I found this an interesting explanation of what doesn’t seem to make sense: President Biden’s lack of popularity.
He says that typically popular presidents who are democrats are either charismatic or Southerners. He points out the disconnect between the popularity of Biden’s policies and President Biden’s lack of popularity. He says most voters do not carefully examine policy choices and then support the president if they support these policies. He thinks voters mostly wanted normalcy and expected it. It’s not his fault that things are not back to normal, but the voters really don’t care about why or who is at fault. They just blame the president. The refusal of rural, conspiracy theorist, fundamentalist republicans to get vaccinated has meant that we are losing many people every day , up to 2,000 people a day are dying due to COVID . That’s hardly President Biden’s fault, but most voters again are not rational. Delta hit us hard in the Summer when President Biden’s numbers tumbled from 56% to 45% . People and voters realized that even with Trump out of office, life was not returning to normal regarding the pandemic. They didn’t consider the role and culpability of right wing media and republicans in the low vaccination percentage.
The Afghanistan army was undeniably going to fold in hours whenever the United States left and if we stayed, we would have lost more troops. They simply did not value democracy as much as perceived stability and religion. That’s hard for Americans to understand and this was not predicted. Since they folded so quickly despite a 4 to 1 numerical advantage and huge investments by our country, it’s hard to argue that this would have happened whenever we left. We had been there 20 years. It cost us in lives and in money and the cost would have gone up. Joe Biden did not draw up the military plans. The military designed their own plans. So, it’s not the method. Nevertheless, the media pushed nation building instead of striking without nation building and they can not admit that they made a mistake. It’s far easier to pretend to not have supported nation building and not accept blame, cast the withdrawal in the worst light , pick “experts” who were wrong and backed nation building forever, and blame President Biden.
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Then we had inflation which Zaharia wrongly in my view blames President Biden for to some extent. People were still hurting from the pandemic economically and worrying about inflation has to come after that. Besides, the last two presidents to reduce the deficit were both democrats. Trump passed his unpaid for tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Putting money in people’s hands and addressing the pandemic were more important than worrying about inflation in my view. Zakaria argues that it was the cumulative effect of these three issues, the lack of normalcy, the fact that President Biden is neither a Southerner nor charismatic, and that in normal times Joe Biden would not have become president. Zakaria argues rightly that Joe Biden became president because of two factors: Trump and serving as President Obama’s vice president. Joe Biden was a safe, white man who it is believed large numbers of voters were willing to vote for.
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I believe that one truth I have read here and heard elsewhere is a big factor for his anemic approval rating. The media continues to believe that the only fair way to cover events is to both side everything and to grade republicans on a curve. They don’t want to be viewed as biased and want some conservative viewers / readers and they simply don’t understand reality and they want to avoid taking responsibility for outcomes. Where there is doubt among real experts regarding where the truth lies or what the best policies are, bothsiding is understandable and perhaps can be justified. When one side is opposing safe and effective vaccines for COVID and promoting false conspiracy theories and horse dewormer and malaria medication and urine and sticking a UV light up your ass and mainlining Clorox for COVID and the other side promotes safe and effective vaccines and getting boosted and wearing KN-95 masks and avoiding crowds and applying social distance, then bothsiding is irresponsible because it will lead to a large number of unnecessary deaths. In that case, one side is promoting nonsense and the other side scientific truth. When one side is saying that Donald Trump won re-election in 2020 but was defrauded of his victory and the other side is stating that Joe Biden did win the election, then one side is lying and undermining democracy and the other side is telling the truth. When one side promotes the idea that voter fraud is widespread and prevalent and the reason why Joe Biden is in the White House and the other side denies the same, then the former side is lying and the other side is telling the truth and the only responsible thing for the media to do is to say exactly that. When one side is attempting a coup and the other side is mostly opposing the coup attempts in the past and in the future (barring Manchin and Sinema) , then only one viewpoint can be shared as being on the right side by the media, namely the former. This could continue on, but you get the point.
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Republicans are graded on a curve while democrats are not. If 50 Senate Republicans vote against democracy and 48 Senators who caucus with the Democratic Party vote for it and 2 Senate Democrats vote against it, we get the headline “Democrats in Disarray “. That was the actual headline for The NY Times regarding the cloture vote for the Freedom to Vote Act. That’s irresponsible and misleading. 96% of Senators who caucus with the Democratic Party voted for cloture. That’s not disarray. The problem was we had no margin for losing votes and that’s due to the anti-democratic nature of the US Senate. And I will take that supposed disarray over 100% uniformity in opposition to the Freedom to Vote Act which is equivalent to 100% support for eradicating our democracy and supporting voter suppression and supporting disenfranchisement.
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The media knows that Donald Trump is a liar and unethical and will constantly lie and act unethically and commit felonies. However, they feel that reporting the felony every time Donald Trump commits one is boring since we are easily at 16 at a minimum. Since so many republicans so consistently take irresponsible or immoral and indefensible positions, then they don’t want to cover it every time it occurs or they would cover nothing else. The difference in the standards that they held Secretary Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to was painful to see and did not serve the country well.
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What do you believe best explains President Biden’s low approval numbers ?
Friday, Jan 28, 2022 · 3:20:54 PM +00:00 · Dem
Manchin and Sinema are another reason.
I regret to say what we all already know: we have a system that tests your ethnicity and your gender and your power and your wealth and your income. We do not have a legal system. I hate to say this because it’s disgusting and so unethical, but we won’t prosecute powerful, rich, white men no matter how high the quality of evidence and no matter how unambiguous and strong and clear the evidence and no matter how serious the crime. Trump and all his people who attempted a coup through several methods should be in prison. They aren’t. Although the Department of Justice should be independent, President Biden picked Merrick Garland and I believe he is not pursuing these people and that’s so wrong that it angers many of us. While I question Garland as a pick, I don’t see power within the president or vice president nor within the 48 senators who caucus with the Democratic Party and vote like real democrats to put Trump and his people who helped him attempt a coup in several ways (1. Pence pressure — change the role of the vp so that the vp alone picks the president elect 2. 142 republicans in Congress supported a written objection to counting electoral college votes that gave Biden the majority 3. Incite an insurrection that scared Congress into allowing Trump to stay in office despite losing the electoral college vote 4. The fake electors ..) in prison .
An attempt to use the votes Garland received as evidence that Garland would put Trump in prison because these are smart people who voted for Garland, smart people who understand the danger of allowing Trump to attempt a coup and go unpunished, and these smart people would not have voted for Garland unless they were confident he would successfully prosecute Trump for his attempted coup . This argument proves too much because it would have you believe that a vote for Garland means the voter (senator) was confident that Garland would successfully prosecute Trump for the attempted coup and that would mean all these senate republicans wanted Trump successfully prosecuted for the attempted coup and I doubt that very much.
Friday, Jan 28, 2022 · 7:32:19 PM +00:00
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Dem
A couple of people seem to believe that President Biden has done a terrible job and they said that they would answer a poll that way. Of course, they have to say that they are progressive democrats. I really worry about CIVICS education in this country. President Biden can accomplish a few things on his own. First, he can use executive orders to further his agenda, but there are only so many issues on which executive orders can use and the next time a president of the other political party is in the White House, the executive orders will be terminated. The president has some unilateral power in the area of foreign policy, but not many.
This means the rest of the president’s agenda must be passed through Congress. We have an anti-majoritarian system. This means that Congress doesn’t accurately represent the electorate. If that weren’t the case, President Biden would be able to pasfs his agenda without a problem . The problem is mainly the US Senate which not only assigns 2 seats to each state regardless of population, but also has the filibuster . Since we have these issues and the US Senate is equally divided, then President Biden (or any other president who is a member of the Democratic Party) was bound to have trouble passing his agenda. This is true because we can’t afford to lose a single vote in the US Senate. Joe Manchin has won six consecutive statewide elections in West Virginia. Donald Trump won West Virginia by nearly 40 points. President Biden did not crack 30% in West Virginia. Joe Manchin is the only democrat and the most progressive person who can win an election statewide in West Virginia. Sitting Governor Jim Justice was a democrat, switched and became a republican, and won election as a republican. Therefore, even though Joe Manchin voted to defend the ACA and for the American Rescue Plan and against the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and to convict Trump and even though Manchin’s margin of victory narrowed considerably since his penultimate election, he clearly has a better than zero probability of winning / holding the seat as a republican. On the other hand, we cannot hold Manchin’s seat without him. Therefore, a threat against him will be completely ineffective. Even if we were able to persuade or coerce Senator Sinema, it would mean nothing without Senator Manchin. Still, it has been made clear to Senator Sinema for over a month that without voting for the carve out to the filibuster for voting rights legislation, she cannot expect to win her next Democratic Party primary. If this did not move her, she is unlikely to be moved by President Biden. Both Senators represent Manchin and Sinema have agency. They have determined to block the remainder of President Biden’s agenda including the Build Back Better agenda and supporting the carve out to the filibuster for voting rights legislation and the legislation itself, the Freedom to Vote Act. There is nothing President Biden can do to force them to alter their positions. He has passed everything he could. No other president who is a member of the Democratic Party counts do better under these circumstances. The argument that President Biden deserves a poor approval rating fails.