Posted on 01/21/2022 4:25:17 AM PST by Kaslin
Joe Biden campaigned as a moderate elder statesman who could help heal a divided country. The press played up the narrative that Biden put in place a team of professionals and technocrats who would provide real governing expertise as a salve from the chaos of the Trump years. The truth, of course, has been just the opposite.
Many Americans are coming to believe that, contrary to the expectations going in, the Biden administration is a rudderless, leaderless, overly ideological mess. Biden did not help himself at his rare press conference Wednesday.
When challenged on America's declining faith in the competence of his government, Biden denied reality. He said the Afghanistan withdrawal was never going to be easy. This directly contradicts his assurances before the withdrawal when he said we could do it "responsibly, deliberately and safely." Biden's earlier statements are not a secret, and everyone knows that 13 American soldiers died after Biden outsourced security around the withdrawal to the Taliban. Deflecting this reality is dishonest, and it's not helpful to Biden politically.
On COVID-19, Biden said he's done remarkably well. This is hard to square with the standard Biden set in the election, when he said Trump was unfit for office after being responsible for 220,000 COVID-19 deaths. By this metric, Biden is now responsible for 400,000 COVID-19 deaths -- the opposite of his promise to come in and "shut down" the virus.
In a rare admission, Biden acknowledged that there have been delays in his administration getting testing kits out. He didn't mention that those delays were directly caused by his own staff. Back in October, testing experts recommended that the Biden administration send COVID-19 tests to American households before the holidays. Biden's staff rejected the idea. As a result, people in towns across America waited in incredibly long lines for tests over the holidays. Biden, nonetheless, expressed continued confidence in this team.
Biden also flatly denied the charge that he was trying to pull the country far to the left. His signature legislative priority, on the other hand, the so-called Build Back Better bill, calls for increased federal government intervention at every stage of American life.
Worst of all, when challenged on his recent remarks equating those who oppose his voting bills with racists from the past, Biden denied the charge even as he continued to press it forward. Then he actually called into question the legitimacy of the coming midterm elections if his attempts to federalize election rules do not succeed.
This again is a story that is not complicated. Many states drastically liberalized voting rules during the COVID-19 pandemic. They increased early voting, expanded mail-in voting, implemented drive-thru voting, counted late votes and even allowed ballot harvesting. Some states are now pulling back from some of these COVID-19 expansions. We need rules for voting. Democrats believe looser rules help them. Republicans believe tighter rules help them. The lines must be drawn somewhere, and it's legitimate to debate them. However, it's flat-out wrong for the president of the United States to pretend that racism is at the root of state resistance to wide-open federally imposed voting mechanisms.
The president's race-card play is not only below the dignity of his office, but it's another example of the amateur nature of his administration's tactics. He needs the support of Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin to pass his bills. Who decided calling them racists was a good strategy? This follows the earlier strategy of Biden's team publicly calling into question Manchin's honesty when he opposed Biden's spending legislation. The White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain just days ago admitted this mistake, telling reporters "One lesson we learned in the first year is, I think, the less we talk about our negotiations with specific senators and congressmen, the better we are. So I'm going to say our talks with Sen. Manchin will proceed directly and privately."
Not publicly trashing your most necessary allies was a lesson learned? Those lessons are supposed to be learned before you run the White House.
The most amazing thing about the Biden news conference was how little he seems to know about how badly things are going. His popularity is in freefall. He's polling at the lowest levels of his presidency. One recent poll by Politico found that 58% of people don't think Biden is energetic. Fifty-seven percent don't think he's a strong leader. Worst of all, 49% of people do not think Biden is even mentally fit. And a full two-thirds of all Americans think the country is on the wrong track.
Biden's troubles extend to his party as well. According to a recent Gallup poll, more Americans were likely to support the Republican Party over the Democratic Party than at any point since 1995. When Biden took office, 49% of people described themselves as Democrats, versus only 40% who identified as Republicans. It was the largest lead Democrats had in the poll's history. Today, it's 47% describing themselves as Republicans and only 42% as Democrats. This is the largest Republican lead since 1991. In just one year under Biden, Democrats have squandered their largest lead in history to, in turn, achieve one of their largest deficits in history. That's hard to do.
His first news conference in ages was an opportunity for Biden to reverse these ominous trends. The American people are reasonable and have proven time and again that they can forgive mistakes. Biden could have gained by leveling about his missteps and explaining how he will fix them. By choosing instead to obfuscate, spin and deflect, Biden wasted the opportunity. The catastrophic nature of Biden's mistakes, the amateurishness of his team and the apparent weakness of the president himself are now top of mind for many Americans. I would not want to be a Democrat on the ballot in 2022.
Joe Biden campaigned as a moderate elder statesman who could help heal a divided country. ...No he did not, Neil. His campaign speeches, sparse as they were, were full of radicalism.
“heal a divided country”, funny how this is the rats mantra insinuating that everyone else caused this divide not them. Create a crisis have the solution
bookmark
And they are not exactly “leaderless”. We just have no idea who is really leading it!
I look forward to Joe’s State of the Union speech.
But maybe we'll see what he REALLY wants passed....and I'm betting it'll be all about climate...which is half a trillion. Climate pays....all other stuff...we pay and will be forever and can be done though the individual state.
Bottom line...it won't be about the children or the aging...it'll be about MONEY and POWER.
Perhaps his handlers can tape his eyes so one half of his brain doesn't suddenly decide it's nappy time...
Pointing out the similarities between what china would want and what joe is doing would be a start to clarifying what’s going on.
I sure don’t. I’ve so far been strong enough to muscle through and dissect the clever lies by Clinton and Obama each year they did theirs, but Biden? Not sure I’ll be up for that, certainly not the whole thing. He’s just too blatant in his deceit, due to his weak body, and mind. I bet most of his own supporters won’t even watch.
He didn’t make the decision to do that disaster. Someone put him out there.
Using a man that is gone, is desperation, and embarrassing.
When I lived in China the government was always promoting a “Harmonious Society” Seems like.the same thing as ‘Heal a divided society “ to me.
What it really means is do it our way or go away.
The author wrote: “His first news conference in ages was an opportunity for Biden to reverse these ominous trends.”
An unrealistic expectation, in so many ways. Starting with the fact that Xiden, a trojan horse, is wrong on everything, and he makes up stuff and lies. Even his major media party pals can’t save him... their lies don’t work either. In the real world, where most people live, Xiden can’t erase gasoline prices, increasingly empty shelves in the grocery stores, higher prices, restaurants/stores with shortened hours or shuttered altogether, and car dealer lots with no new cars for months. Instead, he has more important things to do .... like he rants about racist GOP obstructing his 666 plan, or federal takeover of elections to ensure the demonkraps permanent power. When the racist accusations fell on deaf ears outside their party, his party extended the attempted racist shaming/public pressure to two of their own senators. Even some celebrities and a college football coach were recruited to apply pressure. It just ain’t working. Very very sad for our country that journalism,, the 4th estate died.
My belief is that while joe Biden holds the office of President, all presidential actions are controlled and implemented by a cabal of fierce left wing activists.
Biden has no control at all
Jill is a Delaware nothingness so she is not the locus of the left wingers
Exactamundo.
Anyone who understands the history of this country would know that the system of givernment is one of divided givernment and limited powers. Well FDR finally got the courts to start the descent into unlimited powers without constitutional amendments and the demonkraps-turned-fascist-communists are for consolidating the power into one party, theirs.
This is not overnight event, but has been decades in the making through the process of leftist political gradualism. The only impediment remaining seems to be the voters and 2020 showed that it is possible to make their votes irrelvant on a very large scale. Except enough people are on to what they are doing. As long as demonkraps exist in any significant number in givernment, there is zero probability of “healing” anything.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.