Joe Biden's Big Reversal on the Death Penalty

Over the past four years, Joe Biden’s position on the death penalty has gone from Abolition to Wait to Sometimes to Go for It to Abolition, Actually, Except for a Few. The death penalty is not the hot-button political issue it was during the 1980s and ’90s, so Biden’s evolution (or, depending on your perspective, devolution) had gone largely unnoticed – until his stunning endgame commutation of the death sentences of 37 of the 40 total federal death-row inmates. Now, with one bold and controversial move, Biden has mostly fulfilled a campaign promise that it seemed he’d all but abandoned.