Biden and the Bounds on Unpopularity: How Ex-Presidents Become Closed Messengers in the Midterm Elections

At a Union Hall in Portland, Ore., volunteers with the state’s Democratic Party sat shoulder to shoulder at long tables, while President Biden held a pink and white box of doughnuts.

Biden has been spending more time on the road trying to help Democratic candidates in tough races. This stop was part of a Western swing which stopped in Colorado and Southern California.

But there are many competitive races in other parts of the country where Biden is unwelcome. Like many presidents before him at this point in their first terms, Biden has found his approval ratings underwater. His approval is just above 40% according to recent polls. There are a lot of races where he could hurt more than help.

Midterm elections are almost always about incumbent presidents, especially when they are unpopular. But in a unique twist this year, two ex-presidents who lost control of the House while in office have turned into their parties’ closing messengers.

The Blue State Candidates: How a Candidate Like Joe Biden Has Come to Town, Doesn’t He Wanna Win?

But Oregon is a very blue state that Biden carried handily in the 2020 presidential election. “God, it was nice winning by 16 points,” Biden told the volunteers, gathered on a Friday night to help Tina Kotek, the Democratic candidate for governor,

Two years later, Democrats are nervous about the tough three-way race for governor. There’s an independent candidate — a former Democrat — who could peel off enough Democratic votes to open the door for the first Republican governor of Oregon in more than a generation.

On the following day, Biden went to a Kotek event and then went to a Baskin-Robbins for some ice cream. There, Biden waited for his double scoop of chocolate chip in a waffle cone and said he was very confident that Koek would win.

Mr. Biden has not held a campaign rally since before Labor Day, even as the future of his agenda and his own political career are at stake in the midterm elections. His low profile on the campaign trail reflects his low approval rating, and White House officials say the president has made a point of delivering speeches on the party’s accomplishments, rather than taking part in rallies sponsored by political campaigns.

With less than three weeks until Election Day and polls suggesting Democratic enthusiasm is waning, Mr. Biden’s strategy is clear: He will help Democrats raise money and will continue to hopscotch the country talking about infrastructure, negotiated drug prices, student debt relief and investments in computer chip manufacturing. But his decision to stay out of rallies that are normally a staple of campaign season shows how little the president can do for Democrats even with his megaphone.

He’s also been in high demand at events to raise cash for his party. At a Friday night fundraiser in a private home in Los Angeles, Biden helped raise $5 million, money that will help congressional candidates all over the country, including those in swing districts who at the moment wouldn’t want to be seen in public with Biden.

Some Democratic candidates have claimed scheduling conflicts when Biden comes to town, conflicts that preclude joint appearances. Republicans mocked Biden and his party for this. The author is a Democratic strategist. Any Given Tuesday, said Biden and Democrats are just being smart.

I will still work across the aisle to deliver for the American people. And it’s not always easy, but we did it the first term,” Biden said in his post-midterm election news conference last month. “I’m prepared to work with my Republican colleagues. The Americans have made clear that they expect Republicans to be prepared to work with me as well.

There are places in which Biden can help Democrats, places where they have an advantage in voter registration. Camp Hale is an important World War II training site and has been designated a new national monument by Biden. He gave a boost of support to Sen Bennet at the picture- perfect site, who is running for reelection.

“I want Michael to come back up here,” Biden said before going on to tell the crowd about the hard sell he went through to get him to designate the monument.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: A Brief Review of Biden’s Address to the LA City Hall and the Aftermath of Air Force One

In Los Angeles local officials lined up on a blue tape line to greet the president after he stepped down from Air Force One. Karen Bass, the Democratic congresswoman running for LA mayor, got a well-documented hug with the signature robin’s egg blue plane in the background.

Biden praised the infrastructure law at the construction site and called Bass the “soon to be Ms. Mayor” in his speech where he delivered the core of his message.

Biden is no longer required to pass bills since Republicans are in control of the House. He can propose wildly popular programs and challengeSpeaker Kevin McCarthy to pass them or not in tonight’s State of the Union Address. Capping insulin for all Americans at $35 a month, providing free community college, restoring the Child Tax Credit — which lifted almost one in three poor children out of poverty — and raising taxes on corporate stock buybacks: all these Biden initiatives will have enormous appeal across the US and across party lines.

“We’re always getting incoming requests,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters traveling with the president on Air Force One. “Of course. Of course. There are a lot of good things to talk about.

The Recollapse of the Democratic Party in the ‘1994 Election: The Case for Reply to the Bounds from the White House

WASHINGTON — There is nothing quite like having a president at a big, boisterous campaign rally. And Democrats in four cities — Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee and Las Vegas — will get that chance this month, in the final days of voting that will decide who controls Congress, governors’ offices and statehouses.

The next Congress with the Republican majority is unlikely to look the same as expected, even though many White House officials thought so. While they were confident in the popularity of their legislative agenda, the combination of economic headwinds in the form of persistent inflation and historical precedent that showed nearly every president took losses in the first midterm election led to a less than ideal environment.

White House officials are studying an environment that doesn’t mirror the dynamics of 1994, 2010 and even 2018, the years when Republicans suffered sweeping losses. Whether that will hold, to some degree, is tied to the very construct Biden has identified.

Some in Biden’s own party have begun openly questioning the party’s message – and warning that any momentum that may have existed has given way to clear signs of Republicans regaining the upper hand.

Biden said Monday that the polls were all over the place. Republicans are ahead. Democrats are ahead. The Republicans are ahead. I think the closing days will be more Democratic with one more shift.

It was a candid acknowledgment of a moment that finds Democrats once again scrambling to zero in on a message to blunt GOP momentum, a reality exacerbated by divergent views inside the party of where that message should actually land.

Biden’s comments reflect that Democrats are still in the game two weeks from now, according to a Democratic official.

In a home stretch where the small universe of undecided voters historically votes for the opposing party out of power, whether that will hold is the definitive outstanding question.

“We’ve managed to suck ourselves back into our own circular firing squad,” one Democratic campaign official said. “It was never as good as people seemed to think it was (at the end of the summer), and it’s not as bad as some are acting now. It might be if we don’t pull it together.

The weight of that history is not lost on Biden or his advisers, despite the fact that voter concerns about economic unease are the most important issue in the election.

Two years into his presidency, Biden has struggled at times to fulfill one of his chief promises: restoring normalcy to American political discourse and decency to the way Americans of differing views treat each other. He admits he didn’t think the Trump era would last long into his presidency.

That will start to change in the days ahead, advisers say, with continued insistence that he will hit the road for bigger campaign events after weeks of intentionally smaller scale official events designed to highlight legislative accomplishments.

The Last Seven Days in the Biden Era: What We Can Learn From The Predictive Battles in the House of Representatives and Senate Minority Candidates

They point to two factors specifically on that front: gas prices, which have been on a steady downward trajectory for the last two weeks, and the third quarter GDP report, which analysts expect to show robust growth after two quarters of contraction.

Officials acknowledge their deficit on the economy, despite cornerstone legislative achievements and a historically fast recovery from the pandemic-era downturn, isn’t going to flip over the course of 14 days.

But given the close correlation between gas prices and Democratic electoral prospects over the course of the last several months, they see an opportunity to at least make some gains – or fight to a draw – with undecided voters or those weighing whether to vote at all in the closing days.

In recent weeks, it was laid bare in a particularly acute fashion by Republicans, whether on abortion, popular programs like Social Security and Medicare, or proposals to undoing many of the provisions enacted by Biden that consistently poll in the favor of Democrats.

Biden and his team believe that a serious focus on governing contrasts favorably with House Republicans who are investigating the president and his family, and who threaten to send the nation into default.

The burst of optimism among Democrats after a late summer string of major legislative wins and energy driven by the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe vs. Wade was viewed by many inside the West Wing as overly optimistic.

The structural dynamics defining House races, in part due to redistricting, have long made holding onto an already exceedingly narrow majority a tall task. Republicans have become increasingly aggressive in their budget targets in the past few days, as an environment that is growing more favorable by the day.

In the Senate race, all Democratic candidates are polling with narrow leads or within striking distance. The pathway to hold onto the Senate exists, even if a sharp break away from Democrats could imperil several of the party’s biggest new stars.

The call to unity as the nation transitions into the Christmas season also coincides with the start of family conversations about whether Biden should run for president again. And come 2023, Biden will be operating within a new power balance in Washington. Republicans will take over the House of Representatives and Democrats will hold on to their majority in the Senate.

So many Americans are convinced that Biden has accomplished so little because his advisers are working to solve a political dilemma. Biden has passed a number of historic pieces of legislation that could have a huge effect on the US economy. A majority of people in polls aren’t feeling them.

Biden’s speech Wednesday, delivered blocks from the US Capitol that was ransacked by ex-President Donald Trump’s mob on January 6, 2021, was a strong election-closing argument. It is an election that is taking place next week.

In a week defined by dramatic contrasts between a White House at work and a House Republican majority in chaos, Friday’s event at the White House served as an almost visceral coda. Biden was able to highlight how real the threat to the nation and its politics is, even as signs of the previous administration’s influence began to break down in concrete ways. That risk, in the view of some White House officials, will serve as a literal, if unintentional, split screen to Biden’s remarks.

It’s impossible not to view this State of the Union speech as a preview of President Joe Biden’s soon-to-be-announced campaign for reelection. If this look at the past two years has a message for the next two, it is that Biden is in a strong position to succeed in that quest.

Elections need to be more than one thing. Voters can walk and chew gum at the same time. In Washington, where just a glimpse of the Capitol dome reminds politicians and their media chroniclers about January 6 horror, the threat to democracy feels real.

The gut check issue is less about self-government in the heartlands of Pennsylvania, the suburbs of Arizona and the cities all over the world. It is the simplest one of feeding a family. This is an election more about the cost of a cart full of groceries or the price of a gallon of gasoline than America’s founding truths.

Why Did President Biden Choose to Stay or Not to Leave the House During Trump’s Reionization? A Response to a CNN/SSRS Survey

The price of everything went up during Trump, but the retiree said that they were looking forward to retiring because it was good.

Americans with credit card debt have had a hard time as the Federal Reserve raised its rate by another 0.05% on Wednesday. There are fears that if the Fed is successful, the economy could go into recession and cause the unemployment rate to go up.

The current election and its many anti-democratic Republican candidates could cause political trouble that is beyond mending if Biden’s argument is correct.

But it’s a tough case to make in such a doom-laden political environment for Democrats. Millions of Republicans don’t listen to Biden’s call for national unity even if they think he’s a liar. His low approval ratings don’t help. A new CNN/SSRS survey published on Wednesday states that more than 50% of Americans think inflation and the economy are important to their vote in the mid-terms. Democrats hoped that abortion would save them next Tuesday when the Supreme Court reversed its longstanding policy of protecting the rights of pregnant women. And voting rights and election integrity – the focus of the president’s speech on Wednesday night – polled at only 9%.

“This year, I hope you’ll make the future of our democracy an important part of your decision to vote, and how you vote,” he said. Will the person accept the outcome of the election? he added, at the end of a campaign in which several GOP nominees have not guaranteed they would accept voters’ will.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/03/politics/joe-biden-plea-for-democracy-analysis/index.html

Why High-Priced Medicine is So Cold, But Why Does It Matter? The White House of the Biden White House’s First Inaugural Address

Biden has been talking about high prices. He is trying to convince Americans that a lot of money spent on his domestic agenda will lower the cost of health care, lift up families and create millions of jobs. That may be the case, but things that could happen in the future can’t ease the pain being felt now.

Throughout history, inflation has often been a pernicious political force that breeds desperation in an electorate and seeds extremism as a potential response. The Biden White House repeatedly insisted that the surge of prices was a transitory problem caused by Covid 19- and politicians feared it so much they wanted to cut off supplies.

In his first inaugural address, the president renewed his call for national unity, which was also delivered in front of the Capitol. He said that American democracy was being attacked because the former president refused to accept the results of the 2020 election.

“He has abused his power and put the loyalty to himself before loyalty to the Constitution. And he’s made the Big Lie an article of faith in the MAGA Republican Party – a minority of that party,” Biden said, being careful not to insult every GOP voter as he did when referring to “semi-fascism” earlier this year.

The president also argued that Trump’s threat was far broader now than it was in the 2020 election. There are candidates for every level of office in America who don’t want to accept the results of the elections they’re in, warned the president.

Biden also hinted at a lack of understanding of Trump’s MAGA supporters, who have embraced his anti-democratic, populist, nationalist appeal to mainly White voters, which grew out of a backlash to the first Black presidency of Barack Obama. The 44th president has been defending democracy and repudiation of Trump on the campaign trail in recent days.

It is not clear whether the new openness is part of a grander White House strategy or if it is an indication of a new attitude within the Biden family. The White House production of public debut is not the same as it usually is, and Biden has not reached out to reporters with the usual spin. The White House declined to comment for this story, as did Ashley Biden.

Now the normally private social worker, 41, is suddenly doing public appearances and making very personal statements, talking about everything from police reform to mental health to life as “a White woman with White privilege.” She’s also talking about the travails of her brother Hunter, an admitted longtime drug addict now in recovery.

But Biden is making it clear she’s ready to tell her own story, no small matter for a person whose personal diary was once stolen and peddled for sale to her father’s political detractors.

“I finally feel like I’m in a place where I really know who I am, I know my worth, I know my family – who are honestly some of the most incredible, kind, compassionate humans, who have given up their life, really, for service to the American people,” said Biden, speaking on the record last week to a small group of invited guests at a question-and-answer event at a hip DC hotel.

Four people familiar with Ashley Biden and her family told CNN it’s not clear to them why she is choosing now to make a more public emergence with politically charged statements.

“I have to be honest with you, I started to really have a lot of resentment,” said Biden last week in Washington. It is cruel and dehumanizing. And so, I have a lot of anger around that.”

Hunter Biden: The Family Inside Phenomenology, and How the Public Viewed the Bidens Have Come to the White House

On October 24, Biden joined her parents at the White House for a reception to celebrate the Indian holiday Diwali, standing beside the first lady as she made remarks. Jill Biden wore a green, printed dress; Ashley Biden wore a three-piece, peach-colored sari.

She is not a constant West Wing presence like her predecessor and is not the same as her older brother.

One person who worked with the Bidens for several years says that she had periods of being more vocal. She has had times of being almost out of the picture.

CNN has previously reported that Hunter Biden could face charges for tax violations and making a false statement related to a gun purchase.

“They’re not going to find anything,” she said at the Q&A last week, talking about Hunter Biden, and the investigation. “They’re just trying to do whatever they can, but that’s,” she said, pausing to shrug, “so when that started to happen, when people started to attack me, and I was like, ‘Whoa.’ It became a widespread thing.

Ashley Biden said the brouhaha over the Hunter Biden allegations of wrongdoing and influence peddling has become little more than a family inside joke. I still look at my brother and wonder if he impeached Donald Trump.

An interview with Tracy Biden about her childhood experiences with politicking and political activism in the era of black-white supremacists

Last week she said that she lived a very normal, down to earth life as a child. She excelled in both field hockey and lacrosse during her school years in Delaware.

She took an interest in her father’s grassroots-style of politicking, often accompanying him at campaign events, parades and on the door-to-door visits that were once a hallmark of gathering votes.

Biden was also fearless as he adeptly wove together the painful reality of “the talk” Black parents have with their kids about how to interact with the police and humanized all sides of a renewed call for criminal justice and policing reforms rooted in core American values of trust, public safety, accountability, mutual respect and equal protection under law.

Biden said this month she is now a consultant for the National Alliance of Trauma Recovery Centers, which teaches and assists with building centers around the country with the specific aim of helping victims of traumatic events. Biden recently said she is also “teaching a trauma class for 25 women who are coming out of incarceration.”

Biden launched a brand called Livelihood in 2016 and marketed it as a socially conscious fashion label. The hoodies retailed for $80-$100, and according to Biden, profits went to various charities in support of social justice and minority entrepreneurship.

She was supposed to go to six countries with the first lady in May, but she withdrew from the trips just hours before they were scheduled to start. The Covid-19-related issues were cited by the East Wing.

During the last presidential campaign, Biden says she shied from the spotlight due to her brother being the target of frequent criticism from opponents.

With midterm elections less than a week away, a second run for the White House by her father remains undetermined; the president’s age, approval ratings and performance being hammered regularly by critics.

She said that her father was dedicated during a public radio interview. If we don’t win the House and the Senate, there will be real issues. I mean, it’s over, right? It’s over in the sense of what’s to come. Our rights. Mental health care. All of it.”

The Making America Great Again Movement: The Case of Barack Obama and Donald Trump as an Emerging Leader in the 2020 Democratic National Reionization Scenario

On the dais last week in Washington, answering the handful of questions with responses that went on for several minutes, Biden sounded almost like a certain politician.

“I believe we can come to the same results, we can work together, but I think it’s the how we kind of go about it. I’m not saying to not scream from the mountaintops of injustice, but I also think if we really want, I mean, you have to work with the other side,” she said.

Barack Obama and Donald Trump personify two rival visions of the meaning of America itself and are extending their bitter years-long duel as they find themselves on opposite sides of a profound confrontation over the future of US democracy.

Obama remains an avatar of progressive change and an increasingly diverse nation, who’s far more popular than current Democratic President Joe Biden. He’s the most sought-after political fireman for Democrats struggling to survive tight swing state races and is being used to energize young, minority and suburban middle-class voters.

Trump has mobilized his Make America Great Again movement, which first emerged as a backlash to the first Black presidency and is built around the notion that the cultural values of a largely White, working-class nation is under siege from political correctness, undocumented migration, experts and the establishment.

Obama is lambasting politicians, celebrities and sports stars who peddle conspiracy theories, fear and social media “garbage” of which Trump is the most prominent exponent. And he’s delivering searing take-downs of the 45th president’s proteges who are running for election on the platform of his 2020 election falsehoods – like Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.

“Why would you vote for somebody who you know is not telling the truth about something? I mean, on something that important, I don’t care how nicely they say it. Obama didn’t care about how poised they are or how well-lit they are when he talked to an audience in Arizona on Wednesday.

“What happens when truth doesn’t matter anymore?” Obama added. If you just repeat something over and over again, and your side is saying it is a lie, that’s okay.

The tactic was employed by Trump in his return to the trail in Iowa on Thursday night, but it still felt like a first-in-the-nation caucus warm up.

In a speech in the middle of the night, Trump told his crowd that his favorite president was ruined by false conspiracy theories.

Obama uses his humor effectively to ridicule Republicans, then hits them with a devastating political hit. He labeled Republicans the party of the rich in Wisconsin last weekend, after accusing Johnson of voting for a tax break for plane owners.

“He fought for this. His adult children bought three private planes because he didn’t want them to commute by public transportation. Now, I mean, you need three?” Obama made fun of himself.

It is easy to see if the 44th president does not have his heart in his job. He was tired in the early stages of his election campaign in 2012 and didn’t put up a good performance in his race in Virginia last year.

David Axerod is a CNN senior political commentator and host of the show “The Axe Files.” He was a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. You can add your opinion on CNN.

The reason why Democrats don’t do well in the midterm elections is because their base is not as motivated as the out-of-office party, which tends to vote its grievances. “There is an enthusiasm gap, at least in the polls, between Republicans and Democrats.”

The ex-president demonstrated his hold on the GOP by endorsing and promoting candidates who did not vote for him in the election. There is a question if Trump’s involvement in drafting senatorial candidates like Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker in Georgia could cost the party control of the Senate in swing states.

Republican officials have been worried about the former president putting his political ambitions ahead of his party. Many still blame his false claims of voter fraud for the Democrats winning Senate seats in Georgia due to the help of the tie-breaking vote cast by Vice President Kamala Harris.

While he’s heading out in to the country again, Trump has not been doing his normal routine of multiple rallies in the most closely contested states. The GOP was able to get the attention of voters back to Biden, inflation and economic concerns because of it’s success in the last few weeks.

There are increasing signs that Donald Trump will run for President in 2024, and he is likely to use his campaign to brand legal probes of him for his conduct before and after he was elected.

The Giant Red Wave: The Last Day of Donald Trump’s Electoral Campaign in Los Angeles, Pa., Drifting the Democrats to the Dust

At a rally on Thursday, President Donald Trump said that Democrats were weaponizing the Justice Department and that they treated attorneys general as his personal lawyers when he was in the White House.

The former president didn’t take the focus off the GOP’s message and that decision could be used to weaken Biden in the run up to the 2024 election, according to Kellyanne Conway.

He would have liked to have done it already. I think you should expect Trump to announce his campaign soon. “He’s being urged by some people to still have a November surprise.”

Donald Trump is not done yet. At a breakfast on Thursday, Conway told reporters that they should keep their cellphone on.

LATROBE, Pa. — Former President Donald Trump is predicting America’s destruction if his fellow Republicans don’t deliver a massive electoral wave on Tuesday. The Democrats are warning that the right to abortion, Social Security, and even democracy are at stake.

In battleground Pennsylvania, three of the six living presidents delivered dire closing messages as millions of Americans voted to decide the balance of power in Washington and key state capitals. More than 39 million people have already voted and polls will close on Tuesday.

“If you want to stop the destruction of our country and save the American dream, then on Tuesday you must vote Republican in a giant red wave,” Trump told thousands of cheering supporters as he campaigned Saturday in western Pennsylvania, describing the United States as “a country in decline.”

Joe Biden and the End of the 2020 White House Prescription for Social Security: The Story of Biden’s State of the Union Address in Philadelphia

Biden and Obama shared a stage in Philadelphia earlier in the day for the first time since Biden took office. In New York, former President Bill Clinton, who has mostly avoided politics in recent years, was defending his party.

Even before arriving in Pennsylvania, Biden was dealing with a fresh political mess after upsetting some in his party for promoting plans to shut down fossil fuel plants in favor of green energy. The fossil fuel industry is a huge employer in Pennsylvania, despite his comments in California the day before.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the president owed coal workers across the country an apology. He called Biden’s comments “offensive and disgusting.”

The White House said that Biden’s words were twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended, and that he had commented on a fact of economics and technology.

Democrats are worried that their narrow majorities in the House and Senate could be in danger, since voters sour on Biden’s leadership amid inflation, crime concerns and pessimism about the direction of the country. Democrats in power are expected to suffer losses in the mid-terms.

Trump peeked ahead toward Florida as he campaigned in Pennsylvania, slapping at the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. After displaying recent presidential poll numbers on the big screens, Trump called DeSantis, a potential 2024 GOP rival, “Ron DeSanctimonious.”

While raising the possibility of election fraud this week, Donald Trump repeatedly claimed on Saturday that he lost the 2020 election because Democrats cheated. Because of such rhetoric, federal intelligence agencies warned of the chance of political violence from far-right extremists.

“Everybody, I promise you, in the very next — very, very, very short period of time, you’re going to be happy,” Trump said of another White House bid. Republicans are going to win an historic victory in November.

President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech was the most Joe Biden that voters have seen from Joe Biden since the election — good for most Americans, but somewhat disappointing for abortion rights activists and other progressives.

The President’s State of the Union Address at the Bali Convention Centre: A Brief Observation of Biden’s Journey through the Asian Sea

The president pointed out how the Inflation Reduction Action includes provisions popular with older adults and the less well off, such as a $2,500 cap on out-of-pocket medical expenses, and a $35 monthly cap on prescription drugs. The new law also requires companies that raise prices faster than overall inflation to pay Medicare a rebate.

Thirty-seven minutes after wrapping up a late-night gala dinner with Asian leaders – punctuated by plates of wild Mekong lobster and beef saraman – an aide handed President Joe Biden the phone.

On the other end of the line was David Trone, the millionaire Maryland wine retailer who was thousands of miles and a time zone 12 hours away and had just clinched another term in the House.

The call wasn’t long, a person familiar with it said, but reflected the warmth and enthusiasm Biden had deployed dozens of times in calls to winning candidates over the last week – each one further solidifying a midterm election that dramatically reshaped the prevailing view of his presidency.

President Joe Biden declared in his State of the Union address that the country is just getting started. To highlight his administration’s achievements and make the case for his second run at the presidency were two of the tasks Biden was tasked with tonight. The speech was a success on both counts.

As Washington grapples with the domestic repercussions of a voter-induced electoral earthquake that kept the Senate in Democratic hands and has put the inevitability of Republican House control on the shakiest of ground, the most significant near-term effect is palpable here, on Biden’s long-scheduled foreign trip where the first face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping is taking place.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan provided a glimpse into dynamics of the moment, pointing to the fact “that many leaders took note of the results of the midterms, came up to the president to engage him and to say that they were following them closely.”

“I would say one theme that emerged over the course of the two days was the theme about the strength of American democracy and what this election said about American democracy,” Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One as Biden traveled from Phnom Penh to Bali, Indonesia, for the Group of 20 Summit.

Does the United States Have a Stable Legislator? White House officials and Xi told the media on a possible G-20 sit-down

White House officials, even those who braced for losses in the weeks leading up to election day, have cast aside any reticence to take to their Twitter accounts or to TV interviews to call out pundits and politicians who predicted otherwise.

It’s a reflection – abroad and back in Washington – of a team that officials acknowledge feels constantly underestimated and has long coveted unambiguous success after a relentless and crisis-infused first 21 months in office.

White House officials had been circling the G-20 as the likely sit-down with Xi for months. There were intensive preparations between the two sides in the lead up to announcing the engagement publicly. The tenuous state of the relationship necessitated a sit down, regardless of domestic politics.

The election results show that Biden’s theory of a political landscape that served to rattle allies and foes alike over the last years is actually working, even in a White House mood that has only seemed to grow more cheerful with every new day of called races.

Many people familiar with the matter have said there is an awareness that the US president could face a split screen situation if his party loses a presidential election at the same time that Hu would head to Indonesia.

“Perception matters and so does political standing,” one US official said. We were aware that everyone was watching the election but we never had a focus on it.

The calls back home made by the president underscored the fact that US relations with China appear to be inching away from great power competition towards inevitable conflict.

Biden said that given the long standing relationship he has with Xi that the results weren’t a necessity for the meeting to achieve its goals. US officials are also careful not to overstate the effect on a trip – and in a region – where the layers of complexity and challenges far exceed what voters decide in a congressional district or swing state.

While his advisers have moved to frame that construct broadly, Biden has made clear the leading autocracy that animates the strategy and policy across nearly every corner of his administration is Xi’s China.

Biden is sensitive to accusations he is weak on China, according to people around him, while still intent on stabilizing the world’s most important bilateral relationship.

I found that they want to know if the United States is stable. Do we know what we’re about? Is it the same democracy we have always been? Biden said at his post-election news conference as he described his conversations with world leaders.

The Vindication of Donald Biden During his First Two Years in office: Validation and Post-Second Vice President Xi

Former President Donald Trump, whose election lies had driven the assault on the US Capitol, hadn’t faded away and he remained the most powerful figure inside the Republican Party.

Biden promoted his agenda without being overly partisan. He made repeated appeals to bipartisanship, underscored the achievements made with Republican support, and when GOP members heckled him on Social Security, he managed to spar with them from the podium and, with a bit of jujitsu, appeared to secure a bipartisan agreement to leave Social Security benefits untouched.

It was possible that Biden would be judged the same on his first two years in office as almost all his predecessors have been. It was expected.

Biden’s own political vindication served another purpose while he was on the world stage: validation.

Biden “feels that it does establish a strong position for him on the international stage and we saw that I think play out in living color today,” Sullivan told reporters after Biden departed the ASEAN-US Summit, as the Xi meeting loomed. “I think we’ll see that equally when we head into both the G20 and to his bilateral engagements in Bali.”

Nevada Rep. Dina Titus, who faced a tough reelection battle in a redrawn district, had secured another term in office. Biden needed to pass along his congratulations.

A Presidential Plan for the Speakership Race: The Case of Nancy Pelosi, the House Majority Whip, and the Capitol Insurrection

If Mr. McCarthy does have a plan, he has not shared it with members of his leadership team, whom he has cut out of his deliberations about the speakership race in what some regard as a display of paranoia. Instead, he has been spotted in recent days around the Capitol and the Republican National Committee headquarters nearby with Jeff Miller, a Republican lobbyist who is among his closest confidants.

It was unclear if Mr. Trump was involved with Mr. McCarthy’s campaign or just working on his own. The former president has spoken with Eli Crane, an incoming Republican congressman from Arizona, and Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina, among others. The seven current and incoming Republican lawmakers signed on to a letter demanding concessions from their leaders in the next Congress, including making it easier to vote to remove the speaker.

When Nancy Pelosi in 2018 found herself about a dozen votes short of what she would need to secure the speaker’s gavel, she quietly picked off defectors, methodically cutting deals to capture exactly enough support to prevail. Ms. Pelosi, renowned for her ability to arm-twist and coax, won seven votes by agreeing to limit her tenure, picked up another eight by promising to implement rules aimed at fostering more bipartisan legislating, and won over her sole would-be challenger by creating a subcommittee chairmanship for her.

California Republican made a series of pledges to appease right flank of his party He asked Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, to resign after visiting the southern border. He promised Ms. Greene, who lost her committee assignments for posting violent and conspiratorial posts on social media, that she would get a spot on the Oversight Committee.

He said that public hearings would be held to scrutinize security failures that led to the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol. He has been quietly meeting with ultraconservative lawmakers in an effort to win them over. And on Monday night, he publicly encouraged his members to vote against the lame-duck spending bill to fund the government.

McCarthy took steps to try to get the speakership, and it was obvious when he allowed the Georgia Republican to make a joke about the Capitol insurrection. The congresswoman said over the weekend that had she been in charge on January 6, 2021, the riot would have succeeded and the mob would have been armed. After the White House objected, she insisted she was sarcastic to the law enforcement community and against fundamental US values.

The question of whether the words of the supposed most powerful Republican-to-be in Washington or a rebel member carries more currency indicates the risk that McCarthy may be a weak speaker.

The GOP will take over the House in January with a fragile governing mandate for any party at any time in American history. And the ideological struggle being waged by pro-Donald Trump extremists inside the party would have made even a more comfortable majority volatile.

The 2020 U.S. Senate Majority Assembly Session Kicked by a White House Speaker: Why Biden Cannot Defend a Bipartisan Funding Agreement

The California Republican is in a battle with other members who want to make it easier to remove a sitting speaker and with ex- President Donald Trump, who is appeasing followers of his agenda.

As lawmakers like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene interrupted Biden, McCarthy was silent – but his glare into the crowd spoke for itself. He shushed his conference several times when the president interrupted it.

This is one reason why the current year-end tussle over whether to fund the government for a full year – a bipartisan framework agreement for which was announced Tuesday night – or for just a few months is so critical since it could dump a fiscal crisis on the lap of a weak and easily manipulated new speaker next month.

From a broader political perspective, it might be in McCarthy’s interest to stand up to the most extreme members of his conference. The path to the GOP majority went through comparatively moderate seats in places like New York that will be most at risk in the 2024 election. Swing-state voters overwhelmingly rejected the pro-Trump extremists in the mid-term elections. In the election when Republicans lost the House, it was because of the anti-Trump vote.

In 2024, the GOP governance will be important in showing the voters how it addressed inflation and the economy. McCarthy is planning to form a select committee to examine China’s growing threat which could unite both parties, but most of his recent rhetoric has been focused on investigations of the Biden administration and conservatives’ interest in impeaching Alejandro Mayorkas.

McCarthy, at least for the moment, has been unmoved. McCarthy said Biden doesn’t understand when asked about his potential weakness as speaker.

The same dynamic was at play when McCarthy declined to directly criticize the ex-president for meeting with white supremacist Nick Fuentes at a dinner also featuring Kanye West, the rapper now known as Ye, who has recently made a string of antisemitic remarks. In a histrionic performance at the White House after meeting Biden and other congressional leaders last month, the House Republican leader falsely claimed that Trump had condemned Fuentes four times, when he hadn’t done so once.

Following his first White House meeting since he won the speakership, McCarthy said he believes that a funding agreement could be reached for the next two years and that “you won’t see omnibuses anymore.”

House Republicans had hoped to strengthen their negotiating hand with the White House by agreeing to a proposal, which has proved difficult because of the lack of consensus on spending cuts.

One thing the California Republican does have going for him is that he doesn’t have to face a strong alternative to his candidacy. The former head of the Freedom Caucus has launched a long-shot bid.

The White House has started to zero in on potential openings that the Republicans could create if they lose their majority in next year’s elections.

Biden recounted his past legislative accomplishments without offering much in the way of concrete areas of bipartisan agreement going forward, which is a requirement for anything to pass a divided Congress.

The June deadline to raise the debt ceiling is one of the many obstacles the president and speaker have to navigate, as a potential economic crisis looms if they fail.

In the last month, Biden has concentrated on wrapping up the major spending negotiations in the Congress and not much outreach to Republicans about next year’s Congress. And Republicans are in the midst of their own intraparty war over who will serve as the next speaker of the House, and the new members aren’t even in Washington for another couple of weeks.

The official also declined to say whether Biden will engage more directly with Republican lawmakers, but noted that Biden has a track record of engaging with Republicans during his time in office, even if many of those conversations are private and undisclosed.

Preparing for the upcoming legislative session: The role of McCarthy in navigating the landscape of bipartisan bipartisanship in the House of Representatives

Officials said the preparations for the months ahead are still in the early stages. The focus remains on closing out the final days of unified power in Washington, DC, by securing the passage of the annual defense policy bill and a sweeping bipartisan spending agreement that includes significant new funding to assist Ukrainian war effort, along with a bipartisan measure to close loophole in the electoral process.

McCarthy and the president exchanged jabs ahead of the meeting, which happened to coincide with a press conference announcing red lines for the meeting on social media. But emerging from the West Wing on Wednesday, the new House speaker had an unexpectedly hopeful tone as he underscored that he believes that they can come to an agreement.

But the continued uncertainty across Washington about McCarthy’s pathway to the speakership has tacitly created another reason for what serves as somewhat of a wait-and-see posture in terms of engaging House Republicans.

After two years of searching, the effort will be to expand on what officials leaned, as Biden has a keen awareness of the importance of the little things back home for elected officials.

But as officials confront a landscape that has closed the door on the Democrat-only legislative pathway that led to two of Biden’s most consequential legislative wins – the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and his cornerstone $700 billion economic and climate law – those efforts take on a new level of salience.

A House Democrat told CNN that there was an option to get nothing done or find a way to make this work. “Separating the inevitable, and at times likely insane, partisan warfare from the areas we can get stuff done isn’t easy, but I can’t see two years of nothing appealing to someone like (Biden.)”

Preparing for the newly elected members will bring about outreach from the White House. A senior White House official said that the legislative affairs team works with a single list of individual members and at least one committee.

The administration official said that they were content to let them shoot at each other. “We have a record and, driven by the president, very clear way in which we approach the importance of these relationships. That will certainly be reflected in the next Congress.”

In part, that’s due to the role of the House minority leader at a moment Democrats controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress, aides said. The Senate required GOP votes to approve Biden’s major bipartisan legislative proposals, which could be done without Republicans.

A pair of those incoming New York Republicans – Reps.-elect Anthony D’Esposito and Michael Lawler – said they both see an opportunity to work with the White House to pass legislation, though they have yet to hear from the White House.

“We’ve been named majority makers in New York, you know, sort of,” D’Agostino told CNN. “And to be honest, if we want to maintain that majority, if we want to keep the seats that we flipped, then we have no choice but then to work in a bipartisan fashion to deliver.”

While he defeated House Democrats campaign Chief in suburban New York, he said that when there was a small majority, everyone was being given more power. The goal should be to make sure that we are able to get behind legislation that will have a better chance of passing the senate and being signed into law by the president.

One House Republican told CNN that he gets the Trump focus and the Freedom Caucus focus, even though they hold a lot of sway inside the conference. “But we go nowhere without our freshmen – and while I’m not sure they’ll use it, that creates very real leverage.”

Even if the White House can convince enough Republicans to buck their party on key bills, the speaker of the House controls what legislation comes up for a vote in the chamber. House GOP leaders tried to stick to the unofficial idea that nothing should go forward if no one wants to pass it, though the approach was often scrapped in times of crisis or must-pass legislation.

A senior White House official declined to say whether the White House would focus on trying to strike bipartisan agreements with Republican leadership or try and peel off moderate Republicans through the use of discharge petitions, calling those decisions premature.

The way the President has understood “the way of unity” the last two years is consistent with this. Biden has focused his approach on passing bills that most Americans will understand and appreciate, instead of the divisive identity politics and culture wars of the time that fueled the rise of Trump.

He said that it was a million empty chairs and broken hearts all across the country. Our politics has become so mean and partisan that we see each other as enemies, not as friends, or neighbors, as we used to. We’ve become too divided.”

Biden encouraged reaching out to connect in a time of isolation brought on by technology. He wished that politics would be drained of its toxicity in favor of cooperation. The tenets of his faith and his own experience with loss helped him encourage Americans to be less judgmental.

While speaking at an event on Thursday, the president said that the nation sees bright spots during tough times and that it has long defined America.

“Covid no longer controls our lives. Our kids are back in school. People are back to work. In fact, more people are working than ever before,” he said. Americans are building again and doing innovative things.

Joe Biden, the First Vice President, Celebrates Two Years since the January 6, 2021 Insurrection at the U.S. Capitol

Still, he acknowledged that, for some, “Christmas can be a time of great pain and terrible loneliness,” drawing on his own experience with loss over the holidays – the deaths of his first wife and daughter 50 years ago this week.

It can be hard at this time of year, because no one can know what else is going on in a person’s life or what they’re struggling with. That’s why sometimes the smallest act of kindness can mean so much,” Biden remarked.

President Joe Biden on Friday commemorated two years since the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol – a day he’s called “one of the darkest periods of our nation’s history” – seeking to elevate the law enforcement and election officials who held firm against the most serious effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in American history.

The Presidential Citizens Medal was awarded to more than a dozen individuals including law enforcement officers who were injured defending the Capitol, Capitol Police officer who died the day after rioters invaded the building, officers who died by suicide after defense of the Capitol, and elected officials and election workers.

He also acknowledged that for many of the ceremony, it was a very sad day as more than 140 law enforcement officials had physical injuries and untold numbers were suffering psychological toll from that day.

“History will remember your names. They will remember you for your courage. They’ll remember your bravery. They’ll remember your extraordinary commitment to your fellow Americans,” the president added.

“How do you think this looks to the rest of the world? Coming out of, you know – the first time we’re really getting through the whole history related to January 6, things are settling out, and now, for the first time in 100 years?… It is not a good look and it is not a good thing. As he left the White House for a visit to Kentucky, Biden said he hoped they got their act together and this was the United States of America.

The Capitol Hill Players of the 2019 January 6 Insurrection: An Updated Look at a Scenario for Biden and the White House

Some Capitol Hill players played a role in the election denial that led to the January 6 riot. Of the 20 House Republican insurgents who have frozen the new majority and its path to a speaker in its tracks, 15 served in Congress on January 6, 2021. Fourteen people objected to the count. The group’s five rookies are new to the group. All ran as 2020 election deniers, all endorsed by Trump.

For Biden – who was described as “horrified, stunned, outraged,” as he watched the events unfold two years ago, according to one aide who was with him – it’s a complicated yet critical moment.

The list of honorees bestowed the medal included individuals who testified before Congress about their actions surrounding the 2020 vote certification and insurrection – to a House panel rejected by McCarthy and other Republicans as illegitimate. And despite his steadfast insistence on staying far from the Justice Department’s January 6 investigations and his general reluctance to weigh in on the work of the House committee that investigated the riot, Biden has privately paid very close attention to how things have played out.

The completion of the committee’s work was viewed by Biden privately as a crucial step for the country that appeared to have been on the verge of descending into chaos, according to people familiar with the matter. The White House official said the election results were a rebuke of a strain of election denialism that overtook large swaths of the GOP.

In fact, one official noted, as Biden watched the Senate and House results closely on election night last year, he also made clear to aides he wanted updates on another set of races: secretary of state contests that pitted Democrats against Trump-backed supporters of the lie the 2020 election was fraudulent.

In Michigan, the Democrats got reelected to office, led by their candidate, Jocelyn-Benson. She was recognized for her efforts to keep a fair election in 2020.

Biden vs. O’Neill: What Happened to the House Insurrection Two Years Later? Revisiting the History of the Capitol Hill Battle

The speech was a way for Mr. Biden to show his supporters that he’s still got what it takes to win a second term in four years, even though polls show the majority of Democrats want someone new. After a few stumbles at the beginning, the president turned energetic and combative, and even showed flashes of humor and effective off-the-cuff retorts to Republican hecklers in a setting not known for improvisation.

Yet this week has underscored that despite a view inside the Oval Office of clear progress in lowering the temperature inside the country, the same forces – and the same people – that drove the violence inside the Capitol on two years ago are still players, including the man Biden holds personally responsible for the insurrection.

You’ve likely heard lots about how unprecedented the repeated failed votes for Speaker have been, or at least that it hasn’t happened in about a century. Is this a new level of bad behavior for Congress?

To answer that question, we’ve turned to author and historian John Farrell. He has covered Congress as a journalist and also written biographies of former House Speaker Tip O’Neill and Senator Ted Kennedy.

I believe it is part of a continued decline in order on Capitol Hill, which dates back to the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Once we were freed of that common enemy, there was no reason anymore to stop fighting amongst ourselves. From World War II to the 1950s and ’60s, there was a golden era. And we’re back to where we were in the 1920s, or the 1880s, or the 1850s.

The Speaker battles occurred in the last four to five years of the 18th century as America struggled with a big economic issue and the Civil War was about to start. It’s been rare in the 20th century and so far in this century, but this could be a sign of things to come.

Careerism and Chaos in the era of Gingrich and Nixon: The first five decades of the American government and the next twenty-five years

Things weren’t always golden, but it may be a new low. You had Richard Nixon become a congressman by being in the red hunters during the McCarthy era. Newt Gingrich convinced the Republicans that they needed to be more aggressive. Jim Jordan was a bomb thrower when he was a member of the Freedom Caucus.

The guys see there’s a path in the institution and they become institutionalists over time. But there’s always room for somebody to make their name by being the louder, more explosive member of the group.

I don’t think you should ever underestimate individual careerism. The different wrinkle this time around is that the social media and the cable news atmosphere seems to be providing almost a reward in itself. You go on the cable TV shows, you write on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook, and all of a sudden you are, by yourself, popular. You are, by yourself, without having to rely on the Republican Party to get donations. In a Gingrich era, for example, someone had to feel like he had to get in line because big party donors would call and tell him to.

Well if you’re a bar owner in Rifle, Colorado, and you have a life of loneliness and obscurity, and all of a sudden now you’re a national media person duking it out with Sean Hannity on Fox News and getting on your Twitter feed and seeing that you’ve got tens of thousands of people following what you say, it’s a pretty heady experience. And you don’t really care if there’s an ideological payback down the line.

I don’t believe they tell us a lot. I think that they tell us that in the short term, you can expect more chaos. We came away from a presidency in which the president was twice impeached. Politics was always meant to be a spectacle. And politics in this country, thanks to the wisdom of the founders was always meant to be a mud wrestling game without anybody walking away with a clear preeminence of power. We fought a revolution against King George. But in the early days, the founding fathers were just as suspicious and worried about the parliament having too much power. It is supposed to be a balance. And balance means that there’s going to be lots of stalemates, and there’s going to be times of chaos.

For two politicians defined by, and elevated because of, their close attention to personal relationships, the anodyne nature of the descriptions is telling in the lead up to their high stakes private meeting in the Oval Office.

The highly anticipated meeting was expected to influence how the fight to raise the national debt limit unfolds as the White House and the new House GOP majority are at odds over how to resolve the critical issue.

A House Democrat told CNN the months leading up to the June deadline to raise the debt ceiling was the first round. “Settle in.”

McCarthy claims that Biden has precedent with his demands when it comes to debt limit and budget issues.

But he’ll demand a House Republican proposal first – something White House officials are keenly aware would carry significant political value for Democrats and have the potential for splitting the Republican conference.

Joe Biden: A White House Diplomat in the Correspondence Between Trump and McConnell in the November 2000 Reionization Effort

“I want to look the president in the eye and tell me there’s not $1 of wasteful spending and government. Who thinks that is correct? The American public doesn’t believe that. McCarthy said that the government is designed to have compromise. “For the president to say he wouldn’t even negotiate, that’s irresponsible.”

In the months that followed the elections, Biden has spoken to McCarthy twice. They’ve met once, with the other top congressional leaders. Their exchanges have been played out mostly through aides, the press or in McCarthy’s case, on social networking websites.

White House advisers point to that period as one of self-inflicted turmoil that pushed the US economy to the brink of disaster, citing it as evidence that there should be no negotiation at all. They’re happy to list off the times McCarthy voted to raise or suspend the debt ceiling when a Republican was in the White House as well.

“He’s a man of his word,” Biden said of McConnell at the event. “When he gives you his word, you can take it to the bank; you can count on it. He is willing to compromise in order to get things done.

He said he would be talking to him, making clear that he will work with McCarthy in areas of common ground.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/01/politics/joe-biden-kevin-mccarthy-relationship/index.html

White House Dem Demographers and the Implications for the Future of the U.S. Debt Problem in the Post-Cracken Era

To the extent White House officials experienced a level of schadenfreude in the initial stages of McCarthy’s marathon effort to secure the Republican votes to be speaker, it shifted sharply to a palpable sense of bewilderment by the time McCarthy had suffered through 14 failed votes.

White House officials, though they went to great lengths not to weigh in on the matter, took the opposite view – one that is reflected in their approach to the debt limit where there are clear questions as to whether McCarthy can secure the votes of 218 Republicans for anything at all.

White House officials maintain it is not bluff or posturing, despite the fact that Biden refused to talk about anything but a clean increase. They’ve been deeply engaged behind the scenes in preparation for the long battle ahead, keeping a close eye on House GOP legislative proposals both present and past.

That means Congress has to act, by either raising or suspending the debt limit. Failing to do so would mean an unprecedented and potentially catastrophic default on U.S. debt.

Lifting the ceiling is not something the White House wants to negotiate. Biden said a default would be a calamity that was never experienced in the United States.

Democrats argue that the health of the economy shouldn’t be used as a bargaining chip after Republican lawmakers lifted the debt ceiling three times under Donald Trump.

“I told the president I would like to see if we can come to an agreement long before the deadline and we can start working on other things,” McCarthy added in remarks outside the White House.

Dem Demographic Report: Sen. McCarthy’s stance on budget cuts and the role of the debt limit in the campaign to protect the United States

Senate Republicans are likely to sit back and see what the House GOP does in order to raise the borrowing limit before deciding whether or not to get involved.

Republicans face a political risk as they push to cut spending: If they propose cuts to popular government programs and services, they could face a public backlash.

McCarthy had not settled on any individual proposal, so he was unlikely to make a specific offer, but had heard suggestions from key players in his conference.

The testy moment of the night was when he said that Republicans wanted to cut Medicare and Social Security in exchange for raising the debt limit. Republicans jeered as they protested the characterisation of their position by the President. McCarthy has said those entitlement benefits aren’t on the chopping block, but he has insisted on cuts to future spending in exchange for raising the debt limit.

They added, “President Biden will ask Speaker McCarthy to publicly assure the American people and the rest of the world that the United States will, as always, honor all of its financial obligations.”

A day before the meeting, the president suggested that McCarthy was entering the talks from a weakened position because of agreements he made with the GOP conference.

There is no agreement on Wednesday according to House GOP Whip Tom Emmer who said everything is on the table.

He said he hoped McCarthy could assure the president that social security and Medicare wouldn’t be cut and that there will not be a default.

The American Economy in the Post-Superbowl Dust: A Brief History of the State of the Union for the Last Three Years of President Joe Biden

Every president wants to use the State of the Union speech to burnish his accomplishments and the issues that are unique to voters, which is why they use it so often. And that is important and necessary. But it is easy to think of the speech as a presidential “report card” and miss the opportunity to share a larger and authentic narrative about the country.

The annual report is important because it almost guarantees a president the largest audience he’s going to have all year to talk to the American people.

The traditional pre-game television interview before the Super Bowl may deliver a much larger audience, of course, and a chance for President Joe Biden to crow about his beloved Philadelphia Eagles. But interviews are a gauntlet a president can’t entirely control. Plus, people tune in to watch football – not politicians!

Objectively, the economy is in much stronger shape than when Biden took office: more than 10 million jobs created and steady growth despite eight interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.

The steps Congress and him took during the worst of the swine flu were important. Major public works improvements across the country are being made because of the bipartisan infrastructure bill he signed. The steps he’s taken are making health care more affordable for millions.

Yet Americans have weathered wrenching loss and jarring dislocations during the pandemic, many of which are still reverberating. We have been buffeted by blistering inflation, thanks to global supply chain shortages and spiraling energy costs exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.

The rest of the world has been rocked by the same forces but, as Harry Truman said, when you’re President of the United States, “the buck stops here.” You can’t jawbone people into feeling better.

After 80 Years in the Office: How President Biden Learned to Compress and Protect America, What We Don’t Know, And What He Needs to Do

Mindful of this, even as he reports on the things that have been accomplished, Biden should avoid triumphalism or grandiose claims like, “Not since Lyndon Johnson!” The biggest since FDR! Leave that stuff to historians.

Explain how you have tried to help, but don’t say how great things are. It is even worse, how great you are. You can’t persuade people of what they don’t feel — and will lose them if you try.

All presidents want to project such a vision. But when you have recently turned 80, and you’re already the oldest president in American history, people don’t instinctively connect you with the word “future.”

Biden desperately needs to tell a larger story about where we are going and how these big initiatives are laying the groundwork for something better.

The ongoing struggle in Ukraine shows his argument that American leadership and the global alliances are important in a dangerous world. His former – and perhaps future — Republican challenger’s “America First” mentality is a disastrous path if it means America alone.

I’m sure the President will speak about gun violence and abortion rights and the crying imperative for more steps to prevent unspeakable horrors such as the savage beating of Tyre Nichols.

He must speak about the crisis at the border, the crisis faced by millions of undocumented workers, and his plan to address it, in addition to rekindling proposals for comprehensive immigration reform.

Biden smartly aligned himself with populist issues, like making wealthy corporations pay their fair share of taxes and proposing that all federal infrastructure projects use American-made materials. The president seemed vigorous and fiery, just like putting forth the substantive ideas. The man is ready to take the campaign trail. He was really fond of giving this speech when he dared Republicans to oppose cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

That slender new House majority, which is animated by some of the GOP’s most extreme voices, will be the elephant in the room on Tuesday. Many of them are sworn to Biden’s political destruction. He should use political ju-jitsu to turn the negative energy on them.

He should say: “To those of you in the new House majority, let me say, we all have a choice. We can spend the next two years trying to destroy each other for politics. It is possible to find solutions to problems faced by families and communities in our country. I’m pretty sure I know which choice the American people are hoping we make. I have a plan of action that I know will work. I want you to join me.

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union address with humor, charm, and gusto centered on a common theme: let’s finish the job.

McCarthy will have to decide if he should give Biden a popular accomplishment to run on or give him an appealing issue to run on. For Biden, it’s a win-win proposition.

The selfie vote: Where millennials are leading America (and Republicans can keep up)? Paul Begala, a Republican strategist and pollster

Paul Begala served as a counselor to Clinton in the White House and was a political consultant for Clinton in his presidential campaign.

Voters are used to politicians making promises. What will stand out most, then, are the things that voters may not have heard in a State of the Union before, the things that make clips the next day.

The author of the book “The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America (and How Republicans can Keep Up)” is a Republican strategist and pollster.

A statement as basic as everyone should “pay your fair share of taxes,” and it’s wrong for corporations “making record profits while paying zero in taxes” was met with stone-faced looks from half the chamber, even when Biden pointed out that an oil and gas company paying 15% tax is less than what a nurse pays.

He made a point about how airlines force parents to pay to be seated with their kids at hotels that aren’t even a resort, and that when families who feel pinched in the pocketbook can finally afford a vacation, we get hit with resort fees.

It’s all part of Biden’s narrative about government as a force for good. Biden took the idea of democracy, the possibility of what good it can do in our lives and made it concrete again. Too bad this current Congress is operating in an alternate reality.

Although the southern border and inflation were important to the voters, neither of them received much attention from the President. Neither did the Chinese spy balloon, whose coast-to-coast journey undermines Biden’s tough talk toward Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The speech was surprisingly effective from a man who is not known for his eloquence. Biden was not just confident and humorous; he also made a powerful case for how successful his presidency has been on many fronts.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/opinions/highlights-lowlights-biden-sotu-roundup/index.html

Barack Biden: Shaking Up Politics with a Public Radio Spotlight and a Proposal for a 2020 Presidential Campaign

Georgia had a Lieutenant Governor from 2019-2023, and he was a CNN political contributor. He is a former professional baseball player and the author of “GOP 2.0: How the 2020 Election Can Lead to a Better Way Forward for America’s Conservative Party.”

The spectacle of Biden smiling and offering a pointed riposte through multiple rounds of heckling from some House Republicans was, in many ways, an apt illustration of his presidency and a useful preview of his likely 2024 candidacy.

Karen Finney has worked at the intersection of politics, media and cultural change for over 25 years. Her career includes roles as top Democratic communications strategist and spokesperson, political commentator, television and radio show host, White House staffer, business and communications adviser, leader and advocate for social justice and civil rights.

He now faces a harsher test, in the form of whether he actually moved the needle. One of the reasons public appearances are so powerful is because they can shake up politics. Former Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan each had the capacity to change minds when they held a microphone.

Perhaps Biden, on Tuesday, began getting through to prospective or wavering voters, persuading some — maybe even many — of them to join up for his reelection campaign. If so, Democratic strategists will become much more confident about his prospects for reelection. If he doesn’t get his act together after a night like this, they may wander off the reservation.

What the filibuster and GOP opposition to the ‘George Floyd Justice in Policing Act’ has to teach us about the struggles of black and brown communities

David Gergen has been a White House adviser to four presidents of both parties and is a senior political analyst at CNN. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he is a professor of public service at the Harvard Kennedy School and co-founded its Center for Public Leadership.

The most moving portion of the speech was President Joe Biden’s discussion of the talk that black parents give to their children about how to interact with police officers.

Still, it was political malpractice for him not to explicitly call for Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. The family of the man who died after being beaten by Memphis police officers deserved to hear about it.

Meanwhile, the interracial, intergenerational coalition of voters that got Biden elected needed to hear it. For Black and brown communities who bear the brunt of police brutality, it can seem like forever ago that America experienced what may have been the largest protest movement in its nearly 247-year history following the murder of Floyd in 2020.

Fast forward to 2023, and even after two years of controlling the executive and legislative branches of government, Democrats were unable to pass a comprehensive police reform bill. Such is the nature of the filibuster and GOP opposition to the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Even if Congress doesn’t pass policing reform this term, it’s important for Biden to remind key constituencies he’s still fighting Voters who supported the president last time will want to know that the issue is a priority for him in the years to come.

What Biden and the Democrat Party Really Want to Learn about the Birth of the Modern World: CNN’s Mondaire Jones at the High School

Mondaire Jones is a CNN political commentator and former Representative for New York’s 17th Congressional District. He also serves as a member of the US Commission on Civil Rights.

The speech carried a strain of populism rooted in strengthening the middle class – vintage Biden, but delivered at a pivotal moment for his political future.

The trick is to stand up for what is right, even if it is not appreciated by everyone. The Supreme Court overturned the right of American women to choose in the case of Roe v. Wade. But abortion didn’t merit a mention until well into the speech — despite the fact that, for women, the right to decide when and whether to have children is as fundamental a concern as outsourced jobs or federal contracts.

And some members of the Republican caucus seemed keen to highlight the distinctions between the thoughtful, unity-emphasizing Biden and their own party’s shameful descent. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, among others, repeatedly booed and yelled throughout the speech; when he introduced the parents of Tyre Nichols, who was last month fatally beaten by Memphis police officers, and the Ukrainian ambassador, she stayed seated. That says a lot more than Biden could.

The author of the book “OK Boomer, Let’s talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind” is a New York based journalist. Follow her on Twitter @JillFilipovic.

Counting the Heroes: The Biden-Harris Campaign for the Restoration of the Civil Libertarian Mass Shooting in Monterey Park

It is still difficult to believe that my hometown of Monterey Park experienced a mass shooting that claimed the lives of 11 people. So it was incredibly moving when the president thanked Brandon Tsay for his heroism disarming the suspected gunman in the attack. It was a poignant reminder of our need for gun reform and we deserved to be recognized for the bravery of our soldiers.

Biden is the oldest president in American history at 80 years old and he plans to run for president again in 2024. He’s anticipated to make an announcement soon.

A consultant and CEO for Turner Conoly Group, Allison is also a supporter of the abortion rights group. She was a senior aide to the Biden-Harris campaign.

The White House is calculating that the ideal period for it to achieve these goals is when Congress won’t pass many bills and Republicans will focus on investigations of Biden’s family. He is daring Republicans to resist the uncontroversial proposals in the “Unity Agenda”, which is a package of outreach to his opponents.

It hasn’t done much to unify the country. A recent survey shows that Americans are the same as before, and a large majority expect no change in Washington over the next two years.

A Scathing Rebuke of the State of the Union by Joe Biden and the Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Gest is an associate professor at George Mason University, where he is in the school of policy and government. He is the author of six books on the politics of immigration and demographic change including, most recently, “Majority Minority.”

A CNN producer and correspondent, Frida Ghitis, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review.

In a scathing rebuke of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it’s time for a new generation of Republican leadership.

For the third year in a row, Biden set the record for the oldest president to deliver an address to a joint session of Congress. No one older has ever served in his presidency.

As expected, Biden and the left’s radical agenda don’t meet the hard realities Americans face every day, and that’s what happened when they were in office. Biden is surrendering his presidency to a group of people who can’t tell you what a woman is.

A majority of Americans say he hasn’t accomplished a lot and that many Democrats aren’t thrilled at the prospect of him running for reelection.

Biden wanted to address the national mood, which remains downbeat despite the economy improving and the country trying to return to normal.

The Night Before The Elections: The Rise and Fall of the Night Biden in Washington, D.C. (API/W.R.S.)

In a room filled with elected officials identifying an adult should be easy. Both Republican leaders and Biden’s team telegraphed their desire to act as the night’s “adult in the room” – someone who seeks common ground and is willing to lower the temperature.

“He gets energy from his audience,” the official said. Biden’s advisers talk a lot about how he finds his energy from engaging with people.

When Biden was discussing the debt ceiling and the national debt along with spending on Social Security and Medicare, he got a standing ovation from most Republicans.

It was important that he looked and sounded like someone who was able to keep doing the job, as he prepares to ask voters to keep him in office until he is 86.

His delivery was energetic, even if he stumbled over a few of his prepared lines. He quickly responded to the Republicans’ heckles, turning them into challenges.

Over the weekend at Camp David, aides set up a podium, microphone, lights and teleprompter in a conference room inside the Laurel Lodge for Biden to practice his speech with his team. The White House officials had considered the potential for hecklers as they prepared for the speech.

The speech he gave on Tuesday was a lot like his previous addresses to congress and contained riffs from his father, anecdotes about his views of the middle class and riffs on inequality.

He appealed to the demographic that used to vote reliably for Democrats but have recently switched to the GOP, and said many of them feel forgotten.

Over the past four decades, there have been too many people left behind and treated as if they were invisible. Maybe that’s you, watching at home,” he said. “You wonder whether a path even exists anymore for you and your children to get ahead without moving away.”

The State of the Union and the Future of the United States: Making Sense of Biden’s Disturbance on Policy and Politics

Biden and McCarthy wanted a mature showing to set the tone for the next two years of divided government, even if they remain far apart on policy.

Biden told his Republican friends that if we could work together in the last Congress, there was no reason they couldn’t do the same in this one.

The White House believes the principles of eliminating “junk fees” for Consumers and reining in tech companies will appeal to Americans who aren’t used to the way Washington works.

At moments, his speech seemed tailor-made for a nation of annoyed consumers, down to annoyances about baggage fees on airlines and fine print on hotel bills.

But Biden and his team are acutely aware that simply telling people their lives are improving won’t cut it – they have to actually feel it. The effects of many of the accomplishments Biden helped pass over the last two years are still being implemented.

“Make no mistake: As we made clear last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. In his speech, Biden said that they did.

In part due to her lack of an audience and in part due to the Republicans being provoked by Biden’s own address, her speech was more dull than the State of the Union. Delivered solemnly from the governor’s mansion in Little Rock, the speech was instead a somewhat dark warning against Democratic policies she deemed “crazy,” a descriptor she used three times.

Instead, she appeared to call for a changing of the guard – an appeal for generational change that could apply as much to Democrats and Biden as it could to Republicans and Trump.

Reading rapidly through his prepared remarks and occasionally sparring with his congressional adversaries in real time, Mr. Biden — at 80 the oldest president in history — used the biggest platform of his office to frame his argument for an expected re-election bid by portraying Republican policy proposals as out of step with most Americans even as he offered to work across the aisle.

Biden and Walsh: The State of the Union Address in Washington, D.C., April 21–February 2006, Remarks on Economic Progress

Absent from the chamber, though, was Marty Walsh, the labor secretary who was chosen to stay away as a designated survivor in case of a catastrophe at the Capitol and is reported to be stepping down soon.

In his speech, Mr. Biden called on Congress to extend a new $35 price cap on insulin for Medicare beneficiaries to all Americans; to make premium savings on Affordable Care Act health plans permanent; to impose a minimum tax on billionaires; and to quadruple the tax on corporate stock buybacks.

As important as his program may be, the president also faced pressure to ensure a smooth performance in front of what was likely to be his largest television audience of the year. If he seeks re-election, he would be asking voters to entrust the White House to him until he is 86. Polls show that even many Democrats are concerned about his age and eager to see a younger generation rise to leadership of the party.

President Biden made a pitch for reelection in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, saying “Let’s finish the job” as he extolled the economic progress made under his watch.

“There is more to be done, legislators should pass immigration legislation, codify abortion rights, and cap the price of medicine at $35 a month,” he said.

The State of the Union address is likely to be Biden’s largest television audience of the year, and he used it in part to draw a contrast with Republicans on a number of issues – including raising the debt ceiling.

The president said that the country’s full faith and credit would never be questioned, adding that he was in favor of raising the debt ceiling with no preconditions.

Social Security and Medicare are off the books now, right? He said that they were not to be touched. “We’ve got unanimity!”

“What happened to Tyre in Memphis, we’ve got to do better”: A tribute to the late president and a reminder of the great state of the Union

“What happened to Tyre in Memphis happens too often, we have to do better” Biden said, nodding to Tyre’s mother and stepfather, who were in the chamber as special guests.

“Already, we’ve funded over 20,000 projects, including major airports from Boston to Atlanta to Portland,” he said. “And folks, we’re just getting started.”

He is optimistic that both parties could find common ground on issues such as support for veterans, ending cancer, and beating the opiate epidemic.

Manchin said that the representatives who heckled Biden were stupid, distasteful and it might be acceptable in a third world country. Dick Durbin said it was really unbefitting.

“How did Congress respond to all that debt?” Biden asked. They did the right thing and lifted the debt ceiling three times.

Democrats cheered while Republicans remained quiet. But when the president accused some Republicans of wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare, protests erupted again.

If anyone doubts it, they should call my office, because I will give them a copy of the proposal. He may be referring to a proposal from the Republican leader of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Rick Scott of Florida.

The staff in various offices in the West Wing cheered and high-fived when the president leaned into the Republicans. When the president returned to the White House, staff gathered in the Diplomatic Room to receive him. As he walked in they applauded, and Biden talked about how optimistic he was about the country.

The chief of staff, Ron Klain, is leaving Wednesday. The president made everyone incredibly proud in his back-and-forth with Republicans over Medicare and Social Security, says a person who spoke briefly.

Klain called the back-and-forth an “all-time great State of the Union moment that people would look back on for years.” That received a large applause as well.

Bob Good claims he called Biden a liar because he was upset with the president’s comments that Republicans wanted to cut Medicare and Social Security.

When Trump lied to Congress about border security and drug trafficking: In response to Ogles, Scalise, and Pelosi

“For him to stand there with a straight face, and tell us that he has a solution, when with a stroke of a pen he could have shut down the border … that offends me,” Ogles said, linking overdose deaths to drug trafficking at the US border with Mexico. “He has not done a damn thing about it.”

After Tuesday night’s address, McCarthy wouldn’t comment to CNN when asked about the heckling. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise wouldn’t criticize his members, instead calling on the president to stop his rhetoric about a GOP push to cut entitlements.

South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson yelled, “You lie!” In 2009, during Barack Obama’s health care speech, he was quickly condemned by members of his party. He later apologized.

Nancy Pelosi tore a copy of Donald Trump’s State of the Union address when she was House Speaker.