its collapse.

At least now, we know how frail our democracy is right now, and can address it. Consensus seems to be Joe is off to a good start.