Cont: The Biden Presidency Part II

[Delvo]

Biden keeps sinking lower in the polls (now below common Trump levels), Kamala is doing even worse, the media's already gearing up to force either her or Pete on us next while he's doing even worse than Kamala, the DP overall now has a 10-point poll deficit against the RP overall and that's without even taking into account the 5-point advantage the system normally gives the RP anyway, and, although all of this is clearly a result of not doing anything for the people or even apparently trying to, you know they and all their advisers are sitting around telling each other it's because they've tried too hard to do too much, just like all their media keeps telling them too...

Meanwhile, the Republicans are already not only gearing up to permanently end democracy the next time they're back on top and trying to get schools to teach the kind of view of the country that you'd expect from Chinese or North Korean schools, but also even stealing campaign ideas that were or should be the Democrats', like running against Nina Turner on Medicare For All & pretending she's against it, and a Republican marijuana-legalization legislative bill while Biden sits around refusing to do it by Executive Order.

So not only are we unmistakably heading for an entirely one-party system, but the party with a track record of actually getting what they want done is showing signs of realization of what it is that the people actually want and responsiveness to it. Result: at this point, it's more likely that we'll get progressive policies implemented, and get them implemented sooner, by Republicans than by Democrats.

 

[dudalb]

In the meantime the virtual summit between Biden and Xi seems to have not accomplished much.
Except for people like me suspect the motives of Xi even more with his threat over Taiwan.
Biden has to tread carefully here. He can't be seen as being too weak or accomidating to Xi.

 

[Mike!]

In the meantime the virtual summit between Biden and Xi seems to have not accomplished much.
Except for people like me suspect the motives of Xi even more with his threat over Taiwan.
Biden has to tread carefully here. He can't be seen as being too weak or accomidating to Xi.

Accommodating? According to Xi, they're "Old friends".

 

[dudalb]

Accommodating? According to Xi, they're "Old friends".

Which Biden needs to distance himself from.

 

[Bob001]

.....
Result: at this point, it's more likely that we'll get progressive policies implemented, and get them implemented sooner, by Republicans than by Democrats.

What on earth makes you think the Republicans have any interest in promoting policies popular among voters? The ACA was enormously successful among the people who benefited from it; the Repubs tried hard to kill it for around eight years. A large percentage of Americans support abortion rights, tougher gun control and higher taxes on the rich; not Repub leaders. Etc., etc. The Republican party is fundamentally against the idea of government, and has gained its power by promoting racial and cultural grievance among people who feel left behind.

 

[Tero]

Biden keeps sinking lower in the polls (now below common Trump levels), Kamala is doing even worse, the media's already gearing up to force either her or Pete on us next while he's doing even worse than Kamala, the DP overall now has a 10-point poll deficit against the RP overall and that's without even taking into account the 5-point advantage the system normally gives the RP anyway, and, although all of this is clearly a result of not doing anything for the people or even apparently trying to, you know they and all their advisers are sitting around telling each other it's because they've tried too hard to do too much, just like all their media keeps telling them too...

Meanwhile, the Republicans are already not only gearing up to permanently end democracy the next time they're back on top and trying to get schools to teach the kind of view of the country that you'd expect from Chinese or North Korean schools, but also even stealing campaign ideas that were or should be the Democrats', like running against Nina Turner on Medicare For All & pretending she's against it, and a Republican marijuana-legalization legislative bill while Biden sits around refusing to do it by Executive Order.

So not only are we unmistakably heading for an entirely one-party system, but the party with a track record of actually getting what they want done is showing signs of realization of what it is that the people actually want and responsiveness to it. Result: at this point, it's more likely that we'll get progressive policies implemented, and get them implemented sooner, by Republicans than by Democrats.

On day 301 Biden was at 43 and Trump 38%. It is not "sinking" it's at the roughly 43% it was at 2 weeks ago. Flattened. Trump flattened at 38% occasionally 41%.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

 

[Tero]

I was looking at the popularity polls and it immediately became clear that at least 38% of voters were never going to change their mind about Trump. Democrats are not nearly as loyal, but the trend is the same.

So, a poll question they never ask is "would you rather have another person from the same party as president?"

 

[ZiprHead]

Less than 48 hours after the political press unleashed collective convulsions about the apocalyptic prospects facing the Democratic Party in the wake of two statewide elections last week, a wave of good news has scrambled the media’s preferred storyline.

Addicted to “Biden crisis” reporting since August, and often bending common sense in order to adhere to the Dems in Disarray narrative, the Beltway media now face a conundrum. Do they stick with their GOP-friendly script about an ineffectual president in free fall? Or do they follow the facts and report on Biden’s increasingly impressive list of accomplishments and a runaway U.S. economy that’s flourishing?

Three events unraveled the Biden Doomsday narrative on Friday. A white-hot jobs report not only counted more than 530,000 new jobs created in the month of October, but the Labor Department revised its estimates for September and August and confirmed an additional 235,000 positions were created — or 766,000 U.S. jobs we didn’t know about until Friday. That shocker naturally sent to the Dow Jones upward, ending the day at yet another all-time high under Biden, 36,327. Since he was elected last year, the stock market is up a jaw-dropping 40 percent, and has created $14 trillion in new wealth.

Then as the clock ticked down Friday night, Democrats passed the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, the largest transportation package in U.S. history. The sprawling and historic legislation will produce hundreds of thousands of union jobs, transform the nation’s transportation system and represents the largest passenger rail, roads and bridges investment in 70 years.

Combined, the three Friday wins produced the type of day most sitting presidents dream about. They also came amidst a premature funeral procession, eagerly sponsored by the media, which featured an avalanche of doomsday pronouncements following disappointing Democratic election showings in Virginia and New Jersey on Tuesday. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

How reluctant was the press to sing Biden’s praise on Friday? Both “ABC World News Tonight” and “NBC Nightly News” ignored the stunning October jobs report. “Nightly News” though, did find time to report on Biden’s “plummeting” approval rating Friday night.

https://pressrun.media/p/wave-of-good-news-for-biden-scrambles

Many, many more examples in the link.

 

[Aridas]

To poke at a couple things that might be of some interest for consideration -

Inflation Misreported by Media, Good for Many Workers, Bad for Big Banks

The larger point, however, that he explains today is why inflation can be actually be good for workers but not for big corporations like banks: "Household debt in the United States is a gigantic number, difficult to comprehend. It's like $14.5 trillion -- that is mortgages, credit card debt, student debt, it's a whole bunch of things... And when there's inflation of this kind, 6.2%, that is around $850 billion-worth of that debt falling in value. That is a transfer of wealth from creditors, the people who loaned out the money, to borrowers."

Those creditors/lenders "are the richest people in America, and they are losing a lot of money. And they don't like that! People with tons of money do not like losing enormous amounts of it," Schwarz notes. "Inflation is the absolute worst for people who have loaned out a lot of money. It is something that is never discussed, because it is a sort of clear class issue. It makes you realize that, just as a great economy for regular people is not so great for people at the top, it makes you think about what inflation actually does, and who it affects the most."

While he recognizes that "inflation can be real trouble for some people," (and there is some nuance here) the overall effects are often more positive for the working class and not even particularly harmful to those on a fixed income, such as the elderly living on Social Security, which increases each year as its tied to inflation.

Elsewhere...

'A gold mine for us': Republicans root for economic calamity for the American people

With eyes aglow, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, Senate Republicans’ campaign chief, allowed himself to imagine just how bad things could get for the American public.

“You can see what’s going to happen next. We’re going to continue to have inflation, and then interest rates will go up,” Scott told the Wall Street Journal, clamoring for the Federal Reserve to raise rates, thereby making borrowing more expensive for consumers and slowing economic growth, among other things.

“This is a gold mine for us,” Scott added, clearly unable to contain his glee.

Republicans have been pounding home inflationary concerns for months in hopes that they will spiral out of control and backfire on Democrats in the midterms next year. But Republicans aren’t just cheerleading for economic calamity; they are doing their level best to make it a reality.

Typical GOP.

 

[The Don]

The right in the US claim that the media is hopelessly biased towards the left. IMO that claim is utter garbage and you only have to compare and contrast FoxNews coverage of President Trump to the mainstream media's coverage of President Biden.

FoxNews sang President Trump's praises even if there was nothing to praise and never deviated from the narrative that he was the finest President ever. OTOH as Ziprhead's link shows, the mainstream media are ignoring excellent economic data (jobs, economic growth, the stock market) and major legislative breakthroughs to instead focus on poll numbers which show that President Biden's popularity has "plummeted" to being slightly higher than President Trump's.

It's not the media's job to be cheerleaders, but IMO the public deserve fair reporting.

 

[Aridas]

The right in the US claim that the media is hopelessly biased towards the left. IMO that claim is utter garbage and you only have to compare and contrast FoxNews coverage of President Trump to the mainstream media's coverage of President Biden.

FoxNews sang President Trump's praises even if there was nothing to praise and never deviated from the narrative that he was the finest President ever. OTOH as Ziprhead's link shows, the mainstream media are ignoring excellent economic data (jobs, economic growth, the stock market) and major legislative breakthroughs to instead focus on poll numbers which show that President Biden's popularity has "plummeted" to being slightly higher than President Trump's.

It's not the media's job to be cheerleaders, but IMO the public deserve fair reporting.

To poke at this a bit further, at last check, most of the people at the top when it comes to MSM are right-wingers. Sure, most of the lowest level employees are left-wingers, but they aren't the one choosing topic of the day, direction, what actually gets published, etc.

That Republicans caught red-handed doing bad things worked hard to create the "they're just biased against us" narrative (possibly actually with some help from the aforementioned right-wingers on top) and actually were successful is a bit eye-rolling.

 

[pgwenthold]

FoxNews sang President Trump's praises even if there was nothing to praise and never deviated from the narrative that he was the finest President ever. OTOH as Ziprhead's link shows, the mainstream media are ignoring excellent economic data (jobs, economic growth, the stock market)

Oddly (not really), these are all the same metrics that Trump loved to bleat anytime he could. But now that Biden meets them, it's all about ... gas prices.

Despite the fact that Trump was the one who claimed that low gas prices were bad for the country.

 

[The Don]

Mrs Don pointed out that when Obama was President, you hardly heard about him from one week to the next here in the UK. The same is true for Joe Biden, unless they're here on a state visit then it's an occasional reference in the case that something exceptional happens.

OTOH President Trump was near or at the top of the headlines every single day of his campaign, his Presidency and even the immediate aftermath of it. How was he able to monopolise the news so readily and still be apparently essential viewing ?

Regarding the "left wing main stream media" rhetoric, I presume that this is another manifestation of the right wing culture of victimhood.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

Oddly (not really), these are all the same metrics that Trump loved to bleat anytime he could.

Do you remember Trump’s repeated dire warnings of a stock market crash if Biden got elected? Well, this from Fortune:

“The stock market’s performance during Biden’s first 100 days has officially bested everyone from Trump back through Truman.”

But Trump follows a very simple and obvious game plan learned from Roy Cohn and fine tuned by Roger Stone: take credit for anything good that happens and blame anything bad on someone else. And completely ignore failed predictions.

Sadly, it seems to work amazingly well, at least on a significant number of voters.

 

[Tero]

We are getting our "socialism." Bernie got me senior eye care. Manchin will remove that and paid family leave. But 90% of it will stay.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Kamala Harris will become the first woman to actually hold Presidential power while Biden undergoes a routine colonoscopy later today.

 

[Tero]

Kamala Harris will become the first woman to actually hold Presidential power while Biden undergoes a routine colonoscopy later today.

He won't need another one, if things went well, till he is 89. Will he live that long? He is already NOW at the average life expectancy of US males.

Must be all that salt we eat. Never too late for "Mediterranean diet."

 

[Delvo]

Mrs Don pointed out that when Obama was President, you hardly heard about him from one week to the next here in the UK. The same is true for Joe Biden, unless they're here on a state visit then it's an occasional reference in the case that something exceptional happens.

Biden's drawn a lot less attention than Trump here, too.

How was he able to monopolise the news so readily and still be apparently essential viewing ?

Media outlets like drama and he was dramatic.

Regarding the "left wing main stream media" rhetoric, I presume that this is another manifestation of the right wing culture of victimhood.

That plus a definite pro-(corporate)-Democrat bias plus the right's failure to distinguish between most corporate Democrats (favored by most media) and the leftier Democrats (hated by most media).

 

[Warp12]

Kamala Harris will become the first woman to actually hold Presidential power while Biden undergoes a routine colonoscopy later today.

He probably didn't even need one. But he was willing to take one for the team so she might get some positive press for a change.

 

[Lurch]

He probably didn't even need one. But he was willing to take one for the team so she might get some positive press for a change.

And I thought I was cynical. Ah, well, it is a coping mechanism.