Biden’s Doing a Good Job and He’s Still Going to Lose To a Lunatic

Perception is everything

With the US Presidential election season well under way and Donald Trump creeping from hibernation befuddled with rage hormones, politics is more than ever conducted almost entirely on social media; a festering slurry of lies, bots, and low-information pundits with Big Ideas.

Opening up X-Twitter makes me queasy and adding my malcontent voice to the din isn’t effecting the social change I’d assumed it would, so I’ve slowed down on writing about politics and apocalypse in favour of poetry, fiction, and gentle riffing about trips to Dollarama (this isn’t a financially based decision btw; anti-MAGA rants and doomerism always draw more eyeballs than poems about fairies).

But certain political issues require discussion, however repulsive the exercise.

President Joe Biden came out swinging at his State of the Union address, highlighting his accomplishments in office. These are more considerable than the GOP and their armies of Russian and Chinese bots would have you believe, and include strong job growth, among the lowest inflation rates in the world, falling crime rates, and tangible climate action.

He contrasted these with the achievements of his predecessor, notably the end of reproductive rights for women, and the January 6 insurrection that tried to steal a Presidential election by force for the first time in American history.

Biden also displayed an energy which put the lie to the right-wing meme fodder that he’s not up to the task of leading his damaged, polarized country for another four years, although it doesn’t explain why he’d want to.

Not a bad show, and a majority of viewers polled gave it a thumbs up. But it won’t be enough to boost Biden’s lacklustre ratings or prevent Trumpocalypse come November.

One reason is that the SOTU address doesn’t have much impact on Presidential popularity, partly because it’s less watched than it used to be. This year just under ten percent of Americans watched the speech and three-quarters of them were over the age of 55, with everyone else presumably getting their opinions from teenagers on TikTok.

A second reason the speech won’t revive Biden’s fortunes is that much of the nation doesn’t share the Democrat’s view of reality.

A recent poll found that Americans across all races, creeds, colours, ages and genders think Trump’s policies helped them more and harmed them less than Biden’s. On the surface, this is hard to explain since unless your name is Ivanka or Don Jr. it’s unlikely that any Trump policies did much to improve your life.

But reality rarely intrudes on America’s perception of the world and their place in it. Trump became President in 2016, inheriting an expanding economy from the Obama administration and not fucking things up too badly until Covid hit in early 2020.

When Biden took over, however, the pandemic was raging, with global side effects of skyrocketing unemployment and rampant supply chain issues. None of this was his fault, but it’s understood by the American public that their President is responsible for everything that happens in the world, a belief encouraged by politicians because complexity is confusing and hard to sell.

Consequently, Biden found himself dealing with a level of inflation not seen since the 1980s, which increased the price of everything from gasoline to toilet paper (proving the wisdom of those who stocked up early in the pandemic.)

Polls tell us that what Americans really care about — besides diseased fentanyl-bearing illegals streaming over the border — is how much things cost. And even though inflation is now running at a more manageable — and enviable — 3.1 percent in the US, nothing much has dropped in price, and Americans are nostalgic for the early days of Trump when the Obama economy kept prices relatively stable.

And snark aside, I get that, because probably like you I’ve had to downgrade my luxurious Gouda lifestyle to something more processed and individually wrapped. And I know it sucks.

But I also know that the current inflation problem has very little to do with Joe Biden. Not only do we have lingering economic trauma from the pandemic, we’re now seeing the inflationary impacts of climate change, especially on food.

This will happen no matter who’s in office, but until election time it will serve the purpose of Republicans to blame everything on Biden. If Trump swaggers back into the White House, he’ll point a stubby finger at China or windmills or drag queens, and the red hat cultists will lap it up. Meanwhile, Trump’s climate policy — which can be summed up as “burn the planet for profit’ — will make things much worse. All of this will be cheered along by right-wing media, which doesn’t so much report news as invent it.

In a saner world, the GOP would come to its senses, dump Trump and work bilaterally to fix the massive underlying issues that are making life harder for Americans. But the world is neither sane nor good, and Republicans are purging anyone who crosses the MAGA messiah, the better to secure a spot among the pack of grinning hyenas waiting to suck the marrow from the dead scavenged bones of the American Republic.

Is Biden perfect? Far from it. But given the byzantine nature of the US political system, he’s the best option on the table. And right now, it’s hard to like his chances.