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Re: 'People are questioning if he’s the man of the moment': As crises mount, Biden struggles to show he can solve them.
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Songbird Johnny
Oct 14, 2023, 2:30:03 AM10/14/23
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In article <ugcm8n$3folq$1...@dont-email.me>
governo...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Democrats are stupid criminals. No argument here.
WASHINGTON — What’s a president to do when his polling numbers
are stuck in the basement?
Joe Biden is hoping to figure that out, trying speeches, and
policy gambits, and photo ops. But as a White House event this
past week showed, success isn’t coming easy.
After meeting with administration officials and baby formula
manufacturers about the severe shortage here, Biden struggled to
inspire confidence as reporters battered him with questions
about that crisis and several others he’s facing.
Biden flatly admitted he didn’t know the formula shortage was a
serious problem until April, weeks after the initial recall in
February that triggered it. Asked what he would do about record-
breaking gas prices, which have strained family budgets and
driven up inflation, he argued they “could be higher” if not for
steps his administration had taken and said he cannot “click a
switch” and bring the cost down.
And finally, as he was walking out of the White House auditorium
Wednesday, Biden was asked if he was confident Congress would
pass gun safety legislation in the wake of recent mass shootings
targeting elementary school students in Texas and Black grocery
shoppers in Buffalo. “I served in Congress for 36 years. I’m
never confident, totally,” he said. “And I don’t know. I’ve not
been in on the negotiations that are going on right now.”
In a nation buffeted by one crisis after another, Biden has had
difficulty not only in solving the complex challenges facing him
but in simply projecting to the public that he’s up to the task.
Touted as the most experienced person ever to occupy the Oval
Office, Biden has faced questions about his expertise in leading
the federal bureaucracy, pushing legislation through Congress,
and navigating foreign affairs — and his approval rating has
tumbled accordingly.
His trust in the institutions of government to do their jobs —
and hard-won realism about how far and fast the bureaucracy can
move — can make him appear passive in tackling problems. His
long Senate career can cause him to lean toward incremental
solutions. And one of his biggest selling points over Donald
Trump — “I will always be honest with you” — can lend Biden an
air of powerlessness when he admits that, given the fraught
realities of politics, there’s little he can do on his own to
quickly lower inflation or place new restrictions on high-
powered weapons.
“It’s pretty hard not to like Joe Biden,” said presidential
historian Douglas Brinkley, “but people are questioning if he’s
the man of the moment.”
For months, polls have shown that a majority of Americans are
unhappy with his performance and believe the nation is on the
wrong track. Biden’s low approval rating of about 41 percent —
roughly where Trump was at a similar point in his tenure but
well below the prior four presidents — is dragging down
Democratic congressional candidates and has the party fearing
the loss of its slim majorities in the November midterms.
“I think people want a sense of creativity, a sense of boldness,
a sense of vision, and are desperate for that,” said
Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat. “I think the
president, at times, he gets that. Then I think at other times
the administration is more cautious.”
The news has not been all bad for Biden as the government
reported another strong month of job growth on Friday. But as he
explained the reasons for high gas and food prices, which he
largely blamed on the Ukraine war, he acknowledged Americans
simply want him to do something about it.
“Look, I understand that families who are struggling probably
don’t care why the prices are up,” he said Friday. “They just
want them to go down.”
Biden’s fall from polling grace did not appear inevitable when
he was sworn in last year after four turbulent years of Trump, a
recently ransacked Capitol behind him. Biden’s approval ratings
were high at the start of his term as he pushed his $1.9
trillion American Rescue Plan through Congress and the
government administered 200 million COVID vaccine doses in his
first 100 days in office. With cases declining and vaccination
rates rising, Biden gave a Fourth of July speech in 2021
pronouncing “we’re closer than ever to declaring our
independence from a deadly virus.”
But the Delta variant caused a new COVID surge last summer,
causing Biden’s approval rating to drop. It fell below 50
percent after the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from
Afghanistan in August and has remained there ever since as high
inflation began to take hold — even as Biden has responded with
far greater success to the new foreign policy crisis of war in
Ukraine.
In Gallup’s polling, Biden’s approval rating fell to 43 percent
in September from 56 percent in June. The biggest drop was among
independent voters, said Gallup senior editor Jeffrey M. Jones,
who analyzes its polling data.
“What happened with COVID and Afghanistan and now the economy,
put all of that together it kind of creates this impression of
lack of competence, or inability to deal with these problems,”
Jones said.
With continued crises hitting the country, Biden will have a
hard time reversing that public view, said Dan Schnur, a former
Republican strategist who teaches at the University of Southern
California and the University of California at Berkeley.
“A lot of voters seem to have decided that Biden is a perfectly
nice guy who doesn’t know what to do,” he said. “That perception
may have begun with Afghanistan, but it’s since transferred over
to their concerns about the economy.”
Amid reports of internal White House dysfunction and a possible
staff shakeup, Biden tried to seize the initiative on key fronts
this past week.
He unveiled a new three-point plan to try to lower inflation
that is running near a four-decade high. He convened a meeting
of administration officials and baby formula manufacturing
executives to highlight efforts to ease the shortage, including
government-organized shipments of millions of bottles of formula
from abroad. And he addressed the nation in prime time Thursday
night to urge Congress to pass new gun safety measures after
recent mass shootings.
“For God’s sake, how much more carnage are we willing to
accept?” Biden said. “How many more innocent American lives must
be taken before we say ‘enough’? Enough.”
But each of those attempts to take the reins came with its own
difficulties.
Biden’s call for enacting gun restrictions, including banning so-
called assault weapons and repealing gun manufacturers’ immunity
from lawsuits, goes well beyond the more modest measures being
discussed by a bipartisan group of senators. His meeting on the
baby formula shortage raised new questions about why federal
officials didn’t act sooner to avert the crisis and why Biden
himself didn’t learn of the problem until April.
And his inflation plan was criticized for including one action
item that involved no action at all — a pledge not to interfere
with the independent Federal Reserve’s efforts to bring prices
down by raising its interest rate.
“You can respect the Fed’s independence, but that’s not a plan,”
said Khanna, the California Democrat, who immediately wrote a
New York Times opinion article published Thursday outlining
additional steps he believed Biden needed to take to reduce
inflation.
Khanna, a progressive who cochaired Bernie Sanders’ campaign for
the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, said he “100
percent” supports Biden and his reelection. But Biden needs to
do more to ease Americans’ economic anxiety or voters will make
Democrats pay in November, Khanna said.
“It has to look like we’re willing to go through a brick wall to
deal with people’s economic conditions and we’re doing
everything possible and we’re being creative about it and bold
about it,” he said. Absent that, Khanna added that Democrats
will be “competing with one arm tied behind our back in a very
tough environment” this fall.
LaTosha Brown, cofounder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, which
works to empower Black voters, said Biden is too concerned with
being popular in a divided nation where crises have left many
people feeling hopeless. That’s caused him to earn criticism for
“moving in too safe of a political way,” she said.
But if acting cautiously is going to result in low approval
ratings, Biden has nothing to lose by taking bold steps, such as
using executive action to enact widespread cancellation of
student debt, she said.
“Do what you think is right and do what you think is going to
lift people out of their sense of despair,” Brown said.
“Recognize that the popularity results may not just be about
you, it might be about what people are thinking about where they
are.”
The American Rescue Plan helped boost the economy last year,
including providing checks of up to $1,400 to most Americans,
but most economists now say it also helped ignite high
inflation. Biden’s big follow-up economic initiative, his
roughly $2 trillion social spending and climate change Build
Back Better bill, got derailed in the Senate, adding to the
public impression that he’s not able to address crises, said
Brinkley, the presidential historian.
“I think people still trust Joe Biden for being a decent person
with great experience and keen leadership abilities but he’s
presiding over economic doldrums and a war in Europe and there’s
a lot of frustration,” said Brinkley, a professor at Rice
University.
Although Biden has been praised for rallying much of the world
against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the economy still is the
most important issue facing Americans, Brinkley said. He noted
President George H.W. Bush presided over victory in the first
Gulf War but then lost reelection in 1992 because the country
was struggling to emerge from a recession.
Biden needs to be bold, particularly in addressing inflation and
the economy, or he’ll face a similar fate, Brinkley said.
“You can’t say that he has vigorous leadership. You can say he
has personal integrity and statesmanlike competence,” Brinkley
said. “He could sell his act a lot better if the baby formula
were on the shelves and the gas prices went down. He’s got to
find a way to do that.”
Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at jim.puz...@globe.com.
Follow him on Twitter: @JimPuzzanghera.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/06/04/nation/people-are-
questioning-if-hes-man-moment-crises-mount-biden-struggles-show-
he-can-solve-them/
governo...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Democrats are stupid criminals. No argument here.
WASHINGTON — What’s a president to do when his polling numbers
are stuck in the basement?
Joe Biden is hoping to figure that out, trying speeches, and
policy gambits, and photo ops. But as a White House event this
past week showed, success isn’t coming easy.
After meeting with administration officials and baby formula
manufacturers about the severe shortage here, Biden struggled to
inspire confidence as reporters battered him with questions
about that crisis and several others he’s facing.
Biden flatly admitted he didn’t know the formula shortage was a
serious problem until April, weeks after the initial recall in
February that triggered it. Asked what he would do about record-
breaking gas prices, which have strained family budgets and
driven up inflation, he argued they “could be higher” if not for
steps his administration had taken and said he cannot “click a
switch” and bring the cost down.
And finally, as he was walking out of the White House auditorium
Wednesday, Biden was asked if he was confident Congress would
pass gun safety legislation in the wake of recent mass shootings
targeting elementary school students in Texas and Black grocery
shoppers in Buffalo. “I served in Congress for 36 years. I’m
never confident, totally,” he said. “And I don’t know. I’ve not
been in on the negotiations that are going on right now.”
In a nation buffeted by one crisis after another, Biden has had
difficulty not only in solving the complex challenges facing him
but in simply projecting to the public that he’s up to the task.
Touted as the most experienced person ever to occupy the Oval
Office, Biden has faced questions about his expertise in leading
the federal bureaucracy, pushing legislation through Congress,
and navigating foreign affairs — and his approval rating has
tumbled accordingly.
His trust in the institutions of government to do their jobs —
and hard-won realism about how far and fast the bureaucracy can
move — can make him appear passive in tackling problems. His
long Senate career can cause him to lean toward incremental
solutions. And one of his biggest selling points over Donald
Trump — “I will always be honest with you” — can lend Biden an
air of powerlessness when he admits that, given the fraught
realities of politics, there’s little he can do on his own to
quickly lower inflation or place new restrictions on high-
powered weapons.
“It’s pretty hard not to like Joe Biden,” said presidential
historian Douglas Brinkley, “but people are questioning if he’s
the man of the moment.”
For months, polls have shown that a majority of Americans are
unhappy with his performance and believe the nation is on the
wrong track. Biden’s low approval rating of about 41 percent —
roughly where Trump was at a similar point in his tenure but
well below the prior four presidents — is dragging down
Democratic congressional candidates and has the party fearing
the loss of its slim majorities in the November midterms.
“I think people want a sense of creativity, a sense of boldness,
a sense of vision, and are desperate for that,” said
Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat. “I think the
president, at times, he gets that. Then I think at other times
the administration is more cautious.”
The news has not been all bad for Biden as the government
reported another strong month of job growth on Friday. But as he
explained the reasons for high gas and food prices, which he
largely blamed on the Ukraine war, he acknowledged Americans
simply want him to do something about it.
“Look, I understand that families who are struggling probably
don’t care why the prices are up,” he said Friday. “They just
want them to go down.”
Biden’s fall from polling grace did not appear inevitable when
he was sworn in last year after four turbulent years of Trump, a
recently ransacked Capitol behind him. Biden’s approval ratings
were high at the start of his term as he pushed his $1.9
trillion American Rescue Plan through Congress and the
government administered 200 million COVID vaccine doses in his
first 100 days in office. With cases declining and vaccination
rates rising, Biden gave a Fourth of July speech in 2021
pronouncing “we’re closer than ever to declaring our
independence from a deadly virus.”
But the Delta variant caused a new COVID surge last summer,
causing Biden’s approval rating to drop. It fell below 50
percent after the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from
Afghanistan in August and has remained there ever since as high
inflation began to take hold — even as Biden has responded with
far greater success to the new foreign policy crisis of war in
Ukraine.
In Gallup’s polling, Biden’s approval rating fell to 43 percent
in September from 56 percent in June. The biggest drop was among
independent voters, said Gallup senior editor Jeffrey M. Jones,
who analyzes its polling data.
“What happened with COVID and Afghanistan and now the economy,
put all of that together it kind of creates this impression of
lack of competence, or inability to deal with these problems,”
Jones said.
With continued crises hitting the country, Biden will have a
hard time reversing that public view, said Dan Schnur, a former
Republican strategist who teaches at the University of Southern
California and the University of California at Berkeley.
“A lot of voters seem to have decided that Biden is a perfectly
nice guy who doesn’t know what to do,” he said. “That perception
may have begun with Afghanistan, but it’s since transferred over
to their concerns about the economy.”
Amid reports of internal White House dysfunction and a possible
staff shakeup, Biden tried to seize the initiative on key fronts
this past week.
He unveiled a new three-point plan to try to lower inflation
that is running near a four-decade high. He convened a meeting
of administration officials and baby formula manufacturing
executives to highlight efforts to ease the shortage, including
government-organized shipments of millions of bottles of formula
from abroad. And he addressed the nation in prime time Thursday
night to urge Congress to pass new gun safety measures after
recent mass shootings.
“For God’s sake, how much more carnage are we willing to
accept?” Biden said. “How many more innocent American lives must
be taken before we say ‘enough’? Enough.”
But each of those attempts to take the reins came with its own
difficulties.
Biden’s call for enacting gun restrictions, including banning so-
called assault weapons and repealing gun manufacturers’ immunity
from lawsuits, goes well beyond the more modest measures being
discussed by a bipartisan group of senators. His meeting on the
baby formula shortage raised new questions about why federal
officials didn’t act sooner to avert the crisis and why Biden
himself didn’t learn of the problem until April.
And his inflation plan was criticized for including one action
item that involved no action at all — a pledge not to interfere
with the independent Federal Reserve’s efforts to bring prices
down by raising its interest rate.
“You can respect the Fed’s independence, but that’s not a plan,”
said Khanna, the California Democrat, who immediately wrote a
New York Times opinion article published Thursday outlining
additional steps he believed Biden needed to take to reduce
inflation.
Khanna, a progressive who cochaired Bernie Sanders’ campaign for
the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, said he “100
percent” supports Biden and his reelection. But Biden needs to
do more to ease Americans’ economic anxiety or voters will make
Democrats pay in November, Khanna said.
“It has to look like we’re willing to go through a brick wall to
deal with people’s economic conditions and we’re doing
everything possible and we’re being creative about it and bold
about it,” he said. Absent that, Khanna added that Democrats
will be “competing with one arm tied behind our back in a very
tough environment” this fall.
LaTosha Brown, cofounder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, which
works to empower Black voters, said Biden is too concerned with
being popular in a divided nation where crises have left many
people feeling hopeless. That’s caused him to earn criticism for
“moving in too safe of a political way,” she said.
But if acting cautiously is going to result in low approval
ratings, Biden has nothing to lose by taking bold steps, such as
using executive action to enact widespread cancellation of
student debt, she said.
“Do what you think is right and do what you think is going to
lift people out of their sense of despair,” Brown said.
“Recognize that the popularity results may not just be about
you, it might be about what people are thinking about where they
are.”
The American Rescue Plan helped boost the economy last year,
including providing checks of up to $1,400 to most Americans,
but most economists now say it also helped ignite high
inflation. Biden’s big follow-up economic initiative, his
roughly $2 trillion social spending and climate change Build
Back Better bill, got derailed in the Senate, adding to the
public impression that he’s not able to address crises, said
Brinkley, the presidential historian.
“I think people still trust Joe Biden for being a decent person
with great experience and keen leadership abilities but he’s
presiding over economic doldrums and a war in Europe and there’s
a lot of frustration,” said Brinkley, a professor at Rice
University.
Although Biden has been praised for rallying much of the world
against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the economy still is the
most important issue facing Americans, Brinkley said. He noted
President George H.W. Bush presided over victory in the first
Gulf War but then lost reelection in 1992 because the country
was struggling to emerge from a recession.
Biden needs to be bold, particularly in addressing inflation and
the economy, or he’ll face a similar fate, Brinkley said.
“You can’t say that he has vigorous leadership. You can say he
has personal integrity and statesmanlike competence,” Brinkley
said. “He could sell his act a lot better if the baby formula
were on the shelves and the gas prices went down. He’s got to
find a way to do that.”
Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at jim.puz...@globe.com.
Follow him on Twitter: @JimPuzzanghera.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/06/04/nation/people-are-
questioning-if-hes-man-moment-crises-mount-biden-struggles-show-
he-can-solve-them/
Songbird Johnny
Feb 22, 2024, 5:30:03 AMFeb 22
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