Progressives need to settle down about polls that show criminal defendant Donald Trump running neck and neck, or even slightly ahead of President Joe Biden a year before the election.
Sure, Biden is 80 years old, he will be 81 when the election is held and he’ll be 82 when he starts his second term, but he is healthy, alert and appears to be vigorous as he handles the nation’s affairs. Some of our friends believe Biden should step down and let somebody else lead the Democratic ticket in 2024, but the incumbent Biden certainly is in better shape, physically and mentally, than Trump, who appears increasingly disconnected from reality, as shown in his public ravings as he faces criminal trials on 91 state and federal felony charges in four different jurisdictions, and civil trials for fraud and sexual assault. And if anything happens to Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris is well-qualified to take over, unlike US Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., a little-known third-term congressman from Minnesota who recently entered the Democratic race in the hopes of opening the primary to a “new generation of leaders,” which would seed the corporate media with “Democrats in disarray” stories.
The New York Times fed the paranoia with its Nov. 5 report on a poll conducted by Siena College for the Times from Oct. 22 to Nov. 3 that found Biden trailing Trump by margins of four to 10 percentage points among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Biden was ahead only in Wisconsin, by two percentage points, the poll found. “Discontent pulsates throughout the Times/Siena poll, with a majority of voters saying Mr. Biden’s policies have personally hurt them,” the Times reported. “The survey also reveals the extent to which the multiracial and multigenerational coalition that elected Mr. Biden is fraying. Demographic groups that backed Mr. Biden by landslide margins in 2020 are now far more closely contested, as two-thirds of the electorate sees the country moving in the wrong direction.”
The Northwest Progressive Institute, based in Redmond, Wash., concluded that Republican voters were oversampled in these polls.
“A whopping four-fifths of the total sample said they consider themselves something other than liberal, or refused to answer. Thirty-nine percent identified as ‘moderate’ — a label that sounds good but doesn’t stand for anything — and 36% identified as conservative, nearly twice as many as those who said liberal.”
The poll found 53% of respondents said Biden’s policies have hurt them, which the NWI analysts found “objectively nonsensical,” as Biden has signed into law a long list of bills to help most Americans. For example, the Inflation Reduction Act is finally allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs. The American Rescue Plan reduced child poverty with the Child Tax Credit. The administration is using its authority under existing law to try to forgive student loan debt.
The same poll found 51% of respondents said Trump’s policies helped them, despite Trump’s policies having been incredibly destructive.
Biden’s actions have been popular among those who know about them. But other polling has showed Americans simply don’t know about these things.
“Americans have heard the most about the Biden administration lowering prescription drug costs, ramping up clean energy, and investing in infrastructure, but even on these accomplishments, fewer than three in five Americans have heard about each one,” Navigator Research reported Oct. 24.
“Communicating around Biden’s accomplishments improves his net job approval rating by double digits, especially among people unfavorable to both Biden and Trump, younger Americans, and college-educated women.” Dems need to spread that information.
The key takeaway: Once voters learn about what Biden and Vice President Harris have gotten done, they become more enthusiastic about supporting the ticket in 2024.
On Capitol Hill, fourth time was the charm in late October as Republicans finally settled on Mike Johnson as House Speaker, three weeks after they ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy Oct. 3 for cooperating with Democrats to keep the federal government operating for six weeks into the new fiscal year.
Johnson, a little-known congressman in just his fourth term representing northwest Louisiana, played the long game: First up was Majority Leader Steve Scalise of the New Orleans suburbs, who was nominated by the Republican conference in a secret 113-99 vote over Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, but Scalise dropped the bid after more than a dozen hardliners declared their opposition. He could only afford to lose four GOP votes. Next up was Jordan, a leader of the right-wing “Freedom” caucus, who got the nomination but couldn’t consolidate the GOP vote despite a bullying campaign, which reportedly included death threats to the families of holdouts, before the conference dropped Jordan as their nominee. Next up was House Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota, but two dozen MAGA Republicans opposed his bid after Trump suggested Emmer was a RINO (Republican in Name Only) because he accepted the 2020 election results. Emmer withdrew. At that point, Johnson stepped forward with support of the MAGA Republicans. As a Christian Dominionist leader of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, Johnson had support of the Lyin’ King, who dubbed him “MAGA Mike,” and he consolidated GOP support. including some who set aside their resistance to election deniers. Johnson won with 220 votes Oct. 25.
Johnson’s immediate responsibility was to get a continuing resolution to fund the government into the new year, while Republicans finish work on appropriation bills, but his first legislative priority was to reject additional support for Ukraine and link $14.3 billion in emergency aid to Israel with roughly equivalent cuts to the IRS, disregarding reports from the Congressional Budget Office that the cuts to the IRS would reduce tax collections and add $26.8 billion to the deficit over the next decade.
As speaker, Johnson is expected to pursue proposals to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as he did as chairman of the Republican Study Committee between 2019 and 2021. Johnson helped craft budget resolutions that called for $2 trillion in Medicare cuts, $3 trillion in Medicaid and Affordable Care Act cuts and $750 billion in Social Security cuts, noted Bobby Kogan of the Center for American Progress. Johnson also has proposed raising the Social Security retirement age further, lowering annual cost of living benefits and advancing privatization efforts, said Alex Lawson, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works.
Charles Pierce of Esquire.com suggested that after the shutdown is avoided, Democrats should start filing motions to vacate the chair every few days. “Make the Republicans vote to keep the Speakership in the hands of a slick theocratic grifter a few times a week. After all, that stupid Matt Gaetz rule on vacating the chair when one member proposes it is still a ticking time bomb. Maybe it’s time to have a little fun.” — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2023
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