USA 2020 Elections: Thread

[grarpamp]

Biden, the Chief Bunker Dweller Barely in Charge, and
strange attractor of negative approval rating gravity,
gets pushed out for puppet show at risk of exposing
his stream of un-consciousness and rage...
next puppet showing is "State of the Union", etc.


https://nypost.com/2022/01/19/biden-hunkers-down-ahead-of-just-2nd-solo-press-conference-to-end-first-year/
https://archive.is/nIRKk
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/joe-bidens-awesome-first-year
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/donny-deutsch-pans-joe-biden-on-msnbc/


Biden Gives Rare "Solo" Press Briefing As Approval Rating Craters

President Joe Biden is about to cap his first full 12 months in office
by holding what has been described by the NY Post as only the second
solo press briefing since the former VP returned to the White House.

Readers can watch live below. The briefing is slated to begin at 1600ET:

Biden is expected to discuss COVID, his dismal approval rating and a
range of other topics.

Biden has largely remained out of public view this week - stopping
briefly to speak with reporters outside of the White House on Monday.

On Tuesday, members of the White House attended an economic briefing
and also called Finland’s President Sauli Niinistö to discuss tensions
between Ukraine and Russia.

Will Biden’s handling of the pandemic elicit tough questions from the
press now that the omicron variant has sent cases and hospitalization
rates to all-time highs this month? We think you probably know the
answer...

More than 855K US residents tested positive for COVID Monday,
according to CDC data, nearly 3x last winter’s peak of just 294K cases
on Jan. 8, 2021. And about 150K US hospital patients have COVID,
besting the pre-omicron record of 133K "variant" cases recorded last
January.

To put this all in context: 352K Americans died of (or from) COVID in
2020 under Trump, while 474,000 Americans died of/from COVID in 2021
under Biden.

Murderer! Right, Salon?

Now, President Biden is running around trying to "take credit" for the
dynamic drop in COVID cases.

The impression that Biden has been asleep at the wheel has helped to
drive Biden's job approval rating lower; one recent Quinnipiac Poll
tagged Biden's approval rating at just 33%.

    President Biden's overall approval rating in the last seven
Quinnipiac polls: 49%, 46%, 42%, 38%, 37%, 36%, 33%.
    — Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) January 12, 2022

If QPac's numbers are that low, imagine what the "real" numbers might look like.

    If even the left-wing pollsters have numbers this bad for Biden,
the real numbers must be even more horrific. https://t.co/LiV8S7f7O4
    — Mollie (@MZHemingway) January 12, 2022

Either way, Biden is cratering.

The President only agreed to participate in Wednesday's briefing after
his top media advisors desperately implored him to get out there and
speak directly to the American people.

As Matt Taibbi writes via TK News:
Joe Biden's Awesome First Year

To win an exhausted nation's admiration, all Joe Biden had to do was
nothing. Instead, he's burning future votes like kindling...
“Three more years...”

The Gallup agency released a picture of the comet that is the Joe
Biden presidency on its first anniversary. This is what a one-year,
14-point party affiliation swing looks like:

The pollsters put the numbers in context:

    Both the nine-point Democratic advantage in the first quarter and
the five-point Republican edge in the fourth quarter are among the
largest Gallup has measured for each party in any quarter since it
began regularly measuring party identification and leaning in 1991.

How great was life for Joe Biden a year ago? MSNBC’s John Heilemann
compared him to Lincoln; PBS White House correspondent Yamiche
Alcindor said the return of the Democrats “felt like we are being
rescued from the craziness and now here are the superheroes to come
and save us all”; Rachel Maddow went through “half a box of Kleenex”
in joy; even Chris Wallace on Fox said Biden’s half-coherent
inauguration speech was “the best inaugural address I ever heard,”
JFK’s iconic “Ask Not” included.

Biden looks bad. During the campaign, when he was challenging
strangers to pushup contests and doing sternum-pokes in crowds while
nervous aides bit their lips, you could make the argument he was
merely in steep with his mental decline, which was okay. Against Trump
the standard of “technically alive” worked for a lot of voters. Biden
now looks like a man deep into the peeing-on-houseplants stage, and
every appearance is an adventure.

He might say, “Even Dr. King’s assassination did not have the
worldwide impact that George Floyd’s death did,” or repeat his
evolving fantasy about getting arrested with Nelson Mandela (who
according to the president also later came to Washington to say, “You
got arrested trying to see me!”), or let it slip that aides are
shielding him from all news (a logical takeaway from his “Let’s Go
Brandon, I agree” Christmas moment). Or, he might just collapse into
syllable-piles before casting around in fright, like this
gut-wrenching “Where’s Tim?” scene:

It’s reached the point where MSNBC is permitting guests like Donny
Deutsch to say things like, “He seems old.” In a panic, Party
spokestool Paul Begala went on the network this week to deliver a
real-life version of the old Mel Brooks “the peasants are revolting”
joke, saying “the problem for the Democrats… is not that they have bad
leaders. They have bad followers.”

As Paul Begala said, "the problem with the Democrats...FF

Biden has always been an easy punchline. A tumescent yeller with hair
plugs is a magnet for comics.

TK News subscribers can continue reading here.

FInally, here are some questions that Biden might face during
Wednesday's briefing, courtesy of the Hill:

    Is Build Back Better dead? Are you willing to urge Democrats to
pass pieces of it rather than the whole proposal?
    You have warned for several months that Republican laws like the
one in Georgia represent an attack on democracy. Why then did you wait
until last week to make a forceful push to alter the filibuster? And
would you support reforming the Electoral Count Act if other efforts
fail?
    What preventative measures is your administration looking at in
order to prevent another test shortage and other pandemic-related
measures should another variant arise? What do you say to criticism
that your administration is reacting instead of being more proactive
two years into the pandemic?
    Have you been satisfied with the messaging coming from the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention? Can your administration improve
the way it communicates about the pandemic to the American public?
    You and your advisers have predicted that inflation will be
transitory, but with the costs of food, housing and other essential
goods rising, how can you assure Americans that your administration is
focused on addressing surging inflation?
    Last week, the Supreme Court struck down your sweeping
vaccine-or-test mandate for large private businesses. Will that be the
end of your efforts to mandate vaccines or are more actions on the
table?
    You recently called the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol an
“insurrection” and an attempted “coup.” Do you believe the Justice
Department should prosecute former President Trump for his role in the
Jan. 6 riot?
    Can you commit unequivocally to running for reelection? Will Vice
President Harris be your running mate? If you can’t commit
unequivocally, who do you think should be the nominee if circumstances
ultimately cause you to decide against running?
    Your press secretary, Jen Psaki, said Tuesday that Russia could
launch an attack on Ukraine “at any point.” What is your
administration going to do to punish Russia if it does so? Are you
doing everything you can to try to force Russia to pull troops back
from the border with Ukraine?