President Joe Biden hasn’t exactly been the best president ever.
Not a John Quincy Adams or James Buchanan, a Herbert Hoover after the market crashed in 29. Definitely not as bad as Grant, Johnson, Nixon, or especially Trump.
He’s more like Jimmy Carter, elected after a disastrous round of national trauma over war and politics. If the Baby Boomers haven’t seen the parallels yet, then I’ll spell it out. The generation who fought against the man ultimately became the man, and now the man has to figure out how to navigate the problems of a world drastically changing around them.
The same problems of the 70s persist today: economic woes compounded by problems with Russia (then the Soviet Union) and the Middle East. Extremists in each party dominate the conversation. Scandal and wrongdoing in the White House dominate the headlines. The same issues Jimmy Carter faced in the aftermath of the Nixon administration are back to bite us hard. The same trigger-worthy issues remain in the forefront of American life as arguments over abortion, race, economic hardship, drugs, and the variety of cultural moments that gain our short attention span from time to time.
Remember how I said in my last thought fart about Trump (I felt it was his style to ramble) that the universe is laughing at us and history is repeating itself? Well… I wasn’t kidding. The parallels are there to see if you’re looking at a distance, and yet we run around chicken-sans-head acting as if we don’t know how to act anymore. At least when it comes to the actions of Congress, who back when Nixon was in trouble had no problem coming together to investigate the misdeeds of the President and forced his resignation.
The toxic nature of politics these days forces sides to be drawn and people to act as if the other side is a mortal enemy who must be wiped from the face of the earth. Whether it is cancel culture online, swatting, physical threats on social media or the variety of craziness that comes out of the national zeitgeist, Americans then and now have just kind of lost it.
Amid all this turmoil following the tragedy of the pandemic was President Biden, who was pitched to those tired of the chaos of Trumpism for something sane and found instead a President pitching more of the same: party-line decisions that have long-term consequences meant as patchworks for major problems. Add to that a Republican House since 2022 who is determined to bring down the palace around their ears and show off Hunter Biden’s junk on national television, and we have a national soap opera that on this day is boring.
Who cares about Hunter Biden’s laptop, or whether he was trying to peddle influence? This is what we expect of national politics these days. Sex and selling secrets are commonplace in the nation’s capital. The ante got upped for Americans to care when people stormed Congress.
As one of the people who live in places that don’t care about the inside baseball of Washington infighting, I will say on behalf of many of us who feel the same: sit down, and please shut up for a minute. The “Media” and a select group of GOP voters are driving these impeachment committees. There’s real work to be done, and this is tilting at windmills behavior from people who are supposed to be on the job for the people.
Since generally voters don’t care about Hunter Biden, or Trump paying hush money to a porn star, or anything that can be construed as “scandalous” in a nation constantly fed scandal, then there can be only one outcome: boring wins.
The quiet part no one is saying out loud is that President Biden will probably win a second term, if for no other reason than the alternative is a Trump presidency promising more chaos for the national future. Chaos that no one wants. Especially all the corporate interests that are just as involved in running the show as politicians in Washington.
Nationally, most people who have the good sense to go and vote do so with the idea of consistency in mind. Our nation is bad at thinking too far forward into the future and thus consistency in the White House provides a kind of security blanket for many who fear that the roof will come caving in at any time on their heads need to move ahead. President Biden despite his age is no fool, and understands this just as much as anyone else. Thus the campaign will ultimately come down to CONSISTENCY. This will be the message pushed out throughout the rest of this year in some form or another.
Assuming the nation isn’t in the midst of another war with the Middle East over what’s happening in Israel. Then it’ll be drums and bugles and patriotic fervor of some kind.
This is the other reason why everyone groans at the idea of a Biden/Trump repeat here in 2024. People DO want to be able to start moving forward, but this Groundhog Day year so far doesn’t give us the option to do so. The primaries where candidates are given a shot early to make a splash in Iowa and New Hampshire kill any hopes for those challenging incumbents to rise this round for Democrats, and the GOP is all focused on revenge so have no problem with a second Trump term simply as a big middle finger to the nation. If we’re going to be honest, that’s really what is happening here.
They don’t care about the ultimate damage done in the long term to everyone in the process.
Thus, we find ourselves back where we started. And in the same way that any future where President Trump is elected to office and will face a variety of roadblocks and legal woes ahead, so will Biden. The real damage then comes in the form of destroying his legacy and Congressional leaders and Fox News commentators will continue to push a narrative that the President is the Great White Devil out to turn your children trans and replace you at work with illegal immigrants will be the message.
Congressional investigations aplenty are on the way to ensure that a second Biden term will be just as full of nonsense and lack of forward progress that ultimately will hurt both parties, but hurt Americans who just want to get on with life without the nonsense of this constant political warfare.
We need a new way forward. When leaders are more concerned with their jobs than the welfare of the people they serve, they don’t deserve to keep the office. I don’t believe President Biden falls in that category, but I do believe the chaos caused by his re-election is where the ‘welfare of the people they serve’ bit is the real problem.
Finding that new way forward is where President Biden falls short on leadership bit, and thus falls short in 2024. Even if the votes tally up his way, President Biden can’t win.
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