The one-year anniversary of Joe Biden’s inauguration as president of the United States has produced much commentary about the successes and failures of Biden’s first year in the White House.

Most of the evaluations have been unflattering to President Biden.

He has neither sought nor won much cooperation from the Republicans in Congress, although he campaigned with a promise to be bipartisan.

The persistent pandemic of COVID-19, particularly the delta and omicron variants, continue to disrupt commerce, education and social life throughout the nation.

The military withdrawal from Afghanistan, which U.S. soldiers fought and died to liberate for 20 years, was much too hasty and incompetently handled.

Shortages of consumer goods, caused by worker absences due to COVID-19, have led to inflation in the national economy. Prices for goods and services that Americans buy every day are rising rapidly.

Most mysterious of all, President Biden has failed to be a moderate and middle-of-the-road president. He has conspicuously backed far left and highly progressive legislative proposals, such as the $3 trillion “social infrastructure” bill that would fight climate change and finance many welfare and social services programs popular with liberal Democrats.

Add to that a Biden-backed voting rights bill that would, in essence, shift control of voting in the United States from the states to the national government – again serving the interests of progressive liberals rather than moderates.

Why is President Biden doing this? Here is one explanation.

Two years from right now will be the 2024 Democratic presidential primaries and caucuses. Similar to most incumbent first-term presidents, no matter what their age, Joe Biden likely will want to run for reelection as the nation’s chief executive in 2024.

It is a big deal being president of the United States, particularly with the two-term limit (presidents can only serve two four-year terms). There is a good chance that Joe Biden will want to run for and win that second four-year term that is allowed to him.

That means that the first electorates Joe Biden will face in his quest to stay in the White House will be in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Under Democratic Party rules, enacted by the Democratic National Committee, those are the four states that will vote first in the 2024 presidential primaries and caucuses.

Similar to almost all Democratic primary elections these days, the voters in the first three of those four early caucuses/primaries states will be much more liberal than voters in the nation as a whole. Two years from now, Joe Biden will mainly be fearful of being faced in those first three caucuses and primaries with a very liberal opponent rather than a moderate or conservative one.

So the thinking goes that President Biden is working hard at establishing solid liberal and progressive issue positions that will protect him, in the first three caucuses and primaries, from being ambushed from the left.

This also explains the hasty and mismanaged retreat of the U.S. military from Afghanistan under Biden’s rule.

Ever since 1972, when U.S. Sen. George McGovern won the Democratic nomination on a “Get out of Vietnam” platform, there has been an outspoken and politically active pacifist wing in the national Democratic Party. By getting all the troops out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible, Biden eliminated the “war issue” from his 2024 reelection campaign and avoided any chance in the caucuses and primaries of being called a “warmonger.”

The public is quick to forget the presidential primaries and caucuses of the past, but incumbent presidents who want to be re-nominated and reelected know to remember them well.

In 2020 Joe Biden lost the Iowa caucuses to liberals Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders. In the New Hampshire primary in 2020, Biden came in fifth, way behind Sanders, Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren. In the Nevada caucuses in 2020, Biden was defeated almost 2-to-1 by Bernie Sanders, a candidate so liberal he identified himself as a socialist.

It was not until the fourth election, the South Carolina primary, that Biden finally won decisively and began piling up the delegate votes needed to gain the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Many observers believe it was very fortunate for Biden to win the nomination after losing the first three primaries/caucuses to mainly liberal opponents by large margins.

It is my argument that President Biden does not want to repeat in 2024 what happened in 2020 – losing three of the first four presidential caucuses and primaries. To that end, he has positioned his presidency on the liberal left. He will keep it there until two years from now – February 2024 – when the next round of Democratic Party presidential caucuses and primaries begin.

Bob Loevy is a retired professor of political science at Colorado College. He has written extensively on the presidential nominating process.