Reposted from My Substack
When they came into office, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all faced economic recessions. The economy was in a slump, jobs were being lost, and things were headed into a downward spiral. Clinton turned this around and ended with a budget surplus after cutting the Pentagon budget by 12%, and created 22 Million jobs. George W. Bush tried to spur the economy by cutting $1.7 Trillion in taxes which ballooned the deficit and did little to help job growth. Barack Obama came into office in the middle of one of the largest economic crashes in history with the housing crisis and responded with stimulus packages which saved the auto industry and Wall Street but did little to help people who’d lost their homes on Main street, consequently, it took several years to fully recover.
Biden came into office in the middle of 6% unemployment during the spread of one of the worst world-wide pandemics in history. His American Rescue Act put cash and extended unemployment benefits into the pockets of the American people helping them keep their homes and within just 2 years jobs and unemployment had recovered to 3.4% even better than the lowest point reached by Trump, and far faster than had been achieved by Obama.
And yet he receives little credit for this achievement.
Joe Biden takes the blame for the disastrous military pull-out from Afghanistan where Americans and Afghan translators who had worked with our military were left behind to the tender mercies of the Taliban.
Some of that blame is well deserved as there were many occasions where the media questioned the Biden Administration and raised the concern that the Taliban would surge as our troops departed. Biden repeatedly downplayed this possibility.
President Biden last month dismissed the possibility that the Taliban would swarm through Afghanistan, which just weeks later they are in the process of doing.
"So the question now is, where do they go from here?" Biden said during a July 8 press conference. "The jury is still out. But the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.
But it wasn’t unlikely, that was exactly what happened in just 11 days.
Biden grossly miscalculated the rapid deterioration of the Afghan government and army. Some of that is understandable since the Afghan Army had been handling the bulk of the fight against the Taliban for several years at that point. US Troops had only been in a support and training capacity since 2014. Simply removing the training staff shouldn’t have generated such a collapse, but it did.
But the fact is that prior to Biden’s pullout, the Trump administration had already released 5,000 Taliban prisoners as part of their negotiations — although they stubbornly denied doing it.
Former President Donald Trump on Monday blamed the “inept Afghan government” for releasing 5,000 Taliban prisoners last year, even though the Trump administration called for prisoner swaps in an agreement with the Taliban.
In reality, a commitment to release up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners and 1,000 prisoners from the U.S.-backed Afghan government’s side was included as a confidence-building move in a February 2020 peace agreement inked by the Trump administration and the Taliban in Doha.
At the time, Ghani — whose government wasn’t a party to the U.S.-Taliban deal — told reporters he’d made “no commitment” to release Taliban prisoners, arguing prisoner swaps should be part of a wider peace settlement between the Taliban and the Afghan government instead of a precondition, the New York Times and Reuters reported.
Despite this skepticism, Ghani’s government freed thousands of Taliban members, and government officials agreed to release a final set of prisoners in August 2020.
Those prisoners quickly rejoined the Taliban fighting force and as they took city after city from the Afghan government — which the Trump Administration had left completely out of the negotiations — which quickly crumbled leaving the hapless Afghan Army without support. They too, soon collapsed and left the entire country in the hands of the Taliban.
This was all-around a failure. Trump hadn’t been negotiating peace with the Taliban, he effectively negotiated a surrender and the dissolution of the U.S.-supported Afghan government. Their demise was inevitable and Biden should have realized this was the case.
However, he and the U.S. military did put into effect a massive historic airlift effort that brought out tens of thousands of Americans and Afghans.
"We've already evacuated more than 18,000 people since July and approximately 13,000 since our military airlift began Aug. 14," Biden said. "More have been evacuated on private charter flights facilitated by the U.S. government … [including] American citizens and permanent residents, as well as their families. It includes [special immigration visa applicants] and their families, the Afghans who have worked alongside the United States and its coalition forces, served alongside us, went into combat with us and provided invaluable assistance to us, such as translators and interpreters," he added.
The U.S. military is also arranging flights for U.S. allies and its partners and is working closely on operational coordination with NATO, Biden said. Troops also provided overwatch for the French convoy, bringing hundreds of their people from the French Embassy to the airport.
This was doing the best we could do with a bad, horrible situation.
Eventually, approximately 3,000 Americans and 117,000 Afghans were evacuated. There were hundreds of loses due to the bombing at Kabul Airport, and many former translators couldn’t be brought out, although the State Dept and various veterans organizations continued the effort — many of them wouldn’t have needed to be evacuated at this late hour if the Trump administration hadn’t established a refugee ban that had blocked them from leaving Afghanistan for years.
President Trump’s executive order banning refugees and others from entering the United States damages many; but none worse than a small group of Muslims who were willing to sacrifice their lives aiding our troops: language translators in Iraq and Afghanistan.
These people took a grave risk by serving the US military and intelligence forces in their home countries. Rather than plotting against us, they stood next to us, helping us understand local languages and dialects; gathering and interpreting lifesaving intelligence.
Assisting our troops often branded these brave Iraqis and their families unfairly as traitors or American spies, making them prime targets for the same extremist groups we were fighting against.
Facing grave danger in their home nation, they sought a new life in America, seeking only safety and the opportunity to work toward the American dream. In fact, in 2007, our immigration system faced an influx of visa applications from Iraqis who served as translators for the US military in the Iraq War.
Many of the translators who had helped us during the war could have been already out of Afghanistan if Trump had not trapped them there starting in 2017. Since the pullout, thousands of additional Visas have been authorized.
The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, as enacted on December 29, 2022, authorized 4,000 additional Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) for Afghan principal applicants, for a total of 38,500 visas allocated since December 19, 2014. It also extended the program through December 31, 2024. The Department of State’s authority to issue SIVs to Afghan nationals under section 602(b) of the Afghan Allies Protection Act of 2009, as amended (the “Act”), will continue until all visa numbers allocated under the Act are issued.
This wasn’t supposed to be a surrender, it was supposed to be a hand-off of responsibility to the Afghan army and government. That’s why so much equipment was left behind, all of that was intended for use by the Afghan army. Biden should have taken more precautions in case the Afghans collapsed, it’s clear he didn’t expect or anticipate that happening or the Taliban surging. But they did.
This has been the largest black mark on the Biden Administration, however, it was also the last of their major blunders.
There is an argument from the Right, including from Laura Ingraham of Fox News, that Biden wants to “destroy democracy” with a dystopian future but that is patently ridiculous.
"Fox News host Laura Ingraham tried to gin up more fears Wednesday of a far-fetched dystopian future under President Joe Biden’s leadership—suggesting that Donald Trump’s legal woes were part of a sinister plot masterminded by Democrats to impose martial law," the outlet reported. "She suggested Trump’s various criminal charges and even the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to boot him from the state’s ballot were all part of a calculated plan to make Trump’s supporters act out publicly, giving Biden the pretense to institute a 'mass crack down on civil liberties'—which would ultimately clear the way for nationwide mail-in voting during the 2024 presidential election."
According to the report, she goes on to say, “What we are seeing in the courts, at the Department of Justice, and even in State Attorneys General’s offices, and given Democrats’ ‘Trump is Hitler’ rhetoric, is it not logical, even to consider, maybe to assume that some on the left are hoping to spark some type of civil unrest here?”
As I’ve previously written at length, the FBI and DOJ are not being personally directed by Joe Biden or Democrats. Attorney General Merrick Garland has stated he would “resign” immediately if that were the case.
Biden is not the person threatening personal civil liberties. It was Trump’s judicial choices who took that liberty away from women with the Dobbs decision, Trump has promised to continue the Right-Wing jingoistic indoctrination and censorship crackdown against LGBTQ and African American issues in schools by banning books he doesn’t agree with, he’s called his opponents “vermin” threatening to actually use the Military to “crack skulls” and “shoot” his opposition and to jail prosecute and journalists.
He tried to stage a violent coup against the last election. Dozens of his supporters have been committing murderous terrorist attacks against their political enemies, have threatened to “behead” judges like Tanya Chutkan and those who ruled against Trump in Colorado and hundreds more have issued thousands of death threats against election and school boards all over a series of paranoid conspiracy theories that have no merit.
He says immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of our country and honestly he’s celebrating his various indictments and being kicked off the ballot in Colorado because it only furthers his “victimhood” narrative all the more. The more the media and the courts attack him, the better he does with his base and in the polls. [Which begs the question “If continuing to attack him only helps him, what’s the political gain of continuing to do it?]
But far from being shamed into backing down, sources tell Rolling Stone that Trump plans to go out of his way to ramp up use of the rhetoric, specifically to get a rise out of the media and the left.
"'He wants the media to choke on his words,' one of these sources says," reported Asawin Suebsaeng and Tim Dickinson. "'The [former] president said he’s going to keep doing it, he’s going to keep saying they’re poisoning the blood of the nation and destroying and killing the country … He says it’s a ‘great line.’’ (Trump has been publicly using this specific phrase since at least September.)
"According to the second source, Trump said in recent days that he was being 'too nice' about the 'animals' and alleged gang members who cross the southern border, whom Trump routinely accuses of flooding the United States with drugs, diseases, and violent crime," the report continued. "This person relays to Rolling Stone that Trump also said he and his campaign will be rolling out newer, even 'tougher' policy proposals on immigration in 2024, and that his supporters should look out for them because they’ll be 'very happy.'"
Trump is the one who is directly threatening the freedom and lives of immigrants and Americans, and his fans love him for it. Biden has done none of that.
Trump also celebrates the creation of the COVID-19 vaccine, but in point of fact he had very little to do with it. The development of a vaccine to fight COVID-19 was essentially developed during the Trump administration but in point of fact the first pharmaceutical companies to release a working vaccine, Pfizer and Biontech, weren’t initially part of Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed.”
"HUGE NEWS: Thanks to the public-private partnership forged by President @realDonaldTrump, @pfizer announced its Coronavirus Vaccine trial is EFFECTIVE, preventing infection in 90% of its volunteers," Vice President Mike Pence tweeted.
Others, however, pointed to the fact that Pfizer's senior vice president and head of vaccine research and development, Kathrin Jansen, publicly distanced the company from the Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed vaccine initiative. Jansen was quoted Monday by The New York Times as saying, "We were never part of the Warp Speed. We have never taken any money from the U.S. government, or from anyone."
Pfizer did ultimately make an agreement to sell 100 Million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to the government, but this happened after it had been developed and was ready for distribution. “Operation Warp Speed” didn’t help that development happen any faster.
Trump also left the White House without sharing a vaccine distribution plan with the Biden administration, so they had to develop and implement their own.
“There was no national strategy or plan for vaccinations,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in an interview with Axios last month. “In many ways, we're starting from scratch on something that's been raging for almost an entire year.”
In truth, the Trump administration had made a plan for distribution months in advance - they just didn’t tell anyone in the Biden administration about it because they didn’t participate in the usual administration transition discussions.
For the first time in more than half a century, an outgoing administration is stonewalling an incoming one at every level — with no intention of relenting.
President Donald Trump hasn’t called President-elect Joe Biden. The Trump campaign hasn’t reached out to the Biden campaign. The White House and federal agencies haven’t briefed the Biden transition team. First lady Melania Trump hasn’t invited Jill Biden to the White House for tea.
There are no briefings being given about coronavirus, troop drawdowns in Afghanistan and Iraq, or aggression by China and Iran. No background checks being done for job applicants. No security clearances being conducted for potential Biden staffers.
So all the credit for the benefits of the vaccine belongs almost entirely to the Biden administration, Trump didn’t help at all.
During the Obama administration, the federal deficit skyrocketed to $1.4 Trillion due to the job losses and stimulus packages that were implemented at the time. During the next 7 years that deficit was gradually reduced by $900 Billion to just $400 Billion, until 2015 when the Obama administration was forced into a budget deal with the GOP House — following a government shutdown — that locked in corporate tax cuts which again started to increase the deficit.
Trump came into office and added another $2 Trillion tax cut which further lowered federal revenues and increased the deficit back up to $1.2 Trillion by 2019. Then during the pandemic, Trump implemented 2 stimulus bills, the $2.2 Trillion CARES Act and the $500 Billion PPP Act, which together drove the deficit to over $3 Trillion.
Biden once he came into office also implemented a $1.9 Trillion American Rescue Act which put cash into the hands of the people and funded expanded health care benefits. After these packages all expired the deficit dropped by a record $1.3 Trillion during Biden’s second year, the greatest deficit decrease in history.
Trump promised that his tax cuts would produce a GDP rate of 4-5%, but in reality, his average GDP over his first 3 years was only 2.1%, then after COVID-19 it divebombed to -2.77%. During Biden’s recovery, GDP soared to 5.95% which is the highest rate since 1984 and has since settled back down to an average of 2.9% for 2023 which is higher than Trump’s early average
During Trump’s administration, unemployment reached a record low of 3.5%. However, this was achieved only after 3 slow years of 0.7% improvement from the 4.2% unemployment rate that the Obama administration had left. When COVID hit unemployment exploded to 14%, then it dropped down to 6% when Trump left office. Biden, in his time, took unemployment back down to 3.4% within 2 years — the lowest unemployment rate since 1969 — and it has remained below 4% for a record period.
This has been, yet again, the fastest job recovery in history thanks to the stimulus packages that were passed, but also because of the bipartisan Infrastructure Act which is projected to create 2 million jobs in transportation, the power grid, climate change, clean drinking water, broadband and the environment.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA or the Infrastructure Bill) would provide for $1.2 trillion in spending, $550 billion of which would be new federal spending to be allocated over the next five years. The historic investments included in the IIJA, from clean energy to broadband, would significantly reframe the future of infrastructure in the US.
During the Trump administration gas prices plummeted during the COVID pandemic, but then started rising again in May of 2020 immediately after Trump threatened Saudi Arabia into cutting their oil production.
President Trump told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman that if his regime refused to end its oil price war with Russia, Trump would be powerless to stop Congress from withdrawing US troops from the kingdom, according to a report.
The commander-in-chief’s threat came during an April 2 phone call, Reuters reports, and was central to a White House pressure campaign to slash global oil supply as demand collapsed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
During that call, Trump told bin Salman that unless the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries cut oil production, he could not stop the House and Senate from passing legislation that would pull troops out of the country.
This is what happened after that cut went into effect [on top of the effect of re-establishing sanctions on Iran which took their oil off the market, and eventually the Russia-Ukraine war.]
This — as well as supply chain interruption due to COVID-19 — was the prime source of the inflation that the US began to suffer in 2021. About half of the remaining cause of inflation has been rising corporate profits, not anything done by Biden.
Since the trough of the COVID-19 recession in the second quarter of 2020, overall prices in the NFC sector have risen at an annualized rate of 6.1%—a pronounced acceleration over the 1.8% price growth that characterized the pre-pandemic business cycle of 2007–2019. Strikingly, over half of this increase (53.9%) can be attributed to fatter profit margins, with labor costs contributing less than 8% of this increase. This is not normal. From 1979 to 2019, profits only contributed about 11% to price growth and labor costs over 60%, as shown in Figure A below. Nonlabor inputs—a decent indicator for supply-chain snarls—are also driving up prices more than usual in the current economic recovery.
It was not Biden’s decision not to drill in ANWR, to stop providing new drilling leases on public land or his decision to stop construction on the Keystone XL extension. [We already have a Keystone pipeline that is currently in production. The XL extension would have only increased the rate of oil being transferred - but that would have been Canadian tar sands oil that we would still need to import for US use, and is mostly used to produce diesel fuel — although It can also produce gas — which wouldn’t help the price of US gas much at all.
During 2022 inflation skyrocketed to 9% but has since come down to just 3% in the past year since the Inflation Reduction Act was passed and signed. Inflation has been a worldwide phenomenon, however, the US — thanks mostly to Trump Fed nominee Jerome Powell — has recovered far more quickly than most industrialized nations. As shown on this chart the US leads on falling inflation ahead of the UK, France, Germany, Canada, Italy and Japan.
Projections are that inflation will be down to just 2% during 2024 bringing it completely back into line with historic norms. Soon afterward, the Fed is likely to cut interest rates.
The US inflation rate is seen easing closer to the Federal Reserve’s 2% target next year in the latest forecast from the Congressional Budget Office, as economic growth and labor market activity cools.
The agency expects personal consumption expenditures — the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation — cooling to 2.1% in 2024, according to the CBO’s semiannual forecast published Friday. Excluding energy and food costs, the gauge is set to ease to 2.4% from this year and hit 2.3% by 2025, according to the data, which incorporates economic developments through Dec. 5.
Meanwhile, wages have been gradually increasing at the greatest rate in decades.
Wages in the United States increased 5.74 percent in October of 2023 over the same month in the previous year. Wage Growth in the United States averaged 6.19 percent from 1960 until 2023, reaching an all time high of 15.28 percent in April of 2021 and a record low of -5.89 percent in April of 2020.
Many people are upset about the huge number of immigrants at the border, and that’s understandable but people are not coming because the “border is open” because it’s not open. Approximately 65-70% of people who’ve been encountered at the border over the past 3 years - totaling over 4 million people - have been arrested and expelled from the country.
First of all, we should note that migrants have a lower rate of crime the U.S. Citizens, 95% of fentanyl seizures are with American citizens who are crossing the border at normal points of entry using cars and trucks, and there has never been a successful terrorist attack by someone who entered by crossing the southern border. None of those are valid reasons to oppose immigration.
The president doesn’t control how many people arrive at the border, but what he can control is how we respond to their arrival. About 90-95% of those who try to enter the southern border are stopped and apprehended by border patrol. The majority (65-70%) are not being allowed in and are being immediately expelled based on Title 42, on their having a criminal record, an outstanding warrant, being on the terrorist watch list or being a single adult on their own. Again, simply put, the border is not “open,” far from it.
If people are surging to the border because they believe the “border is open” it’s not because Biden has said that because he hasn’t. The GOP has been wrongly saying that. They’ve been lying - so if they’re coming for that reason, that’s on the GOP. [And why shouldn’t they lie since doing so serves their political purposes? It makes Biden look bad even though he’s stopped, arrested and expelled over 4 million migrants in the last 3 years, more than almost any President ever.]
Only family units or single children with no criminal record are being allowed entry which is only about 32% of those encountered and those people are being processed for asylum and deportation under the law using due process. Fair justice is not instantaneous. 83-95% percent of these migrants, depending on whether they have legal representation, attend their immigration hearings. Eventually, about 35% of those processed will be ordered to be deported by immigration judges and will be removed. A few may be granted asylum (about 35% of those who request asylum status) but most won’t. Ironically, most unlawful immigrants currently in the country came here legally and have overstayed their legal visas. There are actually more of these migrants here than those who have entered by crossing the southern border.
Still, there are far too many entering and our cities and communities are having a hard time handling and supporting so many people at least until they receive work permits and are able to take care of themselves. Biden is only implementing Border Patrol rules using the laws that he has on the books. Policies like “Remain in Mexico” and “Child Separation” have only been shown to put these migrants at dangerous risk of extortion, kidnapping and rape by the cartels and have caused debilitating trauma for separated children. This is how the process currently works, and that process is failing both the migrants and Americans. The first problem is that the entire immigration court system is completely inadequate and overrun. The system needs a serious overhaul and upgrade because the rate of migrants entering and the backlog of deportation procedures which is now at 3 million and growing. They need more immigration judges, better border patrol staffing and better surveillance and detection gear to locate and interdict an even higher percentage of migrants. Secondly, besides those who are legitimately requesting asylum, there isn’t a legal path that someone who is coming to work a blue-collar job can follow without the sponsorship of a company or corporation which they would need to provide a legal H2-B visa. And there is a cap on the number of visas that can be issued. Most people would enter legally if there was such a path, but with the cap in place, there isn’t. The US itself is largely responsible for these people leaving their homes to travel here because we fund and supply the drug cartels with weapons due to our huge drug consumption. People would like to blame Biden for that but he simply isn’t in control of things happening in other countries.
Only Congress has the ability to fix the immigration courts, raise or remove the visa cap, fix the legal pathway, improve staffing and supply greater support for diplomacy and law enforcement to combat the international cartels. Clearly, we also need to reduce our drug dependence, but that has been a persistent problem for decades.
Sadly, Congress has no interest in doing any of that because they rather have this issue to complain about, rather than try to fix it. Biden has on his own has added 24,000 agents to Border Patrol, while the GOP House is trying to cut their staff. The GOP doesn’t want to solve the humanitarian crisis, they just want to keep people from being able to enter, either legally or illegally. They don’t care which, they just want fewer immigrants (because they subscribe to the crazed theory these migrants will benefit Democrats in the census and elections - even though they can’t legally vote. They think they’re “vermin”, are “poisoning the blood” of the U.S. and that their "coming from jails, they're coming from mental institutions" when they simply aren’t.) The Senate is working on a deal right now, but there is little expectation that the deal will solve all these problems. Most likely, it won’t.
And Trump’s border wall doesn’t help because the cartels are cutting through it dozens of times using angle grinders they can buy at Walmart.
It can also be defeated by a rope or a ladder.
Due to his investments in the Inflation Reduction Act, the use of clean energy has exceeded the use of nuclear and coal to generate electricity.
It also appears that mortgage prices and interest rates will be falling in 2024.
In addition to all this, Biden has signed the PACT Act to provide health care to veterans exposed to toxic sources (such as Camp Lejeune).
He’s reduced the cost of insulin to $35 and allowed for Medicare to begin negotiating drug prices for the first time ever.
He’s signed the first major Gun Violence Bill since the original Assault Weapons Ban. He’s established protection for LGBTQ and interracial couples.
He’s implemented measures to protect access to reproductive health in the wake of the Dodds decision.
He signed the CHIPs Act to sponsor the rebuilding of the electronic manufacturing industry.
He’s pardoned thousands of non-violent drug and marijuana offenders.
He’s supplied Ukraine in their battle against the dangerous aggression and threat to NATO from Russia.
He’s supported and supplied Israel in their response to the attacks by Hamas, but also pushed them to implement humanitarian corridors and hostage swaps with Gaza.
He’s conducted counter-terrorism operations against ISIS and Al Qaeda taking out their top leadership.
He’s been one of the most upfront Presidential supporters of Unions in decades.
He’s implemented historic Student Debt relief.
Many Americans are feeling the hard pinch of rising prices and are very frustrated and disgruntled by it. This is perfectly understandable. Inflation was out of control for almost 2 years, but that time is over. Over the next year as wages continue to rise and inflation continues to shrink, we’ll see if any of that frustration starts to subside. Perhaps it will.
However, as I’ve shown literally none of this was caused by Joe Biden and he has responded to these challenges with a historic record-breaking recovery. No one, not any previous President has recovered from such economic challenges this quickly or completely. It’s never happened before, ever.
Jobs, unemployment, deficit reduction, GDP rate, inflation reduction, gas price reduction, wage improvement, border expulsions, infrastructure improvements, climate change, clean energy, chips manufacturing, electric vehicles and vaccine distribution have all met or exceeded historic levels. By all rights, Biden’s administration has implemented more substantive reforms beneficial to the American people than any administration since FDR.
But he doesn’t get a wit of credit for any of it.
He should.
Of course, those on the right will never give him credit for anything. And sadly, none of this may matter to those on the Left because they are so angry and frustrated by the massive death and destruction being rained on Gaza by Israel in the wake of the Hamas attack of October 7.
WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday struck a more critical tone toward Israel, in a sign of alarm within the White House over the unpopularity of his stance on the war in Gaza among younger voters.
Three recently released polls showed voters disapprove of his handling of the Israel-Hamas war. The poll results come as Biden loses ground in head-to-head comparisons against former President Donald Trump and on specific issues, such as economic and foreign policy.
With the 2024 presidential election expected to be a tight race, alienating progressive voters over the war in Gaza would tend to hurt Biden against his Republican rival, political analysts said. By contrast, respondents showed almost no interest in China and Ukraine.
Technically, this is not Biden’s war - it’s Israel’s conflict - and America only has so much influence we can exert. Certainly, we have to condemn the actions of Hamas, but can we do that and also strongly criticize Israel literally killing almost 20 times as many Gazans? It’s a difficult tightrope to dance on.
Then again, in the end, none of this may really matter for the 2024 election. It may not matter that Biden isn’t fully appreciated or liked for the job he’s done. What may matter more is how much the other guy is hated and despised.
The polls at this early day show Biden trailing Trump slightly, but the campaign is yet to truly begin and it’s also possible that what the polls say about Biden doesn’t really matter as the senior media writer at Politico surmises.
Meanwhile, Biden’s victory over Trump in the general election wasn’t a mandate on his popularity. It was a flight to safety for a nation fed up with a meshuga president. Biden was merely the vegetable voters convinced themselves they had to eat in order to rid themselves of Trump.
No amount of repackaging Biden’s first-term accomplishments will boost him to the top of the charts. In September, the New York Times reported that the White House plans to polish Biden’s image by showcasing “his vigor.” Good luck with that.
None of this is to suggest that Biden can’t possibly beat Trump in 2024; he’s done it before, after all. As the Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein wrote last spring, Biden’s unpopularity might not matter as long as voters hate the other guy enough. But if he’s looking for a guaranteed way to move his numbers up, he should do what President Lyndon Johnson did in 1968. Johnson dropped out of the presidential contest and by the time he exited the White House, he was close to regaining a 50 percent approval rating.
Want to be liked? Try doing something likable.
The problem with that idea — which would certainly increase Biden’s popularity, especially for those concerned with his age — is that by resigning from the 2024 race he would likely leave the country to the tender mercies of an angry, crazed, retribution-seeking, delusion-spewing potential dictator-in-chief.
Biden certainly should get better credit than he does, but resigning is a price far too high to pump up his poll numbers and burnish his legacy.
Admittedly, I did not address any of the allegations of Biden’s “corruption” because I feel those are all bogus. Biden is on record as being one of the poorest members of Congress. I’ve seen his tax returns and his financial statements, they’re pretty simple and plain.
If he didn’t dip his hand into the till for 50 years why exactly would he do it now?
But more than that, there was a letter from Burisma head Mykola Zlochevski to Rudy Giuliani stating both that “no one at Burimsa talked to Joe Biden during Hunter’s engagement” and also that Hunter was “innocent” of the claims against him.
So the allegations of the Bidens being offered a “bribe” by Zlochevski are bogus and that’s why the FBI dropped the issue.
Hunter’s issues are a different story, but that has nothing to do with Joe.