Being Joe Biden

I'm sick and tired of Biden-bashing, too.

How would you like to be Joe Biden?  You wake up every day with the sure knowledge that no matter the issue, no matter the decision you make, no matter what the latest “numbers” are, everyone, even people you like and who like you will be unhappy with you, and they’ll let you know it.

Part of it is just being a Democrat.  Republicans don’t get all hot and bothered when something goes wrong for a fellow Republican, especially when one of them is the President.  All you have to do is look at the four years Donald Trump was in the White House to see that.  Trump’s poll numbers?  In the basement – never once rising above 50 percent – for all four years.  Did you hear Republicans whining about how unpopular their president was?  Not a whimper.  But the minute Biden slipped below the magic line of 50, he was “in crisis.”  Front page headlines everywhere.  Biden’s popularity “in free fall.”  “Poll numbers pointing to a midterm shellacking for Democrats.”

Let’s take a closer look.  In mid-December, NPR and PBS and the Marist Poll found Biden’s approval rating at 41 percent, “the lowest score of his presidency,” according to the poll.  CBS reported on Sunday that Biden’s approval rating had risen to 44 percent.  But Gallup tells us that Trump’s average approval rating over four years was 41 percent, “lower than any other commander-in-chief in modern history,” according to the polling organization. 

In fact, when Trump edged up above 44 percent, they broke out the champagne at the White House.  But did we hear about his cratering poll numbers the same way the press has been hounding Biden about his numbers?  Did we get constant front page stories on how “frustrated” and “disappointed” voters were with Trump?  Nope.  Everybody just knew that Trump’s approval rating lived permanently in the 40’s, and what constantly ran on the front page were in-depth interviews with Trump voters giving vent to “anger” that somehow they had lost “their” country.

Take a look at what Biden faces every time he gets out of bed these days.  Russians “thin-out” their embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, reports the New York Times.  It “may be part propaganda, part preparation for a looming conflict or part feint, Ukrainian and U.S. officials say. It could be all three,” according to the Times.  Meanwhile, more than 100,000 Russian troops have surrounded Ukraine on three sides and were reinforced with squadrons of combat helicopters recently, a state of affairs that dates back to the previous administration and if you include Crimea, the one before that. 

Iran?  Charging ahead with its program to enrich uranium.  “As Biden relaxed pressure, Iran took advantage” the Wall Street Journal headlined yesterday.  “America has no good options on Iran” Foreign Affairs echoed.  “But reviving the nuclear deal is the least bad.”  Who got us in this mess?  Who took a walk from the nuclear deal that Foreign Affairs thinks we should get back into?  Donald Trump, that’s who.  “Iran now has the capacity to make enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb in less than a month,” Foreign Affairs informs us.  There is precisely one mention of Trump’s name in the first nine paragraphs of the story.  Everywhere it’s “Washington,” or “the U.S.,” as if the Oval Office was vacant in 2018 when Trump walked away from the deal that even Israel now admits made us safer than we are now. 

Whose fault is it, according to the chorus of Beltway naysayers?  Joe Biden’s.  He’s the one responsible for the “dangerous vacuum” that might result as the nuclear talks “deadlock,” according to the Guardian.  Donald Trump?  Well, neither the newspapers nor the cable news shows have sent anyone down to the Doral Golf Club to interview the waddling asshole who blew up the deal that took the Obama administration nearly three years to piece together with the recalcitrant Iranians. 

COVID?  How has Biden been doing after almost a year in office with the pandemic?  Well, NPR has taken a look, and for some reason, just like nearly every time NPR decides to examine the Biden administration, they are not happy.  “Trust is key in a pandemic,” NPR helpfully informs us.  “If the public doesn't trust what the government says, they're unlikely to comply with public health recommendations.”  Experts told NPR that the Biden administration “has not made much progress…it’s very difficult to rebuild trust once it’s been lost,” according to Lindsay Wiley, “a health law professor at UCLA.” 

Who is responsible for the loss of “trust” all NPR’s experts are talking about?  Why, if you read their coverage, it must have been some ghost, because you don’t find the name of the man who epically fucked up the response to COVID and lied about what a serious problem it was for an entire year.  No, what you hear is that the country was “deeply polarized and distrustful of government before the pandemic.”  Who caused that polarization with his volcanic tsunami of 30,000 lies over four years? You think NPR is willing to take a flyer on that one?

Ha! 

How about the vaccination program?  Well, 500 million doses have been administered, and according to NPR, “75 percent of the U.S. population now has at least one dose,” all done during Biden’s time in office.  “Still, that expanded access has not been met by the acceptance of the vaccine," NPR quotes a Harvard expert.  Over 60 million Americans are unvaccinated, and “those who remain unvaccinated are largely Republican who oppose the Democratic President.” 

Anyone to blame for this savage divide in the American public when it comes to the solution of the crisis with this deadly virus?  Let’s see…did NPR name anybody?  Hmmm…I’m looking…I’m still looking…oh goody, here’s something!  “The administration still has a huge challenge in addressing those that are resistant and hesitant of vaccines," the Harvard expert opines.  But did I find the name of the one person who stuck a knife in the back of the entire national response to the pandemic, Donald Trump? 

Ha!

What would help would be to “mitigate spread through expanding masking, testing, treatment, data, workforce, and clear public health standards,” NPR tells us.  But what do you know?  “This is an area where the administration has fallen short,” says NPR.  Give me a minute and I’ll see if the story has any mention of the governors of states like Florida and Texas and South Dakota and Mississippi and Alabama and now Virginia who have actually signed laws or executive orders banning mask and vaccine mandates.  Still looking…still reading…

Ha! 

Not a word about the entire Republican Party, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, Kristi Noem or anybody else.  Who is to blame, however?  Well, we find “White House,” we find “administration,” we find “CDC,” and we discover that there have been “missed opportunities” and “a confusing patchwork of policies,” but we don’t find the name of anyone who had the fucking “opportunity” to establish a unified response to the virus in the first place, and we don’t find the names of any of the soulless scum suckers who have politicized the response and thus caused the deaths of tens if not hundreds of thousands.

If you can’t get a centrist outfit like NPR to be straightforward and honest about who’s to blame for the shitstorm we’ve been in for two years, who can you count on? 

Nobody, that’s who.  Dana Milbank of the Washington Post reported last month that “President Joe Biden’s coverage since August has been more negative that Trump’s was twelve months ago.”  A data research firm contacted by Milbank “analyzed 200,000 articles and measured the tone of the coverage.”  Milbank “blew up myth about how the Beltway press cozies up to Democrats and goes hard after Republican presidents.” 

Milbank provided a couple of helpful examples.  “On the day that President Joe Biden triumphantly signed into law a bipartisan, $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that will help rebuild bridges, roads and broadband nationwide as well as transform public transportation in this country, the Washington Post ran a front-page gotcha piece about how he isn’t pessimistic enough.”  Back in October, when stories about the crisis in the “supply chain” were all over the news, the White House press corps “demanded to know if Biden would personally guarantee that every gift being shipped out for Christmas would arrive on time.” 

As we now know, deliveries by the USPS, FedEx, UPS and other national shippers worked just fine in the run up to the holidays, but do you think there’s been a single story noting that success and attributing it to the man the White House press corps was prepared to blame?

Ha!

See what I mean about being Joe Biden?  Even when your predecessor was the president every poll of scholars has named as the absolute worst in the entire history of the United States, you can’t catch a break.  A typical case of classic Beltway amnesia has set in among the national press.  At this point in the administration of Donald Trump, he was on his second national security adviser of an eventual four, and his cabinet was well on its way to its second resignation by leaders who had been accused of profiting from their government positions and misusing federal funds and aircraft for personal purposes, and there were multiple ongoing ethics investigations of other cabinet secretaries.

Have there been any stories about Biden’s scandal-free administration or the fact that he hasn’t had any White House officials or former campaign managers indicted and convicted, pointing out that his White House is as squeaky clean as the Obama White House was?

Ha!