Like many of you (perhaps), I’m wondering why Joe Biden’s approval ratings are so low—43% as of November 24—given that his infrastructure bill has passed and he appears to have brokered a deal to get the Build Back Better bill passed as well. Yes, there were hiccups: we still have problems at the border, there’s inflation, and the Afghanistan withdrawal wasn’t very tidy. But Biden’s left-centrist agenda is doing quite well. So why the disapproval? A new piece by the liberal writer Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine has a thoughtful (and long) take on the issue. Click on the screenshot to read:
The upshot is at the beginning:
But the truth is that Biden’s presidency began to disintegrate without his abandoning the center at all. He found himself trapped instead between a well-funded left wing that has poisoned the party’s image with many of its former supporters and centrists unable to conceive of their job in any terms save as valets for the business elite. Biden’s party has not veered too far left or too far right so much as it has simply come apart.
. . . The split within the Democratic Party runs along educational lines. The party’s college-educated cadre holds more liberal views and is increasingly estranged from its working-class counterparts. Those non-college-educated voters are disproportionately Latino and Black, but their worldview bears similarities to that of the white working-class voters who have left the party. The college-educated wing might have claimed power in the name of minority voters, but in reality it has started to drive them away.
Yes, Chait thinks that Biden is the unfortunate but innocent victim of a war within the Democratic Party. On one side is the Left and the intellectuals, fervently backing causes (open borders, defunding police, etc.) that aren’t popular with Middle America and non-college-educated folks. And the “progressive Left” doesn’t seem to grasp that minorities like blacks and Hispanics are more conservative than everyone imagines. The Right, of course, tries to label all Democrats as wokies like AOC and Elizabeth Warren, and they’ve done pretty well at that game. There is seemingly no end to the performative craziness that characterizes the extreme Left.
On the other side are the centrists, whom you’d think would ally with Biden. But they’re fueled, says Chait, by Big Business, which is pumping money and ideas into the centrist moiety of the party in a way that actually stalls Biden’s agenda (think Manchin, Sinema, and their allies in the House). In the meantime, the Democratic Party circles the drain as the internecine squabbling continues, ignoring the main concerns of Americans.
Here are a few quotes from an article well worth reading. There are many more examples in each area, so have a look at NY Magazine. I’ve tried to summarize the argument under a few subheadings. Quotes from Chait are indented.
What Americans want.
One recent poll asked voters to identify the features of the Build Back Better plan that most appealed to them. The top five were, in order, adding dental and vision benefits to Medicare, home health care for the elderly and disabled, letting Medicare negotiate prescription-drug prices, Medicare coverage for hearing, and free community college. Democratic centrists in the Senate eliminated three of them from the bill completely and gutted a fourth. “Bizarrely,” observed Democratic pollster William Jordan in September, “the parts of Biden’s agenda that are most popular seem to be most at risk right now.”
The centrists did not, for the most part, object to the spending. What they ruled out was the policies Biden had come up with to pay for the spending. Most of the money would come from tax hikes on corporations and people earning more than $400,000 a year, cracking down on tax cheats, and letting Medicare negotiate what it pays for pharmaceuticals, which cost Americans more than twice as much as in peer countries. All those measures actually made the popular spending plans even more popular. Raising taxes on the rich commands near two-to-one support. And pollsters have said negotiating drug costs is literally the most popular idea they have ever tested.
What Americans don’t want.
During the 2020 primary campaign, progressive commentators were writing columns on a near-daily basis insisting that none of this could hurt the party. Swing voters barely existed, left-wing policies were all popular, mobilizing the base mattered far more than appealing to moderates, and electability was just an empty buzzword used by a failed Establishment to fend off popular changes. For a while, these arguments carried the day as the leading Democratic candidates kept racing one another to endorse ideas that polled catastrophically: decriminalizing illegal border crossings (27 percent approval versus 66 percent disapproval), abolishing private health insurance (37 versus 58), and providing government health insurance for people who immigrated illegally (38 versus 59).
. . .The grim irony is that, in attempting to court non-white voters, Democrats ended up turning them off. It was not only that they got the data wrong — they were also courting these “marginalized communities” in ways that didn’t appeal to them. For the reality is that the Democratic Party’s most moderate voters are disproportionately Latino and Black.
In 2020, even as Biden improved on Clinton’s performance among white voters, Black support for Trump rose by three percentage points from four years before, and Latino support rose eight points. The California recall election and Virginia governor’s race this year both showed at least some evidence that Latino voters are continuing to slip away from Democrats. The 2021 New York mayoral election was marked by heavily Asian American neighborhoods flipping Republican.
Confounding the liberal assumption that immigrant communities demand more lenient border policies, many signs suggest the swing is a result of their wanting stricter enforcement. Some of Trump’s largest gains came in Mexican American precincts in Texas; Biden’s approval rating among Hispanic Texans stood at 37 percent in late September, with just 26 percent approving of his handling of the border. Their dismay was not that Biden has deported too many immigrants; by a 20-point margin, they registered their support for deporting Haitian refugees.
How the Left screwed up.
There was never a world in which a concept supported by less than 20 percent of the public [“defunding the police”] was going to emerge victorious.
Yet activist groups of all stripes rushed to join the defund movement, including Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and dozens of climate groups. Those endorsements have continued to blow back in the faces of Democrats. Virginia Republicans in this year’s election learned they could attack any Democrats receiving endorsements from these groups as gaining support from “pro-defund” organizations, and one Democrat declined an endorsement from NARAL, an abortion-rights group, in order to avoid being linked to police defunding.
Elizabeth’s Warren’s campaign exemplifies the toxicity of Wokeism. (Warren was at one time my go-to Democratic candidate.)
Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign in 2020 may offer the single most instructive example of the distorting effects of the progressive-activist complex. Warren began her presidential candidacy with some liabilities — most obviously, she was a woman running after an election many Democrats believed they had lost because of sexism — but also many strengths. She had earned a reputation as a hard-nosed champion of economic reform. Her platform was simultaneously aggressive yet broadly acceptable within the party.
Over the course of her campaign, though, Warren found herself both racing to outflank Sanders to her left and unable to expand her base beyond college-educated liberals. Persist, Warren’s campaign memoir, chronicles her dogged and largely successful efforts to win the approval of political activists. She proudly notes that a 2015 address at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute in Boston was called “the speech that Black Lives Matter activists had been waiting for” by the Washington Post. At another speech in 2018, she declared, “The hard truth about our criminal-justice system: It’s racist … front to back.”
The book quotes an activist’s tweet approving of her criminal-justice plan, her well-received appearance at the “She the People” forum, her endorsement by Black Womxn For. At no point, however, does she show any sign of grasping the disconnect between the preferences of progressive activists and those of minority voters. Indeed, as Warren’s campaign went on, her strategy devolved into issuing more (and more left-wing) policy promises, lining up more activist groups, getting more positive tweets.
The progressive-foundation complex was designed to lift up a candidate like Warren. Instead, it swallowed her in a trap, luring her deeper and deeper into a worldview increasingly alien to the voters she needed to win.
How the Left-centrists screwed up. This is the part that I find the least convincing, but it is true that those who consider themselves centrists include those blocking the Build Back Better bill.
“We can’t go too far left,” warned Joe Manchin. “This is not a center-left or a left country. We are a center — if anything, a little center-right — country; that’s being shown, and we ought to be able to recognize that.”
The news media, after years of covering the party’s sharp left turn, were primed to accept this interpretation. “Tonight really empowers Manchin and [Kyrsten] Sinema,” a Democratic strategist told Politico. “Joe Manchin’s wing of the Democratic Party will seem much more crowded today,” observed the congressional tip sheet Punchbowl News.
But this seemingly intuitive response had its diagnosis backward. Rather than helping to correct the Democrats’ problems with the electorate, Manchin, Sinema, and their centrist House allies have compounded them. The story of Biden’s domestic agenda is that it was crippled by a small but crucial faction of Democrats who came to be persuaded by the C-suite view of the world. And all the while, those Democrats persuaded themselves that they were the authentic voices of the people.
The effect of the lobbyists on the center.
It was not quite as simple as wealthy people showing up in Washington with suitcases full of cash. But in some cases, at least, it wasn’t that far from the truth. Former North Dakota Democratic senator Heidi Heitkamp was lobbying against changes to a notorious tax loophole permitting capital gains to escape taxation if the owners passed it on to their children — a loophole she had not long before called “one of the biggest scams in the history of forever.” Former Arkansas Democratic senator Blanche Lincoln, who had once campaigned on a promise to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, was lobbying against it on behalf of Big Pharma. And former Montana senator Max Baucus was writing op-eds arguing against various tax hikes for the rich while refusing to tell reporters who was paying for his consulting business.
. . .Over the summer and fall, item after item in the Biden agenda was suddenly plagued by a handful of Democrats expressing quiet doubts. Many of these doubts seemed new. When Sinema ran for Senate in 2018, she made reducing prescription-drug prices a core promise. And yet by 2021, she had turned sharply against her previous position.
The most spectacular success of this lobbying campaign was not merely that it persuaded a crucial faction of Democrats to ignore both the voters and their own policy wonks to side with organized business interests. It was that they managed to coat an agenda that was in its specifics as electorally toxic as defunding the police with the pleasant sheen of “centrism.”
. . . The independent variable here is not Biden moving to the left; it is congressional centrists counterposing themselves against Biden in a way that makes them look more centrist but also makes Biden look simultaneously more left wing and less effective.
What Biden wants to do, but is stymied.
Biden’s legislative strategy has closely hewed to Shorist principles. Biden has tried to keep the political conversation framed as closely as possible around issues in which he and his party have an advantage: handling the pandemic and rebuilding the economy. His economic program has carefully avoided any controversial social debates and focused on a highly popular combination of raising taxes on the ultra-wealthy and redistributing the proceeds to the working and middle class through programs like universal access to child care, community college, and a child tax credit.
. . . In one sense, the strategy has worked perfectly. Biden’s program has avoided generating the kind of angry public backlash that rose up against Obama (and Bill Clinton before him). Indeed, Biden’s agenda has proved so uncontroversial that Republicans have barely roused themselves to denounce it at all, instead focusing on whatever culture-war chum floats across Fox News, from Dr. Seuss to COVID-vaccine mandates. Even the expected grumbling from progressives has largely failed to materialize because the agenda included an ambitious list of progressive economic priorities that no less a left-wing eminence than Sanders described as “the most consequential piece of legislation for working families since the 1930s.” Democratic pollster Sean McElwee told CNN he detected no divide between liberal and centrist Democratic voters, all of whom supported Biden’s program.
. . . The dream of a Rooseveltian presidency was always grandiose, not least because Biden lacks FDR’s giant majorities in Congress. Yet it was a sensible ambition in its form. Biden’s goal was to demonstrate the concrete benefits of good government and, in so doing, to disprove the cynical Trumpian claim that Washington was merely controlled by wealthy elites. The Democrats can still come through on that promise, if they can prevent the left wing and plutocratic center from pulling the party apart. But time is running out, and Trump is waiting.
It all makes sense, but of course this is all post hoc analysis of why Biden isn’t polling well. It may well be right, but the only way of testing it is to get rid of the Biden-impeding factors (which is impossible), and see if his numbers rise. I suspect that if the pandemic continues waning, and the Build Back Better plan passes with the bits that Americans actually want, then Biden will become more popular. But the border issue will remain, as will the “progressive” left, wedded to principles that won’t fly with the main body of the Left.
And Trump is waiting in the wings. . .
More people died from COVID under Joe (Shut down the virus, not the economy) Biden than under Trump, despite vaccines.
Biden campaigned on shutting down the virus.
He failed.
Blaming Manchin and Sinema doesn’t cut it.
The majority of deaths have come from the non-vaccinated, not from Biden’s constituency. Most of the attempts he’s made to get people to vaccinate have been stymied, either by the courts or by the screaming F-News people.
L
Not to mention that tRump was in office when the virus first started spreading, slowly, and did nothing, while Biden came into office when it was already a global pandemic (not officially declared until 3/11/21) and was fully raging across the world and within the US. And of course, as you pointed out, Biden inherited a nation full of dumbass anti-vaxx, pro-snake oil, anti-mask, pro-group gathering, anti-lockdown morons who have continued to spread the virus while claiming it a hoax or “not that bad”. Blaming Biden is a bit like pushing a Boulder down a hillside but blaming the person it crushes at the bottom because it was going faster by the time it hit them!
So Trump imposed a racist, xenophobic travel ban but did nothing, and the virus only became a global pandemic after Biden took office?
Trump’s Operation Warpspeed developed the vaccine.
The Democrats will get such a hiding in the midterms.
The analysis by Jonathan Crait has not one critique to make of Biden.
Like Biden explains, everything is always somebody else’s fault.
You can’t win elections starting from a position of being in denial of the reality.
Biden is doing is utmost to get the inflation rate above his approval rating.
His latest idea – open the southern border to anybody who wants to cross and then impose a travel ban is only one part of his inability to think straight.
You might be a troll. But let’s refute a few of your points. Trump’s travel ban was limited to a few Asian countries and too late. And the virus came to us mostly from Europe. His subsequent response was denial and disarray, with no federal coordination for obtaining supplies, and trying to use access to such as a political weapon.
Trump’s administration deserves some credit for Warpspeed, but it wasn’t responsible for vaccines, it simply helped fund them and promised to buy minimum amounts. The vaccines would have been developed regardless. And Trump encouraged the anti-vax movement. He made it political, which is why the vast majority of anti-vaxxers are Trumpers, although to be fair there are some on the far Left as well.
The southern border hasn’t been opened to just anyone, as was seen with Haitian immigrants. This BS claim makes me doubt your motives in posting here.
Stop being so hard on Trump. My stock in the Clorox Bleach company increased 399% while he was President
Damn, I missed that investment opportunity. Too late for ivermectin too, probably. I wonder what the next one will be.
Trumps vaccine was what led Biden to being able to declare Independence from the virus on Independence Day itself – July 4th.
Already, the Republican ads are getting ready to repeat Biden’s claim
When he declared that on July 4th, he said about how many died , ‘As of tonight, that number is 603,018 people’
How many have died now Joe?
What happened to the damn edit function?! My dumb fat thumbs typed 3/11/21 instead of 3/11/20! Sorry for the error and damn the inability to correct it.
Linda I wish I could say you’re right but that hasn’t been the case.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(21)00258-1/fulltext?s=08#%20
https://principia-scientific.com/official-data-proves-there-is-a-pandemic-of-the-vaccinated/
That’s rich, considering most of these deaths have come from vaccine-resistant populations, many of which are resistant for partisan reasons.
Is it wrong to hope that Trump gets the Republican nomination? That is the only way that I see the Dems winning in the next presidential election if Biden is the candidate again.
Or maybe how about this, NOT have Biden be the Democratic nominee for next election or have a bunch of other Democrats compete for the spot against the incumbent.
Having Biden run in next election, in his current condition against a Trumpite-Republican candidate (God forbid Trump) would be a disaster waiting to happen.
What i see is way too much detailed analysis. Biden is and has always been a low key politician. Anyone with a big mouth and big personality just runs over him. The trouble with much of his team is they do not sell the product. All we get on the news is tons of republican nonsense and they do nothing. Doing nothing is popular. Trump did it for 4 years and yet 75 million voted for the crook. The republicans will win because they have taken over at the state level. The democrats have done nothing about that. In the majority of states we have republican control and they have fixed the vote. The supreme court has allowed them to fix the vote in all of these states. They also control the close states at voting time with control of the election. With this in place they can’t lose. Apparently the democrats cannot pass any voter rights legislation at the federal level and therefore, they are finished.
What you said, Randall, especially “[t]he trouble with much of his team is they do not sell the product. This reminds me of what James Carville said about needing more Dems in sales rather than policy. Also, HCR’s latest on Substack: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-27-2021?r=2xi1r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy
“The Right, of course, tries to label all Democrats as wokies like AOC and Elizabeth Warren, and they’ve done pretty well at that game.”
I think a lot of the fault lies with the press, and the current model of monetizing the news. Hits and clicks are the means of selling advertising. Conflict generates hits and clicks; so do negative stories. Boring stories of policy successes don’t.
The reason the Right manages to tar Democrats is that all they have to do is quote some far-Left loon about defunding the police or giving everyone a basic income, and reporters drink that stuff up and run endless stories which generate hits and clicks.
I have heard many stories on the news about how the Right and Left are “working from different sets of facts”. Whoever is producing this tripe has no concept of the definition of the word FACT. The reality is that one side is dealing in reality, while the other side is generating nonsense about Jewish lasers starting the CA wildfires and Chinese thermometers causing voting machines to vote for Biden.
I also heard a story a couple of nights ago about how each philosophical side is afraid of the other. The Right is afraid that the Left will change our country forever, whatever that means. There’s just a general attitude that we are Satan’s spawn. The left has actual reason to be afraid, from a participant in a Trump rally asking, “When do we get to use the guns?”, to New Mexico’s own Cuoy Griffin saying that all Democrats should be shot. Nobody on the Left is saying anything even remotely comparable to that. But the only columnist I have seen writing anything about that huge imbalance is Jennifer Rubin. Everybody else is avoiding the reality completely.
L
Quoted For Truth. The hits and clicks = $ equation is important. But it’s also not the whole story. I see far more tut-tutting about how Biden needs to disown AOC than how McConnell needs to disown Lauren Boebert, for example. And AOC has yet to support a group of insurrectionists.
I referred to the latest post by Heather Cox Richardson above, q.v., https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-27-2021?r=2xi1r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy. Reading it got me thinking that for all the righteous railing against the Woke we old-school liberals have been doing this past year, it’s time we turned back to countervailing and diminishing the dangerous craziness on the Right.
Perfectly agreed with the first part of your post, was surprised at the onesidedness of the second part. One of the problems of the left right now is that the activistas often also do not deal in reality but in distortions, distractions and conspiracy theories (systemic racism a major problem in institutions of higher learning, the only or main reason for overrepresentation of black people among victims of police violence is racism, the main function of the justice system is keeping black people down, the verdict in Rittenhouse case is unjust and racist) and this nonsense gets amplified by clickbait media.
“Nobody on the Left is saying anything even remotely comparable to that.”
Don’t they? Depends on whom you are comparing to whom. On the loony fringes, both sides sound dangerous to me. I remember a (white) college personality wishing for white genocide for Christmas, a black lives matter activist declaring that melanin-deficient whites are subhumans, others who say whites have no soul/are born without a soul, and twitter is full of anti-Jewish rants by people who present themselves a s black activists.
The latest FiveThirtyEight aggregation of polls shows Biden’s disapproval percentage at 51.8% and his approval percentage at 42.9% – an approximate 9% difference. At the peak of his popularity during the beginning of his terms the numbers were about reversed. So, the question is: why did he lose this 9%? My guess is that the vast majority of these people are not political junkies that care about the internal divisions within the Democratic Party or know much about them. The problem is cultural. Probably most of them support his Build Back Better agenda. Rather, they have swallowed the incessant and relentless right-wing propaganda that the Democratic Party is the party of the Woke. It is true that there is a small such element within the party – AOC and the Squad. The Democratic leadership has failed to forthrightly, publicly, and continually to reject their positions that the vast majority of Americans oppose. The leadership has made a calculation that it cannot afford to alienate the extreme progressives. It should be obvious to it, but is apparently not, that the poll numbers show that this strategy is not working. All political strategies entail a degree of risk. In my view the Democrats would be better off winning back the disaffected 9% or 10% in the hope that in the end the progressives will not stay home at the next election.
Ruy Teixeira is a longtime Democratic strategist, who is appalled that the party has not taken the measures to rid itself of the Woke stigma. In the below linked article, he offers a practical program that the Democrats should adopt, one that is certainly liberal, but not Woke, that can win back disaffected White working class voters. It makes a lot of sense to me.
https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/democrats-can-reach-more-working
An excellent article, thanks! I’ve forwarded it to my (somewhat) woke sister in Oregon though I doubt it will do much good.
I agree that some of the woke culture has caused tremendous damage to the Democrats. As a reaction to the Rittenhouse verdict Joy Reid retweeted a video of late night host Amber Ruffin saying, “white people have been getting away with murder since the beginning of time.” This kind of nonsense is disgusting and poisonous. Can’t someone in the Democratic Party just come out and say this is obscene? What is so awful is that a lot of good things ARE happening in this country. I learned today that the US has donated more vaccines than all other countries combined. Some of the work that contributed to that was done by white people full of bloodlust. It would be a very sick joke if the Democratic Party gets destroyed by some narcissistic zealots on social media.
Chait is largely right, I think. But he neglects the issues Randall Schenck raises regarding state gerrymandering, voter restrictions, etc., and the failure to counter these with voter rights legislation. (Or maybe you just didn’t quote Chait on those subjects? – I haven’t read Chait’s piece.) That’s an interesting oversight. Maybe it shows how little he expects Democrats to be able to see the forest for the trees, or act on such vision.
The pandemic will wax until at least spring/summer 2022, not wane. There is nothing Biden can do about that unless he can invent a way to turn Americans sane. Some of Build Back Better, with some but not all of the popular programs, will pass. The political question is whether the press will cover the stories of people receiving the benefits. If they do, conservatives will scream “liberal bias” slightly louder than ever, though it can be hard to tell.
The analysis seems pretty plausible (although I freely accept that I’m from the UK and only have an outsider’s perspective on US politics). It seems that the Dems are suffering from the same tensions that have blighted the Labour Party here during its prolonged periods in opposition – an activist base that is out of touch both with mainstream party members and the electorate that they should be appealing to, plus an aversion to addressing difficult issues, such as immigration, for ideological reasons. For some activists, the mere thought that the party should seek electability is seen as a betrayal of its core values. Apparently, no number of electoral defeats will convince them that there isn’t a huge hidden demand for radical socialist policies. Better, in their book, to retain ideological purity than to be contaminated by the messy compromises that governing would entail, no matter the consequences for the millions who will suffer under years of Conservative rule.
You’re spot on, and the same has happened with the NDP here in Canada – the fewer votes they get the further left they go as if that will help a damn thing. I’m reasonably sure the average American just wanted a return to some semblance of normality (nope, never going to use ‘normalcy’!) after the roller coaster of Trump. It took a massive mis-reading of what voters wanted, plus an opportunism by the furthest-left of the Dems (in truth roughly as left as the average Centrist Labour pol in the UK) to give the voters exactly the opposite of their wishes. More roller coaster. And looks like the Republicans are going to start the next cycle of positive feedback and over-correction by going more rightwards. I feel like Senna the Soothsayer – “Woe is me!”
There’s a reason every news item comparing Biden’s low ratings to his predecessors add the qualifying “at this point in his Presidency” — every single Democratic President since World War II has had worse approval ratings during his first (full) term. The only exception would be Kennedy, who was denied a full term.
Biden is currently polling at 42%. In their first (full) terms, Truman hit 36%, Johnson 35%, Carter 28%, Clinton 37%, and Obama 38%. Truman, Clinton, and Obama were all reelected after hitting those lows. Only Carter ran for a second term and lost. (Johnson would have been eligible to run for a second full term, but chose not to.)
Biden’s unique among Democrats in hitting 42% during his first year. A lot’s happened his first year, but I think it’s mostly the pandemic not ending (and all the economic and supply-chain problems that go along with it), and the Afghani government’s surrender to the Taliban. Fortunately for him, if the infrastructure package he just signed pays economic dividends and Afghanistan fades from the news, there will be plenty of time for his ratings to rebound before 2024.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/democrats-faced-similar-problems-history.html
Truman and Johnson’s first terms weren’t “full”, having taken over for predecessors who died.
And don’t forget George HW Bush’s ratings were over 90% after the end of the Gulf War. A year and a nalf later, he lost his bid for reelection
Another thing that has been a big load against Biden is something he had little to do with and that is inflation. This was cause by the pandemic itself mostly – this is economics. A huge drop in demand followed later by a big rise. The logistics chain is all screwed up. Gas prices go up to get the inflation going even more. All of this will. pass eventually but for now it is all bad and Biden gets the blame. He even gets the blame for anti-vaccine folks dying in large numbers. Not too far into the future the number in the U.S. will be 800,000 dead. Mandatory vaccines was working but the crybaby republicans hate it. Can’t you remember in the Constitution where it said you can’t mandate vaccinations. Just make sure I have a gun.
So Biden had nothing to do with increased demand? When he campaigned on increasing demand?
‘U.S. Oil Product Demand Is Set For A Biden Boost In 2021’
‘The expected stimulus package includes financial aid to low-income American families, extended unemployment insurance payments, and billions of dollars in support to state and local governments to avoid layoffs of state employees. Together with a sizeable infrastructure package and an increased likelihood of additional short-term stimulus packages down the road, the Democratic policies create a definite oil products demand upside.’
‘After a blitz of executive orders in the opening days of his presidency, Biden is on the verge of achieving the first major piece of his multi-pronged relief and recovery plan, a $1.9tn coronavirus stimulus package expected to reach his desk by the end of next week.’
An almost 2 trillion dollar stimulus package, and Biden had nothing to do with increasing demand?
The midterms will be spectacular!
The trouble with most of that dialogue is – it’s just BS. The build back better less than 2 trillion that has not even passed as yet, it could hardly be inflationary. Besides that bill and whatever amount is over 10 years. Most of it is inflation reducing. The infrastructure bill that did pass is also not inflationary and covers many years. The earlier one that was passed because of the pandemic probably was a cause. Now if you want to talk about 800 billion in military spending in one year, that is inflationary. Also by the way, this last bill has taxes in it to pay for most of it. Giving the rich a 2 billion dollar tax break, the only legislation that Trump even did, now that was inflationary.
AND, if I’m not mistaken, higher inflation is a world wide phenomenon, not limited to the US.
SO you start claiming that inflation is caused by demand, which Biden had nothing to do with,
I point out that Biden campaigned on increasing demand and lots of articles at the time of his inauguration boasted about the Biden effect.
You respond with fury saying Biden hasn’t been able to increase demand in the way he wanted, just hours after lamenting how increased demand has derailed Biden’s ratings.
The Democrats are going to get smashed in the midterms and they will have no idea why it happened.
It will be such fun.
BTW, Biden is giving 70% of millionaires a tax break and Trump’s bills were not inflationary. I know that because there was little inflation until the Big Guy said free money was going to go out the door if people voted Democrat. The Democrat ad was a picture of a check for 2000 dollars. Biden said ‘Vote Democrat and the checks go out of the door.’
You can still win the midterms if Biden ups the bribe to 5000 doilars if you vote Democrat. It’s your only chance.
Clueless voters that fail to see the alternative to Biden is danger to the country. Biden and the Dems could sell their story better but I doubt it would make much difference.
That’s the primary factor in my opinion. Clueless voters. The press is complicit in that of course. Heck, even a majority of ‘our’ side are part of the problem. If nothing else they talk about the bogus issues and accusations the Republican machine raises as if they are legitimate. We are too stupid to hold onto a democratic republic. The Mitch McConnells of society are well on their way to taking it away from us, and we are helping them.
The Republican Party, with all its negatives, has an incredible PR operation. They really know how to message. Lies, truth, who cares. Even Republican legislators, who voted against the infrastructure bill, are claiming credit for it in their districts. The Democratic Party has two major problems. They are utterly incompetent when it comes to messaging, and they are deathly afraid of the far left minority. They have not been able to sell the various successes that Biden has had such as the lowest unemployment in decades, passage of the infrastructure bill, and the BBB plan that is on its way to passage as well. Sheer incompetence and continued deference to the far left will cost the Dems in 2022 and 2024. The mainstream media is also in good part responsible for the current debacle. They will pick on every wart or problem of a Democratic administration without compromise and only grudgingly report on the successes. On the other hand, Republicans can get away with murder and the MSM will barely report it. I firmly believe the press is deathly afraid of the Republican party and considers the Democratic Party a bunch of patsies that are easily bullied.
I love when people blame the media. It’s ridiculous. The media couldn’t be more supporting of Biden and the Dems if Jen Psaki handed out their talking points. I’d invite you to look at a site like RealClearPolitics to see the juxatposition of conservative vs. liberal press, or at a conservative site like Townhall, to see how easy the press is on the Dems, and how little they do for the Republicans. Maybe the truth is that no one wants what the Dems are selling.
I know this is 50 years old, but have you forgotten the time that a Democrat literally got away with AT LEAST manslaughter? Ted Kennedy was the ‘Lion of the Senate’. He died never having been punished for his crime.
Yah, that’s a long time ago. Things change. No argument. But I would like to ask when has a Republican politician gotten away with anything like that? And I don’t mean “This or that policy lead directly to the deaths of innocent people”. I mean actually drinking, driving, crashing a car, and then walking away from the scene of the crime. Ted Kennedy was in the senate for over 40 years after Chappaquiddic. And did anything happen to him? No. So while the incident was 50 years ago, he got away with it for 40.
Does Caitlyn Jenner count? I don’t really think he lost his bid for governor due to his DUI/manslaughter but he didn’t win either.
Not familiar with that. But if she killed a man and didn’t serve jail time, and is a Republican.. then yah, I’d say it counts.
That being said, she’s not part of some political dynasty. If killing someone prevented her from being Governor, then unlike Ted Kennedy, she didn’t get a consolation prize of being ‘The Lion of the Senate’. It’s a much less public and egregious case.
Besides, was she even affiliated with the Republican party at that point? I mean, presumably she was registered as a Republican, but I recall seeing South Park mock that from before she actually did anything political other than simply support Trump.
I mean, you’re not wrong that it does count. But it just doesn’t have the same feel of excessive injustice as Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick.
Also looking up a brief article about the incident, an LA County District Attorney dropped the case. It’s not impossible that someone in the LA legal offices would give leniency to someone just because they were a Republican, but that seems… unlikely. If the acquittal wasn’t above board (it mentions there not being enough evidence, which might be the case) then it’s more likely that money changed hands, than that a Los Angelos county official said “I want to keep this pro-Trump trans-woman out in public.” Kennedys escape was almost certainly due to his political dynasty. Jenner’s case looks, at a glance, much murkier.
Jonathan Chait triggers the propaganda alert. He was in favour of the Iraq war, and urged liberals to vote Trump and is now best known for his spectacularily bad takes. It‘s interesting how he reports on health care. He picks out specific positions, rather than the big topic. Now compare will the polls:
Gallup.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/4708/healthcare-system.aspx
Pew
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/29/increasing-share-of-americans-favor-a-single-government-program-to-provide-health-care-coverage/
Chait is such a dodgy writer.
I agree.
Exactly what has he done that is laudable? Not been Trump? He is easily a bigger liar than Trump about items big and small, from no vaccine mandates to his homey stories about when his house burned down. The infrastructure bill wasn’t a win for him, it was a loss. It was Sinema’s bill, and he and Pelosi tried to hold it hostage by tying it to the Reconciliation Bill. Then they folded. Afghanistan? The southern border? The transparency of his administration? The economy? Vaccine mandates? He has done nothing, and at the same time lost the goodwill that he had as Uncle Joe. What looked statesman-like during the campaign, with the help of the press, now looks like senility. Add to that the failure of his stand-ins to recognize the concerns of average Americans about the economy, whether it is Psaki’s mocking people about treadmills when they are worried about milk, or suggesting we all eat tofu for Thanksgiving. This Administration is out of touch, and it doesn’t care, because it has a compliant Press, and thinks it can do whatever it wants.
“He is easily a bigger liar than Trump…”
No need to bother reading anything further from an actually rather feeble liar himself or herself. And I do not apologize for that word to anyone. You cannot pretend there is any way that statement contains even the tiniest shred of truth, taken overall.
If anyone else would like to dispute what I just wrote, I would be delighted to engage with them—but not with you.
You have to understand – the Doctor gets much of his stuff from fox.
I keep telling you, Randall, I don’t watch Fox.
Drop the period.
Add:
‘, having already given, just above this, a graphic and obvious demonstration of myself as a liar.’
The problem with these polls is that just because people are critical of Biden doesn’t mean they won’t end up voting for him anyway, given the alternative. It’s more likely that the 2024 election will be as close as every previous one, coming down to a few hundred thousand votes in swing states. That’s why stopping Republicans from cheating is so vital.
I’m going to assume that the article writer does not believe that Biden has Alzheimers, or some other age-related degenerate mental disorder. Otherwise, that would be at the top of the list as to why his approval rating is terrible.
So then, why is the writer talking like he’s an invalid? Poor Joe! He’s being bullied by AOC! This guy has been in politics his whole life, he spent 8 years as vice president, and no small amount of time as a senator before that. And he can’t handle some 30-something former bartender? He can’t say “You’re defund the police scheme is absurd. I support criminal justice reform, but I fully denounce any plan that runs under such an absurd and radical motto!”
Biden has done NOTHING to get the radical wing under his control. You can’t even say that’s not his fault, because he was the Vice President for 8 years. If he is not an invalid, then he shares some of the blame for not warning the Democrat party over the growing power of the radicals in the party.
But of course, it’s not that Biden is an invalid who doesn’t understand whats happening. Or that he’s simply flumoxed by the radicals in his party, that have grown and festered under his watch. In the very first Democrat Primary debate, Biden said that, yes. He supports free health care for illegal immigrants. Which, by the necessity of identifying someone as an illegal immigrant and then giving them free things rather than deporting them, also includes decriminalizing illegal immigration.
The question was asked, and EVERYONE raised their hands. Sure, this was only half of the primary candidates, but don’t try to sell me that the Democrat party hasn’t lost control to the radicals. Biden believed that he had to raise his hand or lose the primaries. Presumably, he had no intention of following through on that promise, but he knew it could be used against him later on when running against Trump. And yet, he decided that it was better to lie to gain the support of the radicals, and risk the backlash in the actual election, than to say something sensible and risk backlash in the primary.
Biden is either incompetent, or he was working under the assumption that radicals controlled too much of his party, and that even as the vice-president, he was (and is) incapable of constraining them. Biden has had more time, power and name-recognition than most to stop the radicals in his own party. And he didn’t. That’s why his approval is through the floor. I’m reminded of the old Christian Trilemma now. Except instead of liar, lunatic or lord, he’s Bad, Mad, or Rad(ical). At least Jesus had one of the three options be good for him.
“And he can’t handle some 30-something former bartender.”
Ocasio-Cortez graduated cum laude from Boston University with a B.A. in both economics and international relations.
Referring to her disparagingly as a bartender, doing both her and hard-working bartenders a disservice, you reveal traits that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
If there is one thing AOC wants people to know about her, it is that she was a bartender.
But well done on totally ignoring the point that Biden cannot stop the woke Left from being the face of the party.
Whatever AOCs qualifications are… she doesn’t have anywhere near the actual experience, connections, and power that Biden has. Biden was a Senator, rather than a Representative (and thus had a bigger proportional share of the vote). He was one for decades. He was one for decades when she was born. Then he became the Vice President. Then the Democrat Nominee. Then the President.
So Biden has always had more power than her, except for the four years of the Trump administration when he wasn’t holding any office. He also has more experience at this. He’s had more time to learn the game than most other people. He’s had more time to build relationships and partnerships than her.
And he can do NOTHING to stop her and her wing of the party. He DID nothing to stop her movement when it was growing.
I’m not disrespecting bartenders. However, bartenders are not politicians. If Jerry Coyne joined the House of Representatives and achieved as much as AOC did against the will of Joe Biden, I’d be making fun of him for being beaten by a biologist at his own game.
You ignored my entire post and reduced it to me calling bartenders idiots. You want to say she was a college graduate with relevant training? Go right ahead. But experience means something. Time working in the field means something. And Joe Bidens education AND decades of experience crippled in the face of someone without any of the latter. Biden, and the people in the party who think like him, had every advantage over AOC. And they didn’t stop it.
Perhaps Joe Biden was an effective politician once. I don’t know, I’m too young. But whether through the limitations of age, or lazy overconfidence, he got stabbed in the back by some young upstart, and the movement she represents. Anyone who gets elected to be the POTUS doesn’t get benefit of the doubt. They don’t get to make excuses. You are supposed to be the best of the best of the best. And Biden is not some outsider with no connections, no experience, and no help, who can be outplayed by a weaker opponent who just has more raw power than him. He IS the man.
So, we get back to where I started. He’s either crap at his job, he’s actually gone crazy, or he supports what AOC is doing, and is just trying to pretend he doesn’t for moderate votes. The first one is the kindest explanation, and the most succinct.
Answer to the question seems to me to be simply the statistically and extraordinarily stupid and ignorant level of the people surveyed, presumably statistically ‘average’ USian voters. And, quite frankly the degree of evil exhibited.
These rotten excuses for human beings are ready to re-install as their leader the national mass murderer (Hitler was not much more than that), the one who is fast becoming an international one, with probably in the end at least 3 million deaths caused directly by him and his enablers. From Economist:

“Globalising discontent
Antipodean anti-vaxxers are learning from America’s far right
They are staging noisy protests, waving Trump flags and threatening politicians”
Take a look.
It’s pretty hard for people outside US to continue to have any sympathy at all for USians on this matter.
The national mass murderer did a lot to push the vaccines along and touted the vaccines as the best pandemic control measure, just like Biden in whose lap they fell. It’s largely state and regional authorities who are responsible for things like contact tracing or mask mandates or contact reductions, not the mass murderer (or Biden) himself. Maybe more of the idiots and ideologues on the right could have been persuaded to vaccinate if Biden and other democrats had lauded Trump for the vaccines instead of trying to downplay his role.
COVID-wise, the US and most of Europe have done worse than most East Asia-Pacific countries so far, largely due to bungling in non-pharmaceutical interventions and probably also different cultural priorities (“freedom” over safety, individual over collective, low versus high trust in government). It’s not a specifically USian or Trumpian phenomenon.
As regards mass murders, the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations all have quite a lot to answer for, with direct and indirect war casualties and the casualties of sanctions that always, hit poorer civilians and hardly ever achieve their objectives.
Listen to the mass murderer’s early interview with Woodward. Or read it, online or in the latter’s book.
Adding; due to no EDIT coming up :
I charge a conjectured ~3 million out of maybe ~20 million in the end. We’ll know a lot of pretty accurate info at least from ‘western’ countries when the (actual minus statistically expected) deaths for the period become known.
Bolsonaro is another mass murderer.
But many of that remaining < 17 million are hardly anybody else's almost direct doing, as you attempt to allude to.
Here "direct" must be interpreted in a reasonable manner. Adolph Hitler is quite reasonably regarded as a mass murderer. He did not himself directly turn the valve for the gas that killed 6 million, mostly Jewish people, at Auschwitz and other camps.
“….US and most of Europe have done worse than most East Asia-Pacific countries so far, largely due to bungling in non-pharmaceutical interventions and probably also different cultural priorities…”
And local bungling is basically what distinguishes the ‘west from the east’ is it?
I’d suggest looking at the actual numbers more carefully, and perhaps dispassionately. E.g.
Right now Canada and US have had very close to exactly the same amount of time since Covid arrived. The largely heroic, and sometimes martyr, nurses etc. in the two countries are hardly different. The availability of FREE vaccine is clear for both. But the vaccination rates are different, spectacularly different if you understand a bit the rudiments of exponential increase and decrease which apply.
And indeed take a look at the Worldometers weekly table for the whole world, zeroing in on those two countries. Deaths in past 2 weeks:
U.S. —12,132
Canada—293; but adjusts to ~2,650 when multiplied by ~9, the population difference.
And 12123/293 ~ 4.5
I very much doubt that huge difference factor is somehow mostly a cultural difference, other than the likelihood that the mass murderer would be unlikely to get more than 10% of the vote in other western countries than US.
His efforts to promote vaccines? C’mon, get serious. The idea came mostly from a Turkish immigrant to Germany and his German born wife, daughter of Turkish immigrants. Maybe they have long been on the mass murderer’s list of close personal contacts, but I rather doubt that.
You could also, for example, compare the present overall death rates from Covid, say between US and Norway, populations ~> 5 million versus ~> 330 million. You will find the US is about 15 times worse after adjustment, IIRC.
Despite strenuous effort, I just cannot seem to find either Norway nor Canada on maps of Southeast Asia.
Should be 12123/2650 = 4.5 , of course.
Sorry for four submissions in a row, but this soft-peddling the mass murderer needs to be countered everywhere with real facts. Surely tens of millions of USians are not really that indifferent to human deaths, just naive and easily duped by con artists.
There’s an article by David Starkey in The Critic magazine where he sets out a brief history of Professionals vs Rude Mechanicals – an acute value distinction between white and blue collar jobs, or professions and trades.
Now ask yourself how unresisted immigration will appear to the poorer white, black, and Latino people working blue collar jobs. There will be more competition for their jobs and more pressure to keep wages down.
Now ask yourself how ‘Defund the Police’ will appear to the poorer white, black, and Latino people living in the poorer parts of cities with higher crime rates.
So Biden’s approval figures are perhaps a consequence of the Democrats signalling willingness to lean towards the ‘liberal professions’ at the expense of the blue collar workers – and the blue collar workers feel disenfranchised.
I am in a business that employs trades people and I can tell you that immigrants are not cheaper labor than good ole white folk born and raised here for generations. I’ve heard this claim for most of my life and yet in over 30 years employing trades people I’ve never seen evidence that immigrants were taking jobs away from white folk, or anyone. The only companies that make over hiring cheaper trades people are ones that are operating illegally, using various methods to avoid payroll taxes and most especially workman’s comp insurance. And it isn’t just immigrants that those sorts of companies hire. Plenty of good ole white boys are happy to leave a legitimate job to work for cash, while it lasts.
The fact is that good ole white folk apparently don’t even want the jobs these days because it has been nearly impossible to hire any for years, well before the pandemic. Of those left in the trades the average age is old. Too old really, but in the good ole US of A that’s how we do it. Meanwhile, you can still find immigrants capable and willing to doing the work, but they are not cheap. Wages have increased dramatically in recent years, starting before the pandemic. I think that’s great by the way, wages have been nearly stagnant for decades and this is the first time I’ve ever seen increases like this. It does make business challenging when it happens so quickly though.
The New York Times had an interesting article a few weeks ago about South African immigrants being hired at 11 dollars an hour and taking away jobs from Americans willing to do the work for cheaper.
I quote some of it. Very informative article.
Growers brought in more South Africans with each passing year, and they are now employed at more than 100 farms across the Delta. Mr. Strong, 50, and several other longtime workers said they were told their services were no longer needed.
“I never did imagine that it would come to the point where they would be hiring foreigners, instead of people like me,” Mr. Strong said.
… The Delta is only one of a number of places where South Africans have been hired for agricultural work in recent years.
A valid data point. This sort of thing certainly happens. Does it happen frequently enough that it’s a problem that should be addressed? Is this a significant driver of unemployment among non-immigrants? If so, how should it be fixed? What’s the cause, who’s at fault? Is it the immigrants? Is it the employers who fire current employees in order to hire cheaper ones? Is it the whole system that allows / results in shit wages for jobs like this? Or is this just the market working as it should?
One thing that’s always been quite clear though is that the Republican Party propaganda about immigration being a critical problem and that the Democratic Party never takes it seriously, never does anything but make it worse, is bunk.
In the case that the NYT reported upon . American workers earning about 8 dollars an hour were replaced by South African immigrants earning 11 dollars an hour.
The Democratic Party does take immigration seriously. They take it very seriously. Why do they think they made sure that so many illegal immigrants could make it across the Southern Border?
So the immigrants are making more money? Is it because they are better at their jobs? Is it because the employer is doing something illegal like not paying taxes and insurance? I can guarantee you that the employer isn’t paying nearly 40% more unless they are being compelled to do so in some way (which doesn’t seem all that likely) or unless by the time it gets down to the bottom line they aren’t actually paying more money and are either straight up making more or making an investment that they hope means more money in the near future.
In any case, I don’t see how this is the fault of immigrants or immigration. Immigrants or no immigrants people lose their jobs to other people all the time. We wouldn’t want government to help these people against the interests of their employers, would we? Have the government interfere with the market? Some call that sort of thing socialism. At least when it suits them.
Judging by your last paragraph, our discussion is likely pointless. From my point of view you are either badly misinformed, or worse.
Note how he “quotes” the NYT story, but provides no link. That’s so that he can present the story in a way that supports his agenda.
Here’s the story, which is more nuanced than “immigrants are taking our jobs!”: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/12/us/black-farmworkers-mississippi-lawsuit.html
First, these are not “immigrants.” They are temporary foreign workers.
Second, it is white South Africans that are replacing black American workers.
Third, this story is about a lawsuit filed by employees of one particular farm operation. Take this and the second point together and make of it what you will.
Fourth, the workers that were let go are older (at a typical retirement age), where the TFWs are younger and willing to work longer hours. The story doesn’t suggest that there is a line up of young Americans willing to take on the job.
Lots of Canadian businesses have to hire TFWs, too, because even in regions of chronically high unemployment they can’t find Canadian citizens willing to do the work. (In those high-unemployment areas, those Canadian citizens are mostly white.) And we’re not talking field farm labour, either, although we do hire many TFWs for the harvest season in farm country. These are steady manufacturing jobs, perhaps not the most desirable work imaginable but it’s inside out of the weather. There are standards for their pay, benefits, taxes, and workers’ comp. insurance.
White folks in high-unemployment areas prefer short-term seasonal work that’s not too demanding and reliably ends, like when fishing season closes. Then they can apply for generous employment insurance benefits to tide them over for the rest of the year. That frees them up to do casual labour like home repairs off the books whenever they feel like it. A steady job in a chocolate factory or a meat-packing plant doesn’t fit that lifestyle, so TFWs on renewable contracts are the way to go. Since there is competition to attract TFWs and white local labour won’t take it at even twice the wage, “because I’d lose my benefits”, it could well be that the business has to pay more for a TFW than it would for a citizen in an economy where there was no disincentive for white natives to work at all.
This is what we mean by “structural unemployment.”
British workers are equally happy to complain about immigrants stealing jobs that it turns out they are not, in fact, willing to do themselves: “The Day the Immigrants Left” https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00r3qyw
That TV show was from 2010 – long before Brexit – and should have been a warning about the underlying reality. Instead, something like 5 million tonnes of cauliflower and other crops have been ploughed back into the soil this year because they couldn’t be harvested – a shocking waste of food and a serious loss of income to the farmers. Similar things are playing out in the livestock sector of the UK’s agriculture industry – farmers are slaughtering pigs in ways that mean that they can’t go into the food chain, because there’s a chronic shortage of veterinary staff at licensed abattoirs.
Badly informed? I was going by the NYT article.
It said the employers used iSouth African immigrants because they had a much better work ethic than the American workers that were displaced.
Sorry if that upsets you.
Reading Chait’s litany of senators and their corporate sponsors reminds me that the Senate is a club of multimillionaires.
I think it was the late Robin Williams who suggested that politicians should have to wear NASCAR-style jackets covered with the logos of their sponsors so we know who owns them.
😄
You may be interested in Snopes on this.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/robin-williams-nascar-drivers/
I remembered the joke from one of his stand up routines though I don’t care enough to find out which one. He did say it, he just wasn’t the first. It’s strange that the Scopes article doesn’t seem to acknowledge his stand up career.I guess they don’t care either.
Until the last line, no mention of the #1 thing.
Biden’s “support” in getting elected had little to do with Biden. It was a one-issue campaign …
“We hate Trump.”
I want Biden to be The New FDR. So does Robert Reich. See his Twitter profile for more on this.
Most voters, including many Republicans, DO want universal child care, DO want universal healthcare, DO want taxes raised on the super rich, DO want to see a fuller Build Back Better program, DO want to see cannabis legalized on the federal level, etc. The problem with the Democrats is that they are lousy at selling ideas. (Also, “defund the police” seems like a straw man to me now, as I am not aware of anyone in the past few months calling for this. True, some people are calling to de-militarize the police, which I favor, but that’s not the same thing.)
I still don’t know what this so-called “far left” is. Sanders isn’t “far left.” He’s a Democratic Socialist. He just wants to see this country have policies on par with what Scandinavia has, which is to say there’s nothing “far left” about the above-mentioned items. (I always surround those two words with quote marks because those two words coupled together annoy the crap out of me. “Far left” seems like a talking point created by Republicans in order to create disarray among the Democrats, but that’s a subject for another day.)
Do Americans actually know that the entire world is laughing at Biden and there are endless clips of him talking gibberish, forgetting things, being unable to read the teleprompter, and rambling on about long dead sportsmen in true Grandpa Simpson style?
As for Kamala Harris….
Here in Spain, I am not laughing at Biden. I do laugh at many Americans though.
Sorry to break it to you, but it’s Trump we were laughing at. A lot. He was an absolute buffoon, way worse than G W. Bush was. Biden is quite respected here in France, except by Trump/far right fans.
Biden is respected far more in the UK and the rest of Europe than Trump ever was. In the Reagan years Spitting Image remorselessly mocked the Gipper, but even he looked relatively compos mentis compared to Trump. (Sadly, not much of the show’s “The President’s Brain Is Missing” sections are available online: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_NDinsd8Qc0 )
And it takes quite a bit to make Dubya appear statesmanlike, but the Donald managed that, too.
Imagine being so tribal and deluded as to call his long string of absolute policy debacles “hickups”, and to characterize his presidency as even remotely “centrist”. The Afghanistan withdrawal was “untidy”? It was inarguably the worst foreign policy debacle since Vietnam. We gifted our arch-enemy not just a country, but a multi-billion dollar taxpayer-funded arsenal. Thousands of Americans, green card holders and allies abandoned to the Taliban. Launched a “revenge” drone strike, told America he’d struck back at ISIS, when in fact he’d merely killed aid workers and children. The worst border crisis in the history of our country, with millions of aliens streaming unchecked and unaccounted for into our nation. Worst economy since the Great Depression, with inflation not only getting worse, but facing the prospect of a 7-trillion dollar boondoggle added to it. People paid not to work. Hyperinflation imminent. Completely nonsensical and authoritarian Covid plan. Unconstitutional mandates. Civil liberties suspended. An entire generation of children kept out of school for a year. The right to private property banished. Killed thousands of jobs on a pipeline for the sake of “environmentalism”, tanking gas prices, and then supported a different RUSSIAN pipeline in Europe. Men in girl’s bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports. Systemic racism in school curricula, elimination of standards. A total embrace of “equity”, and a complete rejection “equality of opportunity” and everything Martin Luther King stood for. Completely divisive president, made the preposterous claim that white supremacists were the greatest threat facing the nation. His physical and mental decline have made him an international figure of pity, if not ridicule. I could go on and on and on. If this guy didn’t have all of MSM, big Tech, academia, Hollywood, and partisan bloggers like you running interference for him, he would be rightly regarded as what he is: the worst president in the history of the country.
Should the compensation for US slavery include teeth knocked out by a slave master to his own slaves?
Is it enough to provide dental care for slaves and their families to have a clear conscience?
Should slaves whipped with whips, their master should provide them with a cream with substances that soothe irritations and prevent infections?