During Donald Trump's presidency crime skyrocketed. Mental illness among teens soared. In Charlottesville racists and Proud Boys rioted. American soldiers continued to be killed in an Afghanistan war that seemed endless. North Korea tested new missiles that could reach the US mainland. Foreign leaders fretted that America could no longer be trusted. Thousands of Trump followers led an insurrection aimed at keeping Trump in power even though he lost the election. Trump himself kept the nation perpetually on edge with ever more unhinged tweets at all hours of the day and night.
Under President Biden crime has subsided. The economy is strong and unemployment is low. Manufacturing is making a comeback, infrastructure is being repaired and rebuilt, and America is making its biggest ever investment in green energy. Under Biden's direction, the Western alliance has been united against Russian aggression in Ukraine and the US is once again respected overseas. The war in Afghanistan is over. Insurrectionists have been put in prison. Republican threats to breach the debt ceiling have been quietly put to rest. At long last, temper tantrums have been replaced with understated leadership.
Wish this could be shown, over and over, on faux entertainment and other right wing nut media.
you wanna get the votes of the fox-curious swing voter?
build a high speed rail to mexico and deport 1000 commuter cars per day back to central america
call it 'montezuma's revenge' and paint giant american flags on the side with red white and blue lasers aimed at the night sky
of course no rational dem has the stomach for that sort of stagecraft, but he'd pick up more than a few trump voters
nothing lights up the conservative amygdala like spectacles of celebratory cruelty
talking about helpful stuff like gdp, U6, closing the medicare donut hole, goo-goo exec orders?
all electoral losers
I imagine this post is triggered, in part, by recent NYT polling that shows Trump ahead in several swing states. My point, while Kevin's argument has merit, there is a fundamental challenge: Democrats need voters in swing states to want to vote for Biden. The intellectual argument for Biden (or Trump is horrible), unless it moves voters in swing states, is sort of irrelevant...
What precisely moves these voters in swing states ? I don't get it. Do you ?
The price of gas.
Price of gas, price of eggs, the media narrative, over and over, that Biden is too old. The corporate media, writ large, wants TFG back so bad it is crazy. ("It might not be good for the country, but he's good for ratings.")
RZM - to be clear, my response is speculative but here goes.
Age - while Biden can not get younger he can, 1) find a more popular VP 2) work on his public appearances to appear younger (better scripts for the teliprompter, less walking in public, a speech coach )
Isreal - perhaps be more publicly forceful for a cease fire
Youth - talk more about V2 of the student loan forgiveness plan
Economy - I don't know but he must do something. Perhaps propose, yes I know the prospect for passing is zero, popular programs that we part of the Covid stimulus,
look at the polls for ideas....etc
Re:1. Sure. And lose the black vote and much of the female vote. Good move.
I'm with you on Israel. Younger voters have grown up seeing and reading about Israeli assaults on Palestinians, who have not "terrorized" them in any way. Us geezers were fed a steady diet of "the land without people for the people without land", the "plucky little Israelis who made the desert bloom, " and of course, Holocaust guilt. Folks in our demographic are too likely to resist the reality of the last 70 or so years.
Salamander - I agree that replacing Harris is tricky. However, a portion of the Biden age issue is folks don't like or trust Harris. Perhaps, who knows, another black woman. The window for this might have been with the last Supreme Court opening, Harris could have been named....yes TOTAL speculation!
Just let Whitmer be the nominee and get out of the way.
If that is actually a factor it would likely be the first time in American history that voters cared who the VP candidate was.
I would like to see a more balanced policy re Israel and Palestine-to-be, but I think the issue is not as high on the priority list of younger voters as climate change, racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and college affordability. The record of the Biden administration on all of these is pretty good (some areas quite good) but needs to be played up. And there is no doubt that the Republicans are on the wrong side of all of these, plus worse on the Middle East, because the religious right wants to bring about the Apocalypse.
Biden is the greatest and most effective president since Johnson, and maybe since FDR and he does it all without anyone noticing.
So, nobody notices.
And he also does it in the face of intransigent opposition from the Party Of NO, who aren't *for* anything in particular, but just *against* pretty much everything. That, plus inexplicable iron-headed opposition from several members of his own party. Members who can't even articulate what it is they want, but use their iron-headed opposition just to gain the spotlight.
... And Why Biden Should Be Worried
Analysis by The New York Times
Sorry, I don’t trust the paper that told me there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, not to mention the paper that ignored the Trump Family Trust scandal and instead allied with Breitbart to try to expose a nonexistent Clinton Family Trust scandal.
Yes. And let's not forget the persecution of Wen Ho Lee.
The yammering that the NYT is doing today re Palestine sounds just like Judith Miller's exhortations to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. It's deja vu all over again....
Iz making little joke, haha. Like that's what they will say right now no matter what's happening. Not bothering with safaris to deepest Ohio, just "analysis." 'Tis the season.
+1!
So here's the big mystery: why don't people get it ? To me, against all odds, Joe Biden is proving to be the best President of my lifetime and I was born almost 70 years ago.. And I can't say I predicted it. I didn't. I was just glad he beat the Orange Bag of Guano. But he has been amazingly effective in the teeth of obstruction from the cultish remains of the GOP:
1) He passed legislation that kept thousands, perhaps millions, of Americans from destitution.
2) He helped lead an effort to roll out the Covid vaccines.
3) He got us out of Afghanistan.
4) He stepped up to lead the west in saving Ukraine and has restored our standing in the world.
5) He's signed substantial legislation on Global Warming
6) The Infrastructure bill is both practically meaningful as well as a statement that the age of Reagan has come to an end.
7) The inflation rate is under 4%, the unemployment rate is too and the economy is still growing at a decent rate, all of which occurred after a once in a century pandemic that killed well over a million Americans.
8) He exemplifies the phrase you can get a lot done if you don't care who gets the credit.
9) He is clearly a profoundly decent man.
What am I missing ? Perhaps my perspective as an aging liberal boomer is out of step with my fellow Americans and certainly with the useless infotainment media.
I think the thing you are missing is that we live in a deeply stupid, racist, bigoted country that prefers a lying seditious crook who doesn't seem to know what year it is to be POTUS again.
Yes, that's what worries me but I know several Trump supporters and they don't see themselves that way and in my every day interactions with them they seem like decent people. I'd like to blame the media and indeed there are lots of examples of coverage that leaves a lot to be desired. And Fox News is definitely a staple for the Trump Supporters I know. But honestly, many of my friends who are not MAGAs are surprisingly negative on Biden too. I am at a loss.
They wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have them for a member?
A lot of people were relieved that Vietnam gave them a great excuse for hating Johnson, even though he was doing more of what they wanted a president to do than anyone else they were ever likely to see.
It's just self-defeatism, and combing with an ivory tower leftist social conservatism that ruins almost everything.
I cast my first presidential election vote for Carter in 1976. Since then, I've nearly always voted for the lesser of two evils. Biden has scored some successes, but he's a moderate, not a liberal. By far his greatest achievement is not being Trump.
His greatest achievements are 1) climate policy, 2) industrial policy, and 3) labor policy. Unfortunately most of the people who even understand the term 'industrial policy' oppose it. But we've needed more government involvement in preparing for the future economy for decades. And when did we last have a Democratic President who backed a strong bargaining position for workers? Pretty good for a moderate.
What am I missing ?
Strong productivity growth.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/07/productivity-up-economy-biden/
I continue to believe if we avoid recession next year, Joe Biden wins another four years. Well, it we do avoid recession, it'll be in large measure due to productivity gains.
True!
That's a good list, and it could go on and on.
Somewhere I would add that he's the best pro-union president in living memory. When the UAW went on strike in Sept, it was billed as a crisis that would hurt the economy and hurt Biden's chances of getting reelected. So what he did was walk the picket line! No president ever did that before. Weeks later, a deal was struck, a big win for labor.
It happened just about 10 days ago and if he got any credit for it, I must have missed it. Meanwhile, I hear the slander that he's aiding and abetting genocide all the time.
This is important. The last three Democrats to occupy the White House actively resisted advancing labor rights. Biden is a sorely needed and effective advocate.
I agree Biden has done a bunch of great things but I hate the gerontracacy and he is one of the most prominent examples of it. That makes it hard for me to get excited about him. Trump is perhaps an even worse example due to his obvious mental decline but Trump isn't the threat, apathy is.
The problem is that he's a "Mitch" senior moment away from becoming unelectable. God forbid that moment arrives next Sept.
Sure, but TFG has had decades of those moments. How is he even being considered a possibility?
If most Americans voted based on objective self-interest—or the effect of policies on national well-being—Republicans wouldn't have won an election since the 1960s.
The Stupid Party demands more stupidity on behalf of all its stupid members.
“Under President Biden crime has subsided. The economy is strong and unemployment is low.”
But he’s OLD! So that’s the one and only thing that anyone will talk about. Honestly, the ongoing and incessantly negative Biden coverage really does seem to provide an awful lot of evidence for some pretty rampant ageism in the USA.
But it gets worse, he’s also WHITE! And MALE! And certain demographics are just so done with that.
Plus, Biden has the unspeakable nerve to simply do his job in an efficient and boring manner. Unlike Obama and Trump, he doesn’t even bother trying to ENTERTAIN us. What century does he think this is?
Doesn’t he know that he should be incessantly tweeting and/or putting out another tik tok video every minute? When was the last time he sang a gospel song that created a YouTube video that was watched 100 million times? It’s almost as if Biden isn’t even trying to go viral! And that means he can’t possibly be doing his job right.
I mean, what does he think we’re paying him for? Where is his nonstop commentary on every little controversy? What exactly are White House reporters supposed to write about when a President sits around doing his job all the time?
All of these problems indicate the obvious need for someone younger to step in as President. We don’t need an experienced leader with a successful record, we need an exciting ideologue who will excite their followers with nonstop updates!
All good points. Unfortunately!
Must be Opposites Day; I find myself agreeing with Leo ....
The 'tell' for ageism is the strong support I see in online comments for that well-regarded Democrat, Someone Younger. When you can't come up with a name, you are just showing your bias.
Something's wrong here. On my machine, the first chart shows data only through 2021 and the murder rate higher in 2021 (under Biden) than in 2020 (under trump). And the second chart starts in 2021 so doesn't even show the unemployment rate from 2017-2020 (trump's term). I would sure like to see those data!
I agree with Citizen99. The graphs don't back up the statements.
The murder rate went down, not up, in each of Trump's first two years 2017 and 2018. 2019 wasn't as good as 2018, but still better than 2016-17. Covid and George Floyd account for 2020, and Biden's 2021 was worse.
The unemployment chart is even worse. Of course unemployment was high at the beginning of Biden's term. That was Covid, not Trump. Why not show the numbers during Trump's term - before Covid?
I have come to expect better here than such cherry-picked graphing.
Murder rates spiked in Trump's last year, and is now falling fast under Biden.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/191223/reported-murder-and-nonnegligent-manslaughter-rate-in-the-us-since-1990/
By their measure, rates went from 5.2 in '19 to 6.8 in '20, held at 6.8 in '21 and dropped to 6.3 in '22.
Its not the data that you have a problem with, its the narrative. Youve cherry picked a narrative and you want the data necessary to back up your narrative.
Yes, both crime and unemployment got worse while Trump was in office and improved while Biden has been in office.....but what if we pretend that Presidents dont have to deal with big issues and instead judge them solely on how they performed if we arbitrarily remove major events!
Ok then!
If we are willing to say that 'of course unemployment was high in 2020
and improved in 2022', why wouldnt we also say that 'of course unemployment was low and growth was solid in 2017 and 2018' in order to dismiss the results of that period?
Narratives in search of facts are a dangerous thing.
Seth Stares Off Into The Distance And Mutters To Himself For A Second:
https://youtu.be/IyeVxGYibJY?si=SSvbseRAMjuiid4D
Say it for me perfectly.
I can appreciate your worries. The thing I keep reminding myself is that the election is still a year away. Mostly these polls don't mean a lot this far out. There's so much stuff that can happen between now and next November.