In today’s political news - Part 5

From Paul Waldman….

“Opinion Joe Biden’s bad news problem”

By Paul Waldman
Columnist
July 12, 2022 at 2:12 p.m. EDT

“If you want to understand President Biden’s troubles, just look at all the news about gas prices.

Or to be more specific, look at the lack of media coverage, now that gas prices are falling precipitously, dropping 35 cents just in the last month. Yet the news does not lead every night with stories in which producers scour the country for the least expensive gas so they can put up one picture after another of signs showing how low the price has gotten.


Biden had very little to do with that price decline, just as he had very little to do with the increase that preceded it. Yet the increase was given maximum attention, with lots of discussion of how it would hurt him; the decline is essentially ignored.

It’s just one example that shows how the political and media system in which we all reside is built to make every president look like a failure — right up until they win reelection.

Right now Biden is in an approval trough, one many prior presidents experienced around the same time. The initial honeymoon, driven by all the hope and possibility of a new era, wears off once the difficult work of governing begins.

Legislative successes may come in the first year of a presidency, but then they get harder to come by. The president’s supporters, realizing he’s unable to wave a wand and bring about the paradise he promised during the campaign, begin to feel dissatisfied. Since almost every president sees their party suffer a brutal midterm loss, the news is full of discussion of his coming defeat. Me: And you know who I blame for this.  And it’s not the Presidents, well except for trump.

Perhaps most importantly, bad news is always treated as more important than good news, so everything that is bad for the president gets amplified. That applies to gas prices and inflation, and it applies to the president himself: A new poll showing him with surprisingly high approval ratings will get a fraction of the coverage of one showing him with surprisingly low approval.

So you probably saw extensive media coverage of a New York Times poll that came out Monday, showing a majority of Democrats saying they want another presidential nominee in 2024. While no one would say it doesn’t show weakness for Biden, it’s an old story; here’s an article in The Post from September of 1982 about a poll showing a majority of voters saying Ronald Reagan shouldn’t run again in 1984. You may remember how that election turned out.

It’s a good reminder of how presidential approval tends to ebb and flow. Obviously, real-world events make a big difference, whether it’s the economy or foreign crises or natural disasters. But what we often see is that after the first midterm defeat, presidents slowly recover the public’s esteem, and everything changes once the public is presented with a binary choice between the president and a challenger.

That isn’t to deny Biden could have done plenty of things better. Like other liberals, I’ve been critical of some of his choices and his handling of a number of issues. I worry that he has been unable to manage his party’s base to keep them engaged and energized. And there are legitimate questions about his age (he’d be 86 at the end of his second term).

But we should also be careful when we discern a causal connection between whatever substantive or stylistic critique we have of the president and his low approval ratings.

Here’s an example: One criticism Biden’s supporters make is that he can be too downbeat, that to demonstrate sympathy with people’s struggles only reinforces the idea that things are bad. It’s a reasonable point, but it’s also sometimes accompanied by the observation that if Donald Trump were in the same situation, he’d say that even the most incremental improvement anywhere is the greatest thing that ever happened in world history and we should all be down on our knees thanking him.

Whenever there’s a good jobs report or even a decline in gas prices, some liberals will say, “If this was Trump he’d be on the news taking credit for it!” Which indeed he would. But people often forget that it didn’t actually work.

Trump never convinced most Americans he was doing a great job; he was the only president in the history of polling never to crack 50 percent approval, not even for a single day. His party was blown out in the 2018 midterms, and then he lost his reelection bid.

You may believe that in a just and rational world, Trump’s approval would have never been higher than 5 or 10 percent, but even so, all his preening and bragging clearly failed. And while it might not hurt for Biden to have a more relentlessly positive message, there isn’t much reason to think doing so would have an enormous effect on how voters think of him.

None of this means Biden is a secret political genius. But other presidents — Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama — found themselves in similar situations and recovered to win reelection and leave office in the glow of public affection. The same could happen to Biden, and the good news for him is that if there’s a story the media loves almost as much as the one that says everything is terrible, it’s the one about a dramatic comeback.”

Let’s be clear about one thing here.  If the Republicans take back the majority, this is type of thing is their priority.  They have absolutely no interest in working on anything that will help the American People.  It’s all about revenge against their perceived enemies.

Be specific on how he is responsible.  What specifically has the President of the United States done to cause world wide inflation?   Because inflation is worldwide.  You do understand that.

The response should be to this question “No, but she can to assholes like yourself”.

Unbelievable…