So, Kyle Kulinski covered an article about how Biden is apparently angry behind the scenes over 2024, and is apparently yelling and cursing and stuff. I dont wanna focus on his coverage since he's kinda been a bit of a biased hack lately due to his gaza derangement syndrome, but I do wanna react to this article from my own nuanced perspective. As you guys know, I'm kinda begrudgingly pro Biden at this point, for lack of a better term. I dont love the guy, but I kinda feel like we're stuck in this arranged marriage with him politically where as much as we wish there was someone else who could come along and fill his shoes and win the election in the process, it really does seem like we're stuck with him, and we gotta make the best of this situation that we can. Biden ain't amazing, but he also ain't bad, and given the threat of Trump being full anti democracy at this point, I kinda feel like we gotta rally behind the guy and yeah. This is what we're stuck with. It's not a good situation to me, I've kinda wanted to avoid this very situation at all costs, but now that we're here, we gotta make do with what we got. ya know, fight with the army we have, not with what we want. As such, I feel like I can be fair here. I can give the guy credit where credit is due, but also be hard on him when I have to. And to be fair, while there are points of this article I sympathize with Biden, he does come off as kinda out of touch here. So, let's get to it.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden was seething.
In a private meeting at the White House in January, allies of the president had just told him that his poll numbers in Michigan and Georgia had dropped over his handling of the war between Israel and Hamas.
Both are battleground states he narrowly won four years ago, and he can’t afford any backsliding if he is to once again defeat Donald Trump. He began to shout and swear, a lawmaker familiar with the meeting said.
To be fair, I don't blame him. I also do polling predictions. I know exactly where the country is, and I appreciate exactly how screwed Biden is. He won last time with a very narrow margin, and that was likely the dude's high water mark, meaning any and all subsequent elections he's going to decline in numbers while Trump is gonna stay the same or go up. It's just the nature of one party being in power and the other out of power. Most elections are referendums on the guy in power and there's a lot of reasons to hate on Biden. He has this extremely broad coalition that is hard to turn out. It's like trying to use a 16 core CPU in gaming with poor single thread abilities. Maybe it could beat an 8 core CPU with stronger single thread if you can use all the cores, but if you can't, you're screwed. Biden's coalition relies on triangulation, which has been a very unstable strategy for democrats since its inception in the 1990s. it works when they've been out of power for a while, but in power, their coalition implodes and falls apart.
I also have to say that I do sympathize with Biden over this Hamas crap. I actually agree with and largely approve of Biden's handling of the situation, and am deeply frustrated with the left on the subject. They might have a point that Netanyahu is kinda going into "genocide" and "war crimes" territory, and rightly disapprove of his actions. HOWEVER, and this is important, the left is...extremely unreasonable. They demand too much, and honestly, I dont think Biden can realistically deliver what they want. And even though Biden is clearly trying to shift left to appease them, it's not working. It reminds me of what happened with Johnson back in the day where he was like "I don't understand, I gave them everything that they wanted, why do they still hate me?" I feel like Biden is in that situation right now with this.
And it really is frustrating that such a narrow segment of the population could end up screwing over Biden over the entire election. Biden literally needs every vote he can get, and the left is just going completely bugnuts on this in a way that he cannot properly control or rectify. I'd be frustrated too. Heck, I AM frustrated with the left. Like, I keep asking, is this REALLY worth throwing the election away over? Because I don't think it is. I don't care about this issue, and while I admit some people might think I'm cold and heartless, I don't really care in this instance. I mean, after delving into it and all, and watching how everyone is behaving, I'm to the point of just washing my hands and just letting whatever happens, happens. If they wanna kill each other and have unreasonable demands of each other, good luck, I'd rather focus on stuff that matters. I literally think a permanent solution to this crisis is a "what color do you want your dragon" level ask.
Anyway...
He believed he had been doing what was right, despite the political fallout, he told the group, according to the lawmaker.
Asked about the episode, Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said: “President Biden makes national security decisions based on the country’s national security needs alone — no other factor.”
And you know what? My honest analysis is that Biden is right. I understand exactly what he's doing, and why he's doing it, and even more so, I agree and sympathize with him. And honestly, i dont know why people care so much. This isn't a strategically important battle for the left. it doesn't advance our domestic causes alone. It's just a pointless virtue signal from political extremists who are terminally online and don't know how to go outside and touch grass for even 5 minutes. This is what all that social justice virtue signalling crap does to an MFer.
For months, Democrats have watched the 2024 campaign unfold with rising alarm as the sitting president struggles to gain ground against his defeated predecessor. Frustrations rippling through the party have reached the top, with Biden at times second-guessing travel decisions and communications strategies that have left much of the electorate clueless about his record, interviews with nearly 20 lawmakers, present and past administration officials and Biden allies show.
The starting gun for the general election campaign fired last week as Biden wrapped up the Democratic nomination. Yet he is still searching for ways to impress upon voters that he deserves a second term by dint of policy achievements that eluded past presidents.
It's so bad even I don't have advice to give the guy. He's like dead in the water. Congress is gridlocked. The courts are stacked against him. Foreign policy is the one domain he truly owns, and everyone hates him over this gaza crap. I think he's doing the best he can but yeah, he's dead in the water and powerless and now the electorate is stabbing him 27 ways to sunday over all of these issues that are beyond his control. I mentioned Johnson earlier, but it's also like watching Jimmy Carter get blamed for literally everything when most of it was beyond his control.
History suggests it will be tough for him to recover. Biden’s 38% approval rating at this stage in the calendar is lower than that of the last three presidents who went on to lose re-election: Trump (48%), George H.W. Bush (39%) and Jimmy Carter (43%), according to Gallup survey data.
That's really bad. I kinda knew it would go this way in a sense when he was elected. Again, 2020 was his high water mark and I knew that milquetoast policies wouldnt be enough. And he hasnt even managed to accomplish most of those. And then inflation happened, and manchin and sinema tanked his agenda, and now he's getting attacked over immigration, which the republicans are stonewalling him on despite them raising the issue in the first place. And now the tiktok kids are going nuts over gaza. Again, I don't envy this guy's position. This is REALLY bad.
Biden has long believed that he isn’t getting sufficient credit for an economy that has created 15 million new jobs. Looking to reach distracted voters who may be tuning in, he told his speechwriters before the State of the Union address to tone down some of the lofty rhetoric and plainly lay out what he’s done, a person familiar with speech preparations said.
During internal discussions, he’ll press aides about which parts of his record to highlight in different states, said a second person who is familiar with the matter.
Okay, dude? Real talk. This is where Biden actually does suck hard. The neoliberal democrats need to stop going on like the economy and fine and peachy and blah blah blah. The left is the side of grievance. It's the side of "this economy is broken and we need to fix it". We understand that simply being at the "good" part of the economic cycle isnt enough.
Unemployment is down, yes, but wages arent going up, people still struggle to find work. This is because of what I always say, jobs arent the answer, and they never will be. You cant produce enough jobs to ever truly fix the economy. It just doesn't work that way. And on top of that, we have major inflation. Prices are 25% higher than they used to be. People can't afford homes, they can't even afford to rent. They can't afford groceries. Prices are still going up apparently, even though the inflation metrics say inflation is down, and people are angry about that. And democrats' messaging on this issue SUCKS. They seem to think they can just tell everyone that everything is okay, and that they need to stop being negative and whiny, and it just doesn't work that way.
Now, Biden cant pass much of an agenda here. But if I were in his shoes, I'd still be hammering home on those bread and butter issues and laying the blame at congress's feet. I'd say "I wanna do this this this and that, but congress won't." Let THEM get the hate for that. Of course, Biden is trying to look like he's doing stuff, but it kinda feels hollow because it's just the same incremental centrist BS democrats love to do to make it look like they're doing stuff while not really.
I really wanna emphasize that to some extent I dont think Biden is what we need from a policy perspective. Centrist dems are a toxic brand and in office, they suck and lose approval like this. Their vision is meh in the first place, then they don't accomplish much, and then they get destroyed.
If I felt like in the long term this would make the left stronger, I'd just let him fall apart. I mean when he got into office, this is why i was a critic from day 1. There was no honeymoon period from me, I went in hating the guy. But....again, I kinda realize at this point he's the best we got and we're stuck with him, so I'm changing my tune. If I thought that we could do better tomorrow by dumping the guy, i would still be cheerleading for doing so. Because I never was a huge fan of his. I WANT him gone, I WANT someone more progressive. I just understand that we are literally that screwed that this isn't an option, and that would make our numbers go DOWN, not up, so at this point I'm just trying to preserve what little legacy the guy's got.
Surrounded by protective aides who want to minimize the chances of a flub, the 81-year-old president has chafed at restraints that he sees as counter to his natural instincts as a retail politician, a third person familiar with internal discussions said.
He has felt cocooned at times and has been eager to get out more, meet voters face-to-face and take the fight directly to Trump, said the third person and a fourth also familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss campaign strategy and the president’s private views.
The problem is, even in this dude's best years, he was a gaffe machine. And now in old age, people wonder if he can even be coherent without guidance. There really is the age thing you gotta worry about with him, it is hurting him. I think the state of the union helped a bit, he's still gonna suffer from issues there.
And then there's the tiktok kids. "YOU'RE A WAR CRIMINAL, GENOCIDE JOE, FREE PALESTINE!" Everywhere he goes. Interacting more with voters wouldn't be pretty.
So...him getting out there, would that help? Probably not. Of course, handling him like this makes him look old and feeble too. Idk. Again, his age is just hurting him. And he's facing angry protesters. And he's a gaffe machine. And ugh.
There are signs that some within his party are also losing patience with him.
“Biden stood up in front of the whole world and said, ‘I’m ready. I’m the guy who can take down Donald Trump,’” said Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash. “So, he goddamn well better do it. We don’t have time for him to be worried about whether or not people are saying things right or the poll numbers are where they should be. I want focused energy and not defensive anger.”
Yeah maybe should focus on trump. Because that guy is a nutcase and while all eyes are on him his opponent is getting away with extremist violent rhetoric. Let's not forget that he is facing dozens of criminal charges still and he literally incited an insurrection. It really is baffling how much teflon teflon don is. Of course, part of the problem is the dems have offered nothing but lesser evil voting since at least 2016 and voters are sick of it. The idea of another biden trump rematch ENRAGES them. But again, then when you throw someone else in there people go for biden anyway. So...what can we do?
Eminently beatable
Biden has on occasion directed his ire at his tightknit senior staff. Given the successes he has had in passing consequential bills and improving the economy, Biden was irritated that his message wasn’t sinking in with the broader electorate, the sources said.
Eight months before the election, Biden’s campaign team remains confident about his chances.
A memo that campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez sent out in December suggests that it was always the plan for Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to start “ramping up” campaign travel early this year — something that is now happening.
Again this is where Biden is out of touch. His accomplishments arent much. I mean i give him as much leeway as I do for his INTENTIONS. As for what he's actually gotten passed, it's only a tiny bit. As a progressive who believes we need much larger systemic change, the dems need to stop acting like these band aid bills are huge accomplishments. They seem to think "I passed XYZ" and we're supposed to be impressed. In reality it's like "how does this help us?" And the answer is, it doesn't. Peoples lives change very little from a lot of his legislation. Anything that would've made a broader difference got shot down early on. Like the child tax credit was the most amazing thing he actually passed. It cut child poverty in half, and then it was pulled out from under him. Direct cash HELPS. Some think it causes inflation (and yes, americans are horribly informed about what causes inflation), but what seems to make people coming back is a direct change to their financial situation. Tax cuts HELP. A UBI or expanded child tax credit HELP. A minimum wage increase HELPS. Biden's solutions dont help, and all people are feeling is higher prices at the grocery store. The democrats SUCK at messaging here. This is a core reason Biden is losing, and I have to be blunt about that.
Since the State of the Union speech, Biden has traveled to Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. He’ll be heading to Nevada and Arizona early this week.
“The president and his advisers have all been eager for him to be out there more and planned for that to take place at the start of the election year, as has been the norm for past incumbents seeking re-election,” the second person familiar with the matter said.
No comment on this.
Biden aides see Trump as an eminently beatable and deeply flawed opponent. In a recent campaign call with reporters, Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chairwoman, said Trump appears to have little interest in attracting voters beyond his most faithful base.
“We know that he lost in 2020,” she said. “In order to win, he’s got to expand his base of voters to find new people to be with him. And that is not something he’s shown that he’s really focused on.”
This is a miscalculation.
Biden barely beat trump last time. A 1.2 point shift and trump would've won. All trump needs to do is keep his base fired up, while biden can't afford to lose any supporters. And we're seeing the result of that. Trump, to my knowledge, aint gaining many voters, Biden is just losing them. Because a lot of people are looking at biden and are like "everything's expensive, this guy ain't helping me". And then you got the people freaked out over immigration. And the leftists losing their crap over palestine. And yeah. Biden is shedding his coalition. His coalition was barely sustainable last time, and now he's tanking while trump isn't.
‘A little mad at himself’
At times, Biden gets suggestions that conflict with one another. Some advisers have told him he should walk faster out of concern that his gait feeds impressions that he’s too old. And yet the White House is sufficiently worried about him tripping that he has taken to boarding Air Force One via a shorter staircase through the belly of the plane, forgoing the iconic image of the president waving from the main doorway high above the tarmac.
To be fair didnt he fall doing that? or was that trump?
“He’s probably a little mad at himself for not being more forceful with the staff,” a person familiar with internal discussions said.
Privately, Biden questions whether he should trust his gut instincts over the guidance coming from the array of advisers tending to his political interests, this person added.
“The man’s been successful for decades in Congress and became vice president and president,” said a fifth person, who formerly served in the Biden administration. “If you try to change the person, you’re making a mistake. Let the president go out there and do his thing.”
Im not sure whether it would be better or worse for Biden to act impulsively. Being managed sometimes does hurt. But if Biden ends up imploding when let off the leash, that could backfire. It's a gamble.
‘A failure of communication’
A consensus of Democratic officials is that Biden needs an army of surrogates to spread the word that his record has improved American lives in concrete ways. He can’t carry the message alone.
Andre Dickens, the Democratic mayor of Atlanta, said that Trump’s bluster tends to soak up the attention, but Biden’s record is actually making city streets safer. He cited spending bills that enabled his city to pay retention bonuses to police officers and underwrite youth programs that help to curb crime.
Again Im mixed on this. Biden should go out there and sell a vision but to be fair his vision does kinda suck. Still, the public is exaggerating the issues with his presidency and blaming him for stuff that isn't his fault, so it goes both ways.
“Coming after a blowhard like Trump who tells you every day what he hates and what he likes, Biden is … soft and calm and getting the work done,” Dickens said.
Letting voters know is “the job of the mayor and county leaders who have benefited from the Biden administration’s policies,” he added.
Simplicity might be Biden’s most promising approach, some of his allies said. Package his record as part of an American renaissance — a success story that is putting money into peoples’ pockets, they suggested.
I'm not sure if this will work. People like trump and his approach. Biden defending his record is gonna be a hard sell because his record hasnt really improved peoples' lives as much as he likes to think they do. The average american cant connect their well being to his policies.
Mary Landrieu is a former Democratic senator from Louisiana and a Biden supporter. Asked about Biden’s inability to get credit for legislation meant to revive American high-tech manufacturing and upgrade the country’s roads and bridges, she said: “I think it’s actually a bit of a failure of communication on the part of the White House.”
That only helps people who are in manufacturing. Again, just creating jobs doesnt help if youre on the democratic side. Republicans go for that crap...when a republican is in office, but their entire politics is job creation and tax cuts. Democrats want social programs. He's trying to play the republican game and win democratic voters when I think democratic voters want something different.For democrats, it's not just enough to bring back factory work. You need to make work PAY. You need to address healthcare. You need to address student loan debt for real this time. You need to push for a UBI or at least bring back the child tax credit expansion. You need to think like Bernie Sanders.
Nearly $4 billion in clean energy projects are underway in Louisiana under a bill that Biden ushered into law called the Inflation Reduction Act, a title that doesn’t capture the measure’s real purpose.
Im going to be blunt. I like the inflation reduction act. I like environmental policy. Climate change is an existential threat to our country and we need to address it. But...and this is a larger failure of the left, addressing it isnt as sexy as some people like to act like it is. Because unless you got a job explicitly from it, you're not gonna notice your individual circumstances improving. You're not gonna say biden made your life better. It's not gonna connect. Given that I do believe climate change is an existential threat and this bill helps on that front, i gotta give him credit. This is THE thing that Biden has accomplished I can give him full credit for on my metric. And he did it in an efficient way. Keep in mind, Im not bernie, i dont want a sprawling green new deal. I dont think a green new deal is a good policy. We wanna fix climate, but not throw tons of resources we dont need to into it. We just gotta leverage funding and work to achieve a result. It's not about the jobs, it's about the outcome, and quite frankly, the reason why the issue has been ignored for the past half century is because americans dont feel their lives get better when it's addressed. Climate change itself is like being the frog in the boiling pot, people dont notice. But when youre jimmy carter telling people to wear a sweater and turn the heat down, THAT'S when people notice. People notice when you inconvenience them. Solving the climate is necessary, it has to be done, but it's going to be relatively thankless in terms of being able to go to the american people and sell that. THat's always been an issue with climate policy, including the green new deal.
“There’s a real story to tell,” Landrieu said. “It’s a winning message and it’s about jobs, prosperity and evolution. If that message can be communicated, I think the American people will respond.”
JERBS! MORE JERBS!
Dude, we're at 4% unemployment, job creation was never gonna be the solution to our problems. If you wanna solve poverty, bring back the child tax credit or go full on UBI. Also, people are more concerned about INFLATION than unemployment. It may be possible that much like obama's economy was permanently tainted by the great recession, biden's is going to be so by inflation and the covid recovery. it's a stigma he's not gonna be able to shape unless he brings prices down to the point of DEFLATION. What's gonna happen is the republicans are gonna hammer him for inflation and then turn around and act like things are great the second trump takes office. This is the game they play. It's about optics. Biden's biggest flaw that is actually his fault is relying on this narrative of jobism and how creating jobs makes him great. We dont need more jobs. People need higher incomes. Democrats have to be PROGRESSIVE. They need to RAISE the minimum wage. They need to push for policies like the child tax credit or a UBI. They need to get out there and push policies that involve the government making their lives better. Mere job creation and tax cuts is more the republicans' forte. And they're NEVER gonna give biden credit for anything.
Conclusion
So, this is my own conclusion on the state of Biden's presidency after reading all of this. In a lot of ways, Biden is in a hard place and a lot of what's ailing him is beyond his control. The left is going bugnuts over gaza and threatening to tank the election over that, which is monumentally stupid and I sympathize with Biden on that.
Biden is in a position where with his age hes darned if he does and darned if he doesn't. If he continues as he is he's more stage managed, but less authentic, and people question his competence with the job. But if he went off the cuff and was less handled, I'm not really sure that would help. Biden is kind of old, he's always been a gaffe machine, and if he just goes out there and acts like he does, it might backfire.
One thing I will come down on him on though is his "accomplishments". Often times when people defend biden's accomplishments, they push these long lists of things that while they sound impressive when you read them out, in terms of what they do for the american people, they dont really help people much. Most people aren't going to notice their lives get any better over this. if anything, a lot of people feel like their lives have gotten worse due to inflation and long for the trump days, as wild as that sounds.
To some extent, this is an endemic problem with the democrats. Honestly, I could've told you this in 2020, but none of what's happening to Biden now was particularly unpredictable to me. I mean, the democrats forced biden on us and used the threat of trump to make it work. Biden was never what most people wanted. he had no inspiring vision, he was just the dude who was the alternative to trump. Lesser evilism doesnt actually win elections long term. You might be able to get away with it once but not again.
When Biden won in 2020, that was his high water mark. He's gonna inevitably lose support from there. And he's having trouble turning out his base while the trump base is ride or die on him. And admittedly, there isnt much to be enthusiastic about. His accomplishments were very milquetoast and dont help many people. His intentions were a bit better, but still, Biden was never the person for the job, and it never should've been him in the white house. it should've been bernie sanders. It always should have been. Because all those grand policies that animated the left and made them so ride or die on the guy? They wouldve greatly improved peoples lives if passed. I'm not saying they could pass. Biden couldnt even accomplish his policies despite telling us how he'd be able to work with congress to get them done. So maybe bernie would be hated too. But Biden just never had that charisma and he really never was the right guy for the job. I really wanna emphasize that. I think a huge reason he's in this position, after getting a glimpse into his head, is that he was never the right guy for the job. And the short term decisions the dems made to foist this guy on us is coming back and biting us because guess what? he cant maintain his coalition.
Now, to be fair, a lot of the issues he's being blamed for are exaggerated by the american people, with them often times being somewhat unreasonable, but at least on inflation, i cant blame them, and i see where they're coming from. People are pissed and Biden isn't really implementing policies that materially improve peoples' lives. He's touting job creation in an era of record low unemployment...and high inflation. I've always said it, JOBS AREN'T THE ANSWER. But this is what the cult of jobism gets us. MOAR JERBS. Even though they're not greatly improving the state of the country. Could've seen this a mile away.
Most people, when they look at who's president, they ask if they're better off than they were four years ago, and most people can say, no, we aren't, prices are up, and our purchasing power has declined. Biden has very little to respond to these people on.
I also think Biden doesn't understand what it really means to be a democrat. Like most "new democrats" and centrists, he thinks like a republican. He looks at the metrics and thinks "this is fine, unemployment is down, the stock market is booming" and fails to understand how this doesn't connect to peoples' lives or individual situations.
I'm not saying I have solid concrete answers for Biden. Without a cooperative congress and court system, he literally is stuck up a creek without a paddle on this. And even worse, Biden did nothing to actually cause the aforementioned situation. But, people are gonna blame him for it as he was the guy in office when it happened. Biden's position is not enviable. He's in the worst position the democrats have been in since the carter years, and it literally took almost 30 years for the democrats to recover their image after that one so that hurts.
As for israel....i sympathize with him over that one. Wtf leftists. Are we really gonna throw away this election over THIS crap? This is the one issue i fully sympathize with Biden on, and I understand his frustration. He's being crapped on by a bunch of tiktok kids who dont understand how the world works. And he might lost because of that. Ugh.
Anyway, I know biden aint great, but pretty please consider voting for the guy? Really? I mean I dont love him or think he's perfect either. I mean, he's okay. But inflation aint his fault, gaza aint his fault, he's been kinda okay, and while I want someone more progressive im not even sure if that would poll well at this point or reverse this ship. Let's just get this guy back in and then in 2028, we can figure out where we wanna go from here.
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