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.
I’d also like to add further about the first possibility, namely that “1) small deviations from the prior data set have been offset by other small deviations”.
If you look at the graph below, the Republican dot is below the line, and the Conservative dot is above. This means that the rise of the Conservative dot is offsetting the fall of the Republican dot.
To me this is a clear indication that true conservatives are getting sick of the insane politicization of real issues by the Republican party.
@James Vega
The r-squared is a measure of the variation from a straight line. 100% or 1.00 means a perfect linear fit, and 0% or 0.0 means not linear at all, or completely scattered.
The rhetorical questions you raise are correct. Namely,(and I quote from your statement) “If Obama’s support fell wouldn’t that just shift the line down but maintain the same r squared value assuming his support fell off equally among all the demographic groups? Or is that the point. If his support was falling it wouldn’t be falling in all the demographic groups so the r square should go down?”
If the r squared was less than it was before that would mean that some of the prior data points have changed significantly, so as to cause more deviation from a straight-line than existed in the original data-set measured back in February.
However, since the r squared value (or coefficient of determination) is unchanged, that means one of two things: 1) small deviations from the prior data set have been offset by other small deviations, or 2) the random nature of polls are within the same statistical normative range that existed in February 2009.
So nothing is really changing, according to the r squared value.
Ok maybe I’m missing something here but: I’m not sure what relevance the r squared value has. If Obama’s support fell wouldn’t that just shift the line down but maintain the same r squared value assuming his support fell off equally among all the demographic groups? Or is that the point. If his support was falling it wouldn’t be falling in all the demographic groups so the r square should go down?
There is an additional point that should be made about the recent polling that shows Obama trending down
In February Obama was in his honeymoon, the Republicans were in complete disarray and the big issues were the stimulus package and the budget – on neither of which the Republicans could get any real traction.
Since then Obama has had to deal with the Auto bailout, Cheney-Gitmo, the size and ambition of his health care and climate change initiatives as well as sniping about his “weak” approach to the Middle East, Iran, etc — a whole series of issues that would inevitably peel away some of the “soft” honeymoon support he had in February.
Given this, the slippage we’re seeing is actually remarkably small, not large. He’s now put out most of the most controversial aspects of his progressive program and — not only has he held his coaltion together, as Dr. Abramowitz’ data shows — but his support is still in the mid-50’s overall and above 50% among independents.