Analysis of: ‘The invisible man’: Joe Biden has disappeared in almost every way – except in Trump’s daily commentary
The Guardian | January 24, 2026
TL;DR
Biden's post-presidency marginalization reveals how bourgeois democracy treats leaders as disposable once they fail to deliver victories for capital. The real story isn't Biden's decline—it's how both parties serve the same class interests while performing opposition.
The Guardian's portrait of Joe Biden's vanishing from public life offers more than political gossip—it reveals the fundamental disposability of individual politicians within the capitalist state apparatus. Biden, once 'the most powerful man on the planet,' now struggles to raise funds for his presidential library while Democratic donors feel 'fatigued and let down.' This rapid abandonment exposes how the capitalist class views politicians as instruments rather than leaders: useful when delivering legislative victories, discarded when they fail to prevent outcomes unfavorable to capital's interests. The article's framing naturalizes this disposability while obscuring the continuities between administrations. While cataloging Trump's reversals of Biden policies—on climate, immigration, and federal workforce—it presents these as fundamental ruptures rather than variations within the same mode of capitalist governance. Biden's 'biggest climate spending bill in history' still operated within market frameworks, subsidizing green capitalism rather than challenging fossil fuel ownership. Trump's 'assault on clean-energy initiatives' serves different fractions of capital but doesn't represent a break with capitalist logic itself. Most revealing is how both parties maintain the spectacle of opposition while serving overlapping class interests. Trump's constant invocation of 'Crooked Joe' and 'Sleepy Joe' functions ideologically to sustain the illusion of meaningful political difference. Meanwhile, Biden's $10 million memoir deal demonstrates how former servants of capital are rewarded upon exit—a material interest that shapes their behavior while in office. The working class remains absent from this narrative entirely, appearing only as an abstraction ('the American people') whose survey responses matter solely as political ammunition.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Professional political class (Biden, Trump, party officials), Major Democratic donors and capitalist fundraising networks, Media commentators and political consultants (Luntz, Whipple, Galston), Career federal employees and bureaucratic state apparatus, Think tank intellectuals (Brookings Institution)
Beneficiaries: Publishing industry (Hachette's $10M memoir deal), Fossil fuel capital under Trump's energy policies, Political consulting class who profit from perpetual campaign cycles, Think tanks funded by capital to produce acceptable policy discourse
Harmed Parties: Working class (entirely absent from article's framing), Federal workers dismissed through loyalty tests, Immigrant workers facing 'hardened' policies under both administrations, Communities dependent on climate adaptation now defunded
The article depicts power struggles entirely within the bourgeois political class—between parties, between presidents, between donors and politicians. The working class appears only as passive survey respondents. Democratic donors exercise real power by withholding library funding, demonstrating how capital disciplines politicians who fail to deliver. Trump's obsessive references to Biden serve to maintain partisan polarization that obscures shared class interests between party elites.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Donor class fatigue and capital's evaluation of political investments, $10M memoir advance revealing post-office profit structures, Presidential library funding as measure of ruling class approval, Tariffs and 'economic coercion' in international capital competition, AI sector's energy demands shaping fossil fuel policy
The article reveals the production of political legitimacy as an industry unto itself—consultants, pollsters, think tanks, and media figures all labor to interpret and manufacture political meaning. Biden's memoir writing represents intellectual labor commodified at elite rates, while thousands of dismissed federal workers face proletarianization. The 'presidential walk of fame' exemplifies how symbolic production serves ideological functions, with the autopen controversy manufacturing consent for attacks on previous administration's legitimacy.
Resources at Stake: Control over federal regulatory apparatus, Climate infrastructure spending and green energy subsidies, International economic relations and tariff revenues, Cultural capital of presidential 'legacy', Donor networks and fundraising infrastructure
Historical Context
Precedents: Carter's marginalization by Democratic establishment post-1980, Cyclical nature of US political 'realignments' serving capital recomposition, Historical pattern of incoming administrations investigating predecessors, Post-Watergate norms of presidential transition now eroding
This represents late-stage neoliberal political fragmentation, where the bipartisan consensus that governed from Reagan through Obama has fractured—not because class interests diverge, but because different capitalist fractions (tech, fossil fuel, finance) compete for state capture. The intensity of Trump's attacks on Biden reflects not genuine opposition but the need to maintain spectacle of difference as actual policy options narrow. The 'investigation' of Biden's autopen usage mirrors McCarthyite witch-hunts—manufacturing legitimacy crises to justify authoritarian consolidation.
Contradictions
Primary: The contradiction between bourgeois democracy's claim to represent popular will and its actual function serving capital: Biden was abandoned not because workers rejected him but because donors did, yet the narrative frames this in democratic terms ('the American people').
Secondary: Trump must keep Biden relevant to maintain opposition narrative while claiming total victory, Democratic donors punish Biden for losing to Trump while their class interests are largely preserved under Trump, Biden's 'ambitious legislative agenda' served capital accumulation yet is framed as progressive achievement, The 'invisible man' is constantly invoked, making him hyper-visible through proclaimed absence
These contradictions cannot resolve within bourgeois political frameworks. The intensifying spectacle of partisan warfare—investigations, portrait mockery, perpetual campaign rhetoric—serves to absorb political energy that might otherwise challenge the system itself. As material conditions worsen under either administration, the gap between political theater and lived experience may eventually rupture the legitimacy of electoral politics entirely, creating openings for either working-class organization or authoritarian consolidation.
Global Interconnections
Biden's marginalization connects to global patterns of capitalist democracies struggling to maintain legitimacy amid declining living standards. Trump's international posture—'power, strength and self-interest' replacing multilateral frameworks—reflects US imperialism's transition from hegemony through consent to hegemony through coercion as economic dominance wanes. The straining of NATO relations and tariff threats represent inter-imperialist competition intensifying as the unipolar moment ends. The article's mention of 'European leaders asking [Biden] to get engaged' reveals how international capital seeks any lever against Trump's unpredictability—not from progressive motives but because stable imperialism serves European capital's interests better than chaotic nationalism. Meanwhile, the focus on domestic political theater obscures ongoing exploitation of the Global South, which continues regardless of which party holds power.
Conclusion
Biden's disappearance from public life demonstrates what Marxists have long argued: individual politicians are functionaries of capital, discarded when no longer useful. For working-class observers, the lesson is not to invest hope in bourgeois political figures but to build independent class organization. The real political struggle occurs not between Biden and Trump—whose administrations both serve capital with tactical variations—but between the working class and the capitalist system both parties uphold. As contradictions intensify and legitimacy crises deepen, spaces may open for genuine alternatives, but only if workers recognize that the electoral spectacle exists precisely to prevent such recognition.
Suggested Reading
- The State and Revolution by V.I. Lenin (1917) Lenin's analysis of the capitalist state as an instrument of class rule directly illuminates how Biden and Trump, despite rhetorical opposition, both operate within and for the same state apparatus serving capital.
- Prison Notebooks (Selections) by Antonio Gramsci (1935) Gramsci's concepts of hegemony and the role of intellectuals explain how think tanks, pollsters, and media figures cited in this article manufacture consent and legitimate bourgeois rule through cultural production.
- Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti (1997) Parenti's analysis of how liberal democracies and fascism both serve capital while appearing opposed helps decode the Trump-Biden spectacle as variations within, not challenges to, capitalist governance.