Biden Needs an Enemy - The AtlanticCan the president change the narrative / messaging and save democracy again? Less than a year ago, America was led by a man who governed to please the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and toyed with the idea of imposing martial law. After Donald Trump, you’d think the American people would just enjoy having a normal president who doesn’t use his Twitter account to threaten neighboring countries or corporations. But they don’t. Take one look at national polling numbers and you’ll see that Americans are unhappy with Joe Biden: According to FiveThirtyEight, 51.7 percent of Americans disapprove of his job performance. A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed that 50 percent disapprove of Biden’s handling of the pandemic and 59 percent disapprove of his handling of the economy. To improve Biden’s popularity, earnest consultants might tell him to work on the fundamentals. But the fundamentals are actually good: The economy is getting better. Americans have both cash and jobs. Sure, inflation is an issue, but it’s a global phenomenon and not unexpected, because we’re coming out of a pandemic. The disconnect between the facts and the polls suggests that Biden’s true problem is a narrative one. Specifically, he doesn’t have an enemy, a punching bag to absorb Americans’ anger (rational or irrational). Americans are of course clued in to the idea that presidents need enemies to win over the electorate. FDR pitted Americans against the wealthy LBJ waged war on poverty Reagan pitted Americans against our government itself shortly after apologizing for the Lewinsky affair, Clinton ordered the military strikes against our new enemies Sudan and Afghanistan to that end, Biden could easily declare ‘war’ on the authoritarians (Trump, MTG and Gozar in the House, insurrectionists, et al.) threatening our democracy oil co and OPEC for the high gasoline prices tax cheats like the Trump co. and self-dealing charities like the Trump Foundation, now defunct obstructionists Manchin and Sinema
Biden has a lot of enemies but I really hope he doesn't campaign and certainly not govern by focussing on enemies. That was the thinking of the last Admin. That even talked about scripting everyday as the President vanquishing his enemies. It's the kind of political rhetoric designed for low attention voters and extremists. It's one of the big reasons why are politics are so toxic now.
I agree. Biden got elected and the Dems won the House in 2018 turning out a coalition of voters that consisted of suburban white women, and people of color. None of the voters that are leaving him, at least in the polling, are voters that are going to come back to him if he turns into a Leftist Trump. The went to him because he WASN'T Trump. The problems are the problems of "feeling" in America right now. The President cannot really control something like that. He really just has to capitalize on the times and be in tune with "the feeling" in the country at any moment so he is able to speak to the concerns people have at that time. When gas prices start going up, the President should get ahead of that and essentially campaign as an opposition opponent where he says "what is happening is terrible, and existential. Join me, and call your congressman/woman and tell them my gas bill plan needs to get passed today, etc. etc." Don't make excuses, and certainly do not just sit on the sideline. Those middle/low information voters just want to know he's a true fighter, and right now they don't see that, and that's the main issue IMO. Even though I do know he's doing what he can, and I also know what little is in his control. And lastly I know the problems with the media and how they are an opposition party and create gas price p*rn among other things to make people hate the governing party in power unless they are well mannered Republicans than they LOVE them.
Year one ..having fun! How does it feel to not have to be in the news cycle 24 -7 ? How does it feel to not feel like you are living in a game show? Whew People don't want an abusive relationship again and the idea of more orange . And deathsantis doesn't move the needle enough ...maybe he does. By the time the election comes all this stuff will be lined up nicely..it's called 'planning' imagine that! I got high hopes for you ni##$ we gonna see! @tinman
Brandon doesn't need an enemy. He needs to retire to an old folks home so he can tell his CornPop stories all day long.
We have the largest domestic terror threat in the history of the country and an entire political party destroying the institutions of democracy piece by piece. Take your pick.
The ideal enemy. Too big and too nuclear to go to war with. Should leads to trillions of no bid juicy military contracts for many years. One of my favorite boondoggles are nuclear aircraft carriers which iirc cost about 14 billion, but all agree are completely defenseless against a simultaneous attack of a few 5 million missiles. On the plus side this military industrial complex action does create jobs especially in some rural areas whose other main industry is often time the prison industrial complex. Negatively our infrastructure gets more developing world like daily civilian
On the eve of a dismal q4 results, Team Biden is now engaging in his new arch nemesis, Omicron, and his side kick, The Republican.
I would pick both. @Os Trigonum will post more "jokes" about the Democratic Party, something he loves to do, while ignoring exactly what you're talking about, that the Republican Party giving it's soul to Donald trump is a true existential threat to this country and that is not a joke. Not a joke at all. The problem with President Biden is that while he may be a decent man and and a decent president, he does a lousy job of conveying to the American people the good things he is doing at home, with the foreign policy decision that has gotten the most attention, the precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, rightly seen as a disastrous failure. Meanwhile, his strengthening of NATO, firming up our major alliance that had been badly weakened by trump, is not getting the attention it deserves. At least his surprising "alliance" with Australia and the UK, centered around the Aussies obtaining nuclear submarines, but consisting of much more than that, has been getting a lot of attention recently, most of it positive (except in France). What hurts Biden is that he spends as much time trying to hold the competing factions within the Democratic Party together as he does fighting off the extremists of the GOP. That doesn't help him a bit and doesn't help the party, as reflected in the recent gubernatorial election in Virginia. One can't help but think that had the infrastructure bill been passed months ago, that the next governor of Virginia would remain a Democrat. The "optics" of the messy exit from Afghanistan, when leaving could have been put off, and the loss in Virginia portray a "weakened" Democratic Party. Biden doesn't deserve all the blame for that, not by a long shot, but he certainly deserves a large part of it. President Biden needs to turn that around. If it takes an "enemy" to do so, he has many to choose from, foreign and domestic. The man has to get busy. There is a lot of ground to be made up, and the clock is ticking. The stakes are high. In fact, they could hardly be higher. Should trump manage to lie his way back into the presidency, backed by the extremists who have taken control of the Republican Party, our very democracy is threatened. That is hardly a laughing matter, regardless of what the Babylon Bee may have to say about it.
Yes as stated repeatedly, the Democrats suck at messaging. If you look at things like the US UK Australia alliance that potentially will do far more to counter the PRC than Trump's go it alone trade wars which actually increased the trade deficit. Trump's whole career has been built on the idea of style over substance which much of the GOP is also about. Biden has actually addressed the substance including on things that Trump wanted such as the withdrawal from Afghanistan. He's certainly not done a good job across the board on those as the withdrawal from Afghanistan showed but he is willing to actually put substance behind his rhetoric.
