Prof. ST Hsieh
Director, US-China Energy Industry Forum
626-376-7460
September 25, 2023
It is all to clear to everyone that Biden’s re-election challenges are not his fault! But he is the only one can change course soon enough to be a one-term President that history will honor him as one of the few super-star US Presidents in line with George Washington and Abrahm Lincoln. They all made decisions with the nation’s interests as top priority.
As of now, Biden’s reelection bid only has two bad results, not only for him personally but also for the nation. Scenario One, he could lose the election to convicted Trump and the world will witness the decay of the US: essentially Trump II most likely will mean that the once mighty US will be no more!
Scenario Two, Biden still has a chance to win his second term. But his second term in the White House will be so tasking of his physical and mental capacity that could render the US an openly divided nation. We clearly understand how Trump would behave facing a legitimate election lose.
The optimum outcome is:
Biden gives a younger and vigorous democrat a chance to defeat and contain Trump, re-unite the nation. But time is short, it is time for Biden to make the move.
This week in Bidenomics: The president’s unpopularity, explained
·Senior Columnist
Updated Fri, September 22, 2023 at 2:56 PM PDT·Scroll back up to restore default view.
Democrats have struggled to understand how job growth can be stellar and unemployment close to record lows, yet President Biden’s approval rating remains stuck in the low 40% range. An even smaller portion of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the economy.
The Census Bureau may have solved the mystery when it released its annual update on income and poverty earlier this month. The median household income in 2022 was $74,580, a drop of about $1,750 from the year before. And income in 2021 dropped $330 from the year before that.
Compared with 2020, when Biden won the presidency, household incomes have fallen $2,080, or 2.7%. Those numbers are adjusted for inflation, so they reflect real declines in living standards.
Inflation is the culprit. Nominal wages have risen, but inflation has risen more. “The rate of inflation outstripped the rate of pay increases so that the income of most households did not buy as much,” William Galston of the Brookings Institution wrote recently. “Americans noticed this decrease, and as the polls indicate, they did not like it.”
Voters tend to credit or blame the president for whatever happens on his watch, but the economy is a gargantuan, complex machine that doesn’t respond much to presidential policies.
So what about Biden? Voters clearly blame him for inflation that reached a peak of 9% in June of 2022. It’s now down to 3.7%, a considerable improvement. But Biden’s approval rating hasn’t improved as inflation has come down, which indicates voters are still feeling the pain of inflation and not yet in a mood to forgive the incumbent for lost purchasing power.
Biden’s critics are convinced that a single piece of legislation — the $2.2 trillion CARES Act Biden signed in March 2021 — is solely responsible for the inflation that peaked a year later, hammering family budgets. That’s mostly false. Starting in 2020, Congress passed $6 trillion worth of COVID stimulus, the majority of it during the Trump administration. In toto, all of that money gushing into the economy probably did goose inflation. But it also rapidly popped the United States out of a recession and fueled the strongest recovery of any advanced nation.
Supply chain snafus caused by the pandemic contributed more to inflation, as did massive shifts in spending patterns by Americans suddenly stuck at home, buying everything they could find. There were other factors, too, but as any politician knows, when you’re explaining, you’re losing.
Biden’s real inflation problem is that he simply needs voters to forget about it. He can’t explain it away. The details are too arcane and the disinfosphere has given everybody who wants to blame Biden a reason to do so. The trends are now in Biden’s favor, but whether voters warm to him during the next 12 months may now be a matter of how good their memories are.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance.
Biden faces foreign policy trouble spots as he aims to highlight his experience on the global stage
AAMER MADHANI
Updated Sat, September 23, 2023 at 9:07 AM PDT
Biden Foreign Policy
WASHINGTON (AP) — This probably wasn’t how President Joe Biden envisioned his big foreign policy week ending.
Biden spent much of the time trying to make the case to world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly as well as to Democratic donors and voters that his decades of foreign policy experience and demonstrated moral clarity set him apart from Donald Trump, the early front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.
But just as Biden is looking to spotlight his foreign policy chops with his 2024 reelection bid heating up, he is facing a growing list of national security headaches, several of which emerged in recent days.
The president is also facing growing global concern that future U.S. aid for Ukraine could become captive to a looming U.S. government shutdown.
Biden, 80, has faced increasing skepticism about his age from voters, including some Democrats. He offered perhaps his most fulsome argument this past week about the benefits of having a veteran politician in the White House at a delicate moment for the world.
“When Russia invaded Ukraine, I knew what to do — because I’ve been doing it for a long, long time,” Biden told donors at a New York City fundraiser this week.
He will need that experience as he tries to navigate tensions between Canada and India over the June killing of the Indian-born Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in suburban Vancouver. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday that there were “credible allegations” of Indian involvement in the killing by masked gunmen of Nijjar, who had been wanted by India for years.
The claim has been dismissed by Indian officials as absurd. India on Thursday stopped issuing visas to Canadian citizens and ordered Ottawa to reduce its diplomatic presence in the country.
The situation could complicate Biden’s dealings with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a critical ally as Biden seeks to put greater focus on the Indo-Pacific in the face of China’s growing economic might and military assertiveness.
In addition to shared concerns about China, the U.S. and India want to work more closely on the challenges posed by climate change, artificial intelligence, global supply chain resilience and other issues.
Associated Press writer Joshua Goodman in Miami contributed to this report.
Why the Democrats are now openly worried about Biden’s age
Toby Harnden
Fri, September 22, 2023 at 3:10 AM PDT
Oh dear. In what his speechwriters had intended to be a Kennedyesque flourish at the United Nations in New York, President Joe Biden was out of gas.
His voice approaching a whisper, he urged delegates to bend “the arc of history for the good of the world” before mumbling, in a manner that suggested he had little power to do anything, that “it’s in our power to do it.”
And then, almost apologetically, like a befuddled grandpa realising he’d gone on too long and had been hard to follow, murmured: “Thank you for listening. You’re kind.” Later, he would go on to repeat the same story within minutes at a private fundraising event.
True, it was not the most disconcerting recent performance by the 80-year-old American commander-in-chief. That would be his press conference in Hanoi less than a fortnight ago. There, he rambled about the “famous song, you know, ‘Good Morning, Vietnam’ (it’s a movie) and “lying, dog-faced pony soldiers” in a John Wayne movie (The Duke appeared in no such movie).
He quipped “I’m just following my orders here” and “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go to bed” before his press secretary cut his mic and tinkling piano music took over.
For months, it has been clear that ordinary Americans are worried about Biden’s age and infirmity. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that 73 percent of voters – including a staggering two-thirds of Democrats – felt Biden was too old to seek a second term.
And while Democrats pointed out that the likely 2024 Republican opponent Donald Trump at 77 was no spring chicken or picture of health, the problem is that Americans could see Biden shuffling around and struggling to read teleprompters.
Suddenly, the establishment is now changing its tune and catching up with ordinary Americans. The venerable Washington Post columnist David Ignatius opined that Biden should not run in 2024. Even the author of an admiring biography of Biden floated that his subject might exit the stage, whilst Steve Schwarzman, CEO of leading asset management firm Blackstone, expressed his own doubts on whether Biden would be awarded a second term.
Democrats are now openly fretting about Biden, with one official inconveniently musing: “He is in a period of his life where passing and death is imminent.”
So what’s going on? Partly, it’s the opinion polls Biden’s approval rating is mired at 39 percent, firmly in the re-election danger zone. It’s also the terrifying thought for Democrats that this is how Trump, even though he faces 91 felony counts, returns to the White House.
Time is running out for Democrats to change course. This month is the unofficial start of the presidential campaign. The first Democratic primary is in South Carolina at the start of February.
Vice President Kamala Harris, at 33 percent approval, is even more unpopular than Biden. Privately, senior Democrats believe that nominating her would guarantee defeat. That means another party standard bearer. If Biden doesn’t drop out within a month or so, it’s almost impossible for that to happen.
It’s depressing that such a vibrant, forward-looking country should now be in the grip of a gerontocracy. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, is 81 and has twice frozen in front of the cameras this year and been escorted away by aides. Senator Dianne Feinstein is 90, wheelchair-bound and often appears not to know what she is doing or where she is.
Mackowiak offers the Democratic handwringers an ingenious solution. “The pathway that I see for them is Biden says, ‘Look, the country’s facing major challenges, I can either run for election, or I can try to solve major problems for the next year. I’m going to just do one term.’ Then he appoints Harris to the Supreme Court and the Democrats nominate someone else.”
No one is placing bets that Biden will do this. “American politicians are drunk on power,” laments Sabato. “It’s addictive. And that’s why Biden staying. He spent his whole life trying to get to be president. Do you really think he’s going to voluntarily leave before the Constitution says he has to?”