Friday, January 20, 2023

Some Thoughts on The Halfway Point of The Presidency of Joe Biden

Friday marked the halfway point of Joe Biden's presidency where it concerns this term in office.

While I have expressed misgivings about the presence of classified documents at his personal residence, it does not appear that Democrats are going to abandon him. 

Longtime South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn, who single-handedly resuscitated Biden's campaign in 2020, proclaimed a couple of days ago that he was "all in" for Biden in 2024 and warned other Democrats not to challenge him, If Clyburn is all in that means Biden is all in. That is unless more classified documents are discovered at his home.

Then again even if that comes to pass, defeated, former President Trump and his cohorts are so slimy and duplicitous. As I have argued, Republicans wouldn't bat an eyelash if Trump wallpapered Mar-a-Lago with top secret documents. Whatever Biden's shortcomings in this matter, the likes of Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz will not cover themselves in glory to anyone beyond their most dedicated supporters. And if House Republicans are serious about implementing a 30% national sales tax that would hit lower income families the hardest, then Biden is looking good. 

President Biden has consistently demonstrated he is governing in the interest of everyday people whether it be through vaccine distribution, infrastructure spending, allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices and trying to relieve student loan debt (despite judicial challenges from conservatives). Defeated, former President Trump is only interested in talking about his own grievances most of which are imagined. 

For a period of about a year (from August 2021 to August 2022), Biden had a long rough patch. This coincided with the emergence of the Delta variant, the haphazard withdrawal from Afghanistan and rising inflation. However, COVID has receded and so has inflation and not many voters think about Afghanistan. Until the classified documents story broke, Biden was on a five-month winning streak. Even if it does adversely affect Biden's poll numbers there is a good chance it might just be a hiccup for the reasons explained above.

The voters might not love Joe Biden, but he is better than the alternative and hat might be just good enough for a plurality of voters to re-elect him for another term next year. 

No comments:

Post a Comment