Bored with kicking around Covid-19 like
the political football it has become, the chattering class has taken on a new
cause: why do so many people dislike the US president?
It would take several encyclopedia-size
volumes to fully answer that question, but let’s try to be brief. Anointed by
Barack Obama himself last year despite an abysmal primary performance, Biden
slunk into the Democrats’ prime position, with election results preposterously
showing him to be the most popular president in history, despite a clear
indication that he had been elected not for his virtues but for his opponent’s
failings.
And Biden wouldn’t be doing any of the
governing, it was clear. When all the non-Biden candidates suddenly dropped
their candidacy to endorse him, it became obvious that the former president had
made a few calls on behalf of his ex-VP, declaring that the past-his-prime
gaffe-machine was to be the party’s unlikely, doddering, weirdly racist savior.
Under the guise of United-Colors-of-Benetton-style diversity-in-name-only, the
nation would project the image of progress while the hoary old system continued
cranking away beneath the surface.
Why put Biden in such a position when
there were younger, more surface-diverse, and coherent candidates up for grabs?
For one reason: it would make taking out the president look like a singularly
disastrous proposition for anyone plotting a palace coup – anyone who didn’t
want the profoundly undesirable Kamala Harris as president, at least. Harris,
second only to Biden in her unpopularity, would be safely neutralized in her
runner-up position, and the status quo would be safely in the hands of the
system pulling Biden’s strings when the economy started to collapse for real.
That
system would have a license to pick whoever is pleased to throw under the bus
when the collapse took place, with no beloved demagogue in situ to urge the
people to rise up against their hideously corrupt leaders; no individual with a
cult-like following to demand pitchforks and torches be taken to BlackRock’s
headquarters or its CEO’s home; not even a rising movement to convince the
masses to turn off their TVs, throw them out the window, and watch Covid-19 and
the threat of vaccine mandates dwindle into a tiny little blip in the corner of
their minds.
Biden,
too, would have dwindled into such a speck, his existence so inconsequential
despite his decades in Congress that one would have to truly scan a room three
or four times to pick out the hair-transplanted, confused-looking old man who
seems like he’d be more at home playing bingo with his fellow care home
residents than slugging it out on the political stage. This is why, of course,
the man appears to take no unscripted questions and seems to spiral into a rage
when he’s confronted with a question that he hasn’t been briefed on yet.
For the
same reason Trump’s 2020 campaign came off as curiously lackluster, a carefully
choreographed death spiral for the inveterate showman, Biden’s party did not
want the responsibility of the demise of the American empire in its hands. The
near-extinct Tyrannosaurus Rex of the petrodollar system comes closer every day
to collapsing, and whichever party is in office at the time will literally and
figuratively be left holding the bag, spelling its doom in no uncertain terms.
One can wriggle out of a sex scandal or an embezzlement oopsie, but one can’t
rid oneself of the stench of collapsing the global financial system. Even
George W. Bush didn’t try that one, splitting the responsibility between his
own outgoing bailout and the incoming Obama, spiced up with a lot of
misplaced ‘hope’ propaganda. Americans were fed so much ‘hope’ they didn’t
know which way was up by the time they’d lost their houses, and could no longer
figure out who was to blame.
Biden has thus found himself caught
between a rock and a hard place, assuming – as some wonder – he knows he’s
there at all. Just 36% of Americans approve of his performance, while 53%
disapprove, according to Quinnipiac University’s survey last
week, his worst performance so far – and there’s plenty of distance yet to
fall. The stock market continues to soar even as real-life incomes continue to
implode, and Main Street is having it rubbed ferociously in its face that there
is no real relationship between the stock market and ordinary people. It’s a
tough lesson, but Americans had to learn it at some point.
The question now is will anyone take that
lesson and do anything with it, or merely moan on social media and go back to
sleep?
The progressive wing of the Democratic
Party is seething, having been told to “vote blue no matter who” in 2020
with the reassurance they’d at least get a few scraps thrown their way, and
maybe a trail of breadcrumbs leading them out of the forest of Trumpitude into
some mythological liberal paradise. Instead, they have received nothing but one
slap in the face after another as their neocon-at-heart president (the man
who co-wrote the
Patriot Act, as we all seem to forget) struggles to railroad arch-scumbag Neera
Tanden and her dance partner from hell, Rahm
Emanuel, through a very accommodating Senate. Those who voted for him in
hope of a return to some nonexistent ‘normalcy’ are getting the ‘I told you so’
treatment from their friends on the left and big innocent puppy eyes from their
pals on the right.
And Biden, for all the promises that he
would stay the course after four years of supposedly disastrous Trump
leadership, has merely checked out and let the carnage continue. Doddering
towards his ninth decade, he seems to barely know where he is half the time,
nor do half the rest of Congress, most of whom could apply for senior citizen
discounts at their local Applebee’s.
No wonder Americans don’t relate to him.
The only question is why they aren’t doing something more about this government
by the short-termers, for the short-termers? The comatose response to outrage
after outrage resembles nothing so much as the checked-out trauma liberals
experienced in the wake of Obama’s elections, believing this was it – the end
of the never-ending War on Terror – only to be served up several more heaping
helpings of the stuff. ‘It’ll only be a few more years’ becomes the
never-ending refrain, but that’s no good for the young and middle-aged who have
to suffer through these short-termers disastrous policy decisions.
Biden’s real problems may start with an image
– it’s hard to believe in a politician who doesn’t appear to be in full control
of his faculties – but while Republicans rallied around Reagan during his
similar demise, Democrats have quietly begun to distance themselves from Biden,
meaning there’s more at play than mere dementia.
His presidency has the added embarrassment
of him having been sold to America as the man who would ‘fix’ the country. The
narrative managers claimed we had begged for just this candidate and by golly,
we were going to get him. We may never know the truth of what happened with all
the many voting shenanigans that happened last November, but the notion that
Biden won more votes than anyone in US history is a pathetic joke that Our
Democracy™ will never live down. Had they not added that particular insult to
injury, the Biden crew might have made a safe getaway, but it was one kick too
many to a population truly weary of being kicked.
Former US
Labor Secretary Robert Reich whined in
the Guardian last week, sounding legitimately confused if not personally
wounded by so many ungrateful Americans disliking Biden, and demanding to know
what more the administration can possibly do. Look at the stock market! It’s
yuuuge! But it takes a Trump-size personality to sell such Trump-sized BS, and
Biden doesn’t have it in him.
Lowering our
expectations even lower than they already are – to sub-austerity levels after
several presidents in a row took an ax to the economy and encouraged their
cronies to fill their pockets as fast as possible – is not a governing
strategy. The government must quit allowing BlackRock and its ilk to loot the
treasury, ban insider trading by Congress, investment banks, and private
equity, and start returning the money to the people. It’s that or let Americans
dig up the truth for ourselves – and we won’t be very happy with what we find.
Written by
Helen Buyniski
is an American journalist and political commentator at
RT.
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