President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

Yeah and such an effort could never happen again so, a year before the election, let's all bend over for MAGA.

 

Gee, I wonder what caused that huge increase in turnout. The Dems need to figure out what fueled it and be certain to do that again.

 

I will posit the fact that Biden is unpopular. But there's ample evidence, which needs to be cited in the 2024 pieces I won't read, that the Republicans are even more unpopular.

 

If Trump is somehow not the Republican nominee, and it's Haley or DeSantis, I could see votes go away from Biden, especially for the "anybody but Trump" crowd.

 

I think the issue with that scenario is that Trump attracts a shit ton of the "racist uncle" or extremist vote that simply does not show up if his name is not on the ballot. That's been my pet theory at least for why Rs have underperformed during these midterm elections.

 

Biden's issues heading into 2024 seem to boil down to inflation and foreign policy.

On the former, the only thing that can really help him is if gas prices go down and stay down. If people in battleground states see gas in the $2.50-$2.75 range, that could take some of the sting out.

On the latter, Ukraine and Gaza are major liabilities. The Republicans will do everything they can to stop or slow funding to Ukraine and then say that Biden wasted hundreds of billions of dollars and was weak against Russia. Gaza may be a true no-win situation for him - he's going to shed Palestinian-friendly votes if he stays on the path he's taken so far, and he'll hemorrhage votes on the other side and be called soft on terror if he tries to help Gazans.

You'd think that Trump openly planning a vengeful autocracy would mitigate some of that, but despite last night's results, I think there's going to be some fatigue with that at some point. I hope I'm wrong, but I think Garland's decision to slow-roll the investigations will be viewed as a massive mistake in hindsight.

 

I get it that ultimately someone is held responsible, but man it would be cool if we stopped pretending that everything good and bad that happens is because of the President's action or in-action.

Good things happened when Donald Trump was President. Bad things happened when Donald Trump was President. And the implications of most decisions a President makes can't be fully weighed for many years down the road.

About the best we can hope for is a President who acts professional, leans on subject-matter expertise, is capable of making decisions beyond political calculus, and is an effective communicator.

 

I can't wait till Trump rolls Ivanka under the bus for engineering the Deutsche Bank loans that got better rates by having him sign a personal guarantee of holding more than $2.5 billion. Those loans from Deutsche's Private Wealth Management group are the ones that he's really in the skillet over.

 

CNN:

"Ivanka Trump distanced herself from knowing anything about a discrepancy in the value of a penthouse apartment in one of her father’s Manhattan buildings that she leased.

Louis Solomon, a lawyer for the attorney general, asked if there had been a purchase option on her penthouse apartment at Trump Park Avenue for $8.5 million. She confirmed there was.

The value of the apartment on Trump’s statement of financial condition, however, was $20.8 million, according to the attorney general’s civil complaint.

Solomon asked whether the value of her purchase option was factored into her father’s financial statement.

"As I had told you a year-and-a-half ago, I wasn’t involved in his statement of financial condition, so I can’t say what it took into account or didn’t take into account," Ivanka Trump responded."

 

Is this bad news for Dems? Are they in disarray?

Democrats flip county Donald Trump won by nearly 60 points

 

Except the president elected in 2016 stoked the fire on myriad issues, was not professional, didn't take COVID seriously, didn't seem to listen to experts and advisers, got a Supreme Court that overturned Roe vs. Wade, denied he lost the 2020 election, sparked an insurgency on the Capitol.

I'm probably forgetting a few thousand other things.


All of that had implications, not only in real time, but will have ramifications for many years. So sure, give him another run. What could go wrong?