Waiting for Joe Biden’s speech to a joint session of Congress to begin this week, I observed at New York that Republicans were struggling to define him consistently, which felt like a familiar problem for them:
When Bill Clinton was at the pre-Lewinsky peak of his powers, he drove Republicans nuts. They alternated between accusing him of “stealing our issues” with his triangulating pitches on welfare reform and crime and the size of government, and of being “liberal, liberal, liberal!” — a sort of boomer love child of George McGovern and Janis Joplin in a deceptive deep-fried southern packaging. Eventually the opportunity to depict him as a lying sexual predator solved the conservative dilemma, though you could argue he never stopped throwing them off-balance.
Republicans are similarly having problems getting a clear focus on Joe Biden, as the Los Angeles Times’ Noah Bierman observes:
“Alex Conant, a Republican consultant who has advised Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, [says] that his party’s two main messages about Biden are at odds with each other, blunting their impact. ‘The thing you hear Republicans say most is that he’s too old for the job, which isn’t consistent with saying he’s doing too much,’ Conant said. ‘You can’t effectively argue that he’s incompetent and that he’s too effective.'”
This dual framing of Biden was evident during the 2020 campaign, when Trump called him “Sleepy Joe” and with his usual lack of subtlety suggested his opponent was senile, even as he assailed Biden’s party of radical socialist aims. The 45th president and his surrogates squared the circle by treating Biden as the half-there puppet of the real powers, particularly the “communist” Kamala Harris.
But now, 100 days into the Biden-Harris administration, even though the new president has kept an unusually low profile, there are no signs of Harris or anyone else manipulating him. Indeed, so far his White House has been remarkably free of the factionalism that often undermines clear presidential leadership. With Clinton as president you had a White House staff famously divided (ironically, given the later reputations of the First Lady and the veep) into progressive “Rodhams” and centrist “Gores” who jockeyed for position and placed their varying stamps on administration policies. George W. Bush’s presidency was also marked by competing power centers (e.g., his terrifying vice-president and the “Boy Genius” Karl Rove); to a lesser extent, so was Obama’s. As for Donald Trump, hardly a week passed without someone — particularly his rotating cast of chiefs-of-staff — being described by “insiders” as the real power behind the throne or perhaps as the wild man’s lion-tamer.
Trump, of course, created some of the same problems for Democrats that Clinton — and now Biden — posed for Republicans. Was he the “toddler president” who ran a hollowed-out administration with no real core of convictions or goals? Or was he a putative Il Duce craftily planning an authoritarian takeover of the country? Up until the day he left office there was evidence for both descriptions. Indeed, the coda of his presidency, the January 6 Capitol riot, was variously regarded as a fascist coup attempt and a clown show.
Trump’s successor will have an opportunity in his first address to a joint session of Congress to add to the impression that he is quietly but firmly in charge of the executive branch, and has imposed order on his fractious party as he unveils yet another massive proposal. Kamala Harris will be sitting (and often standing and applauding) behind him, likely looking more like an adoring protégée than any sort of puppet-master. But if he stumbles at all, or looks tired, or says things that supposedly centrist Democrats like him don’t believe, the knees of many elephants will jerk and out will come the mockery of the old man who is a reassuring front for the Marxists actually running the country.
Such confusion if it continues will be of great service to Biden, much like the current Republican tendency to focus on irrelevant culture-war themes while a mostly united Democratic Party enacts legislative initiatives of a magnitude we haven’t seen since Ronald Reagan’s first year in office. For all their political gifts, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — who, lest we forget, both had a much more firmly Democratic Senate and House the first two years of their presidencies — couldn’t come close to the mastery of Congress Biden has exhibited up until now. As Republicans watch Biden’s speech, they should soberly realize that before long it may not matter that much if they bust up the Democratic trifecta in 2022. The damage to GOP policies and priorities wrought by “Uncle Joe” and his “senile socialist regime” could be too large to reverse by then. While Republicans fret about Trump and rage about “cancel culture,” Biden is eating their lunch.
Fellow donkeys,
If the good news from this DCorps poll isn’t enough to boost your spirits, I strongly recommend heading over to democracycorps.com and checking out their Public Polling chart (right column, about halfway down), which provides a superb summary of the state of the polls right now, both nationally and at the state level (and it includes our favorite statistic: the D/R split). In it you will find that the average of polls for this past several days has GWB with 47% support. Not only that, but the number has been remarkably static close to a month now. By contrast, JFK’s support has risen gradually and steadily, from 43-44% pre-debates, to 45% after debate #1, 46% after #2, and 47% after number 3. This really confirms what all of us thought must be the case all along: the majority of the country is pretty unhappy with Bush, and was just waiting all along to be convinced that Kerry was the right man to replace him. Most of them have now been convinced, and them who haven’t will be on November 2nd.
We all know that Bush at 47% is toast — but if you’re still pessimistic, consider the following:
1. The polls summarized by DCorps are all for LVs — if it were RVs then Kerry would be doing even better, as has been the case in almost every poll during the entire campaign season.
2. We have had positive documentation from the NY Times that the Dems kicked some serious a** in new vote registration — so much that even the pachyderm’s shredding forms & denying applications won’t be enough to counteract it.
3. With Kerry poised to win this race 51-47, we really don’t even have to sweat the Electoral College, but in case you want to do that, DCorps’ report has similar summaries for all the state polls, showing — shock of all shocks — Bush’s support running at 47% or lower in essentially EVERY battleground state that is still being seriously contested: PA, OH, FL, MI, MN, IA, WI, NH, NV, CO. Right now, Kerry stands poised to win EVERY ONE of these states!! Even if Jeb & Co. steal FL, we got room to spare.
The absolutely stability of Bush’s 47% is actually very good news — it means that nothing he’s done for the last month has garnered him any extra support. This race appears to have entered a static phase, and may change very little over the next 2 weeks. So rejoice! We are hurtling toward victory!
Now prepare for a very late night on November 2nd — to see if we take back the Senate!
Most interesting question in the survery:
“In last election, did you vote for Bush or Gore?”
Respondents said they voted for Bush by 50-44.
If the respondents are reporting accurately (a big ‘if’), then this describes the polling bias. If the polling bias is +6 for Bush, we can expect good things in 2 weeks.
I think that one of the most telling aspects of this poll is that it is based on a polling population that voted 55 for Bush to 44 for Gore in 2000 and now favors Kerry by 50 Kerry and 47 for Bush.