Political Comment: Biden is obviously unfit for office. His long standing traits of; crooked money graft, nasty stupidity, play-acting the role of “uncle Joe,” indifference to other people’s suffering are all on display and his mental impairment is in full blown decline.
I understand why his soviet of preppy handlers like him but why are his approval ratings still above 40%. pl
All the (D) democrats I happen to interact with
Find nothing wrong with “Jim Crow Joe” HT to
Diamond and Silk on Newsmax network.
Anyone is better than Orange Man besides he
Created these messes and the new junta must
Rectify all of it. Classic case of denial?
And he got hammered by the Security Establishment and press corp for actually leaving Afghanistan. The press corp and SE would be quite happy had Biden resumed the war and we went back to 50 soldiers and 3,000 civilians a year die in Afghanistan. Leaving was unforgivable.
For all of the talk of Joe’s incompetence, his poll numbers were doing well when he pushed infrastructure spending.
Chuba
“The press corp and SE would be quite happy had Biden resumed the war and we went back to 50 soldiers and 3,000 civilians a year die in Afghanistan.” That is a clever answer if you agree with Fukuyama that history ended some time ago. My position as demonstrated in the 2009 IQ2 debate was to try to do Counterinsurgency (nation building) in Afghanistan rather than maintain a base at Bagram from which we could sally forth on ops to kill jihadis.
A base at Bagram means that we are still at war w/the Taliban. The the only thing they want is for us to leave. I’m certain we could fortify Bagram, have a few spotters (U.S. or Afghan army) and reduce U.S. troop deaths to zero. But civilian deaths would increase because the Taliban activity would increase. Most of the Jihadis we kill would be Taliban in order to prop up the govt and only a a few would be the Al Qaeda / ISIS type.
I’d like to see if we could work w/the Taliban to kill ISIS-K with drones. They tell us where they are, we strike them, and they go through a Kabuki dance, condemning us for violating their territory. We are obsessed with a small number of Al Qaeda / ISIS in Afghanistan but don’t care about a much larger number in Syria. We are even twisting the knife in Assad’s back while he tries to fight them. I know you know that, just saying that there is a point where I consider it excessive to keep using Afghanistan as a bombing platform.
Chuba
“A base at Bagram” What the hell are you taking about? We left there before the fiasco at Kabul. That is over. You obviously have no idea what TTG and I are talking about in a covert support of the resistance.
Just looked at Rasmussen’s Presidential Tracking Poll
website and the first thing that stood out was not the numbers, but the sponsor. “Sponsored by The ANTIFA from Jack Posobiec”. Sure enough the link takes you to Posobiec’s book on ANTIFA.
As you might imagine, the Fact Cheka were right on this and declared it to be The Truth.
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-rasmussen-poll-jack-posobiec-sponsor-1625311
Am I the only one who finds sponsorship from a widely known right winger and the instantaneous fact check, obviously intended to discredit the poll, suspicious? Poso’s in-your-face sponsorship of the poll is unhelpful, at a minimum.
Rasmussen Polls are notoriously biased towards the GOP. Kind of the exact opposite of the Democratic-leaning polls – PublicPolicyPolls is one that comes to mind.
So Biden’s approval rating is actually higher, perhaps by three or four points. And that is after the beatdown he took by the liberal press and CNN for the withdrawal. The media spent more ink and airtime on Afghanistan in the last two weeks than they did in the past 20 years. I guess they don’t care as much about the other 2400 KIA US Servicemen as they do for the latest thirteen.
Leith
“Biden’s approval rating is actually higher, perhaps by three or four points.” You don’t know that. Rasmussen is “notorious?” Maybe in the minds of Bidonians.
Colonel:
IMHO most polls are a bit biased, either left or right. Very few are completely neutral, but even those sometimes should not be believed because of leading questions. It is better to average them than to take a single poll as gospel.
Leith There is a CBS News poll this week that shows him at 41%.
Polls by TV networks or newspapers & magazines, whether leaning rightie or leftie, are the worst polls of all.
News organizations are NOT pollsters. Their methodology is suspect. They use bad sampling techniques and loaded or leading questions. They probably use third or fourth string journalists to wordsmith the survey list. Their accuracy is well behind those of the professional polling organizations.
Leith,
Cindy Sheehan feels your pain. Once elected Obama/Biden dropped her like a used handkerchief. The transformation of America into the socialist utopia Obama and company have desired for years is accelerating under Joe and Ivy Leauge experts. At least we no longer need worry about Ukraine or Russia Collusion.
Fred:
Cindy Sheehan is just one of 5400 grieving gold-star mothers. Why does she rate special status above the others? Or make that 6800 if you include non-hostile casualties.
PS – don’t forget the 52,000 WIA.
Leith,
Why don’t you ask the professional democrats why they used her against Bush and dropped the whole issue after Obama was elected. .
Are you a Bush Junior fan Fred? He is the guy that got us into this 20-year war. I thought you Trump fans considered Bush a RINO?
“Beatdown by the liberal presss” That’s laughable. Some harsh words for this demented old fool and it’s a beatdown. The howler monkey press would have been calling for Trump’s impeachment had this happened under his watch. Having said that, I wish Trump would have followed through with his promise to remove us from that pointless debacle.
Lots of people in government and corporations are desperate not to see the fascist Uniparty go down in flames. Exhibit A: Mitch McConnell. Pocketbook issues for them through their continued employment in the case of the “workers/wokers”, while in the case of the big kahunas of the corporations and NGOs, continued opportunities for graft; in other words, the inevitable outcome of citizens being transformed into consumers/economic units, and corporations finding their interests in globalist forms, increasingly divorced from national interests.
Also, I suspect the massive increases in immigrants with tenuous to non-existent interest in the historical roots of our increasingly (to them) superannuated Constitutional system is carrying more weight, and this is in turn is being amplified by the judiciary and its single-minded and highly corrosive ideology of the “living Constitution” as almost infinitely mutable, preferably through judicial activism with a free hand to inject “legal precedents” from outside even our own traditions. A minoritarian judiciary hell-bent on changing We the People into We the Clamoring Alien Tribes.
Colonel,
I just perused this article over at the Z-man blog, and with your assent, I should like to add this by way of supplementation to my prior comment, which seemed to largely focus on material, pecuniary interests as driving factors. This article ruminates on issues that are more in the realm of the spirit, issues that speak to current, observable malaise of the Western world.
https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=24921
N.B.: To those who may be unfamiliar with the acronym, LARP, this refers to Live Action Reality Play; those who engage in LARPing are acting out in real life fantasies that would otherwise only remain in their minds. There’s a surface similarity to historical re-enaction, but it is less bound to facts, having more to do with the participant’s need to lose themselves in fantasy, only very lightly tethered to anything real, or historically known.
Thank you.
20 million people now work for the tax-payer supported government, in one form or another – federal, state or local. They have families and friends who multiply those numbers two and three fold.
They want Joe Biden or any other person with a (D) by their name writing their paychecks; not an (R) who would write them pink slips. They are virtually all registered Democrat and Democrat campaign supporters.
The impact of this unelected special interest group – the large bureaucratic state – has yet to be fully understood. Because its existence answers most if not all questions about contemporary US dysfunction. Made up of good and often well-meaning people as individuals; but collectively now operate as an albatross around all our necks.
Reading the WSJ front page articles explains why Biden’s numbers remain high. Reading the WSJ editorial page makes you wonder what they are smoking in the WSJ news rooms.
This dichotomy illustrates the WSJ does maintain a Berlin Wall between the news room and the editorial pages. However the reader must now read the editorial pages for news; and the front page for opinion.
Just reading what passes for “news” in the legacy media explains the high numbers – all is roses, rainbows, kittens and puppy dogs with Team Biden for a vast number of legacy media consumers.
The best polls from my research are ones where they pay people over a period of time for their opinions. It makes sense. Instead of random thoughts, you get people who start paying attention and thinking about issues that effect them. Unfortunately, there are not many of these polls.
Most of them have serious flaws like throwing out outliners that are way off the assumption. NPR talked about this aspect years ago. Throw out those shots that go over the backboard, get blocked or, get stolen and slam dunked on the other end of the court. I highly suspect the ball got stolen and slammed on the other end but they keep throwing those out of the equation and adding up all the easy “free throws”. Everyone knows this guy is Nixon level pressure cooker right now.
because they are NOT in fact representative of the true voter sentiment. polls are statistics and statistics are the easiest math in the world to cook any way you like.
between leading questions and outright lying in compilation….. pollsters could make adolf hitler appear compassionate and humanitarian.
add that to the fact the political, justice and msm orgs in the usa are as corrupt and mendacious as any found on this planet.
bidens polls are only the height at which the elites think they can state as ”fact” while getting the ever gullible public to swallow as legitimate.
Reading any poll, without a drill down to impacts on the electoral college, is of little value except to the Delaware basement bubble crowd.
People like good news; not accurate news. Democrats understand this better than the GOP. Except they did refuse to recognize the past four years of good news coming out of the Trump administration.
It is all how we tell the story that counts. Saccharine Nancy’s outright lies and pontifications can be used as a case study. Understand the point you want to make, and then just make up stuff to support it.
EG: Biden handled Afghanistan brilliantly and we are now all safe. Fill in the facts. People remember how they feel; not what is actually true. Shrewd politicians have exploited that forever. But Democrats have turned it into a conscience free high art form.
I think a nagging problem is Republicans just don’t like lying. Whereas, Democrats are far more willing to go for the emotional jugular, because they understand this is what people really want.
Reagan understood both, which is why he has gone down in Presidential history as the Great Communicator – when he smiled, all was well with the world. We all remember him saying it is morning again in America, but can we really remember why things had gotten so dark?
The same poll reports 26% strongly approve of his performance while 47% strongly disapprove. Not good for President Corn Pop. But the MSM, while criticizing the decision to withdraw more than the execution of the withdrawal, are continuing to protect him by sweeping the worst of the Afghanistan fiasco under the rug. So I imagine his numbers will gradually become more favorable over time.
Can you imagine the absolute bloody hell he/she would suffer if a Republican referred to a mature African American man (and cabinet member no less) as “boy”??? The Usual Suspect cable channels would talk about it ad nauseam and Pelosi would likely initiate impeachment proceedings.
Means that 40% (a very low number) are uninformed, badly educated and immature.
AND, as other commenters have pointed out, polls are generally biased, usually to the left.
Colonel, as an anti-neocon anti-neoliberal I did not find President Biden’s withdrawal speech entirely agreeable – but then I find very few politicians’ speeches agreeable. Setting that aside whoever put the speech together was I believe in the main correct.
It was not a disastrous withdrawal. On the contrary it was a supremely well organised withdrawal, especially since Ghani’s flight and the ANA collapse turned a carefully scheduled operation into an accelerated and urgent one. This was a most creditable military operation in a most harrowing and unpredictable environment. I believe that will eventually be recognised though at present the tragedies and disasters are being pointed to to “prove” it was a shambles. On the contrary, that it succeeded in spite of the tragedies and disasters shows that somewhere in that vast American military machine there are people who know their business.
“Wow”, I thought as that last plane lifted off on schedule “they’ve actually managed to pull it off”. For until the last minute there was no guarantee, in those tense hair trigger days, that they would.
And the tragedies and disasters? Yes, they were harrowing. Name me one operation outside peacetime that does not have such and worse. What do the detractors demand? That real time operations should run like some idealised video game?
If you want to avoid tragedies and disasters, I’d say to all, from Merkel and Johnson to Blair and Bush, don’t start interventions that must inevitably end in failure.
EO
You are conflating 2 issues. Sure the military delivered as best they could in a harrowing and unpredictable environment. They always do. The issue is why exactly the withdrawal had to be conducted in such an environment. I don’t buy Biden’s BS about it being inevitable. Neither do the 90 retired flag officers who recently wrote an open letter on the subject. Neither does LTC Scheller.
The opinion poll is not on the popularity of the military who actually undertook the operation, it is on the CinC. Colonel Lang was advising we got people out of Kabul months ago. The IC maintains that Biden was warned of the likelihood of a rapid collapse. Biden should have taken every precaution to evacuate US citizens and the AWHU (Afghans Who Helped Us) early. Instead he gave the inexplicable order that Bagram be abandoned before the evacuation was even underway. Sure there was always going to be chaos when the mass populace in Kabul saw the last planes leaving, but by then an orderly evacuation could have been largely completed.
The Democrat controlled media may yet succeed in whitewashing this preventable disaster. The bitterness many people feel over it will not so easily be washed away.
Barbara Anne – on the manner of our withdrawal I believe what you say here is key – ” Sure there was always going to be chaos when the mass populace in Kabul saw the last planes leaving, but by then an orderly evacuation could have been largely completed.”
The original plan would not only have averted that chaos. It would have ensured that Afghanistan had a smoother changeover from one regime to another, preferably keeping elements of the old administration in place.
It’s doubtful that the Taliban is capable of running a country. It’s also doubtful, whatever the leadership say, that they’re capable of restraining the more brutal of their fighters. I think we’ve seen examples of that already.
All those meeting over the last few months, with so many parties and not least the Americans involved, were for the purpose of dealing with that problem of changeover. Leaving Ghani and in particular his administration in place in order to arrive at a negotiated handover was key to that. The Taliban would have stayed out, Kabul would have been quiet, the embassies would have been kept open, and the orderly evacuation you mention could have proceeded.
The other Western powers, with the possible exception of the UK, were on board with that plan. And if the UK wasn’t initially, the PM’s statement to the House shows he accepted it later. This, incidentally, is why I am unimpressed with the subsequent reaction of the European countries including my own. They shoved all the blame on to “the Americans” without acknowledging that they too had agreed to and were working to that plan, as Mrs Merkel’s statement clearly shows.
Ghani’s impromptu flight, leaving his own officials high and dry, put paid to that plan. McKenzie, wisely, decided he could not take on the job of running Kabul so all that was left was for the Taliban to take it on. Hence the panic and the hasty evacuation of the Embassies. The Indians, for example, had intended to leave their Embassy in Kabul. After Ghani’s flight they cleared out fast. So did most others.
I can’t see there is error here. We had a good plan. It didn’t work. Happens. We moved, all of us, to another – the hasty and considerably more urgent evacuation of personnel and of those civilians it was possible to get out in the time. That’s what we saw done.
There are still elements of that first plan in place. There’s going to be considerable pressure on the Taliban to restrain their fighters, both financial and military pressure. We’re already seeing other countries moving in to run or to assist with running essential utilities. No one knows how all that’s going to go but it won’t be for want of trying.
So as said earlier I see no “failure” here in the manner of this withdrawal. Nothing that could or should have been handled differently. Merely an inevitably difficult withdrawal, considerably more difficult than it need have been given Ghani’s flight, from a venture we should none of us have engaged in.
Dear Colonel,
Until there is some big economic pain, I consider Biden’s poll numbers as referenced to the opposition, which these days is either Trump or . . . . McConnel? Kind of like measuring a voltage and not hooking the ground lead up.
– Trump institutes an automatic response among a significant fraction of the population, buoying the number. Thus, until a different figure emerges as opposition, I see his numbers just floating (groundless-ly).
I recall a comedy called “Idiocracy,” that I think has relevance, too.
There is a operating rule of thumb in mainly non-partisan political campaigns that may apply also to polls -any candidate in a two way race can count of getting an automatic 30% —- just because.
Therefore no candidate should expect to win more than 70% of the vote. Anything more than 30% has to be earned. So to get to 50% plus one to win, one actually has to only bring in 20% plus one more voters; not all 50% plus one.
And a candidate getting anything over 55% is deemed a landslide. Voters are weird since they vote against as much as they vote for and often vote on their own issues, that have nothing to do with the qualities of the candidates or the campaign issues like gender or nationality of last name, or brief three word ballot identification, or incumbent label, or location of name on the ballot.
I suspect answers to polling have similar peculiarities.
Biden was put in the Presidents office because he is easy to manipulate and he was capable of winning the election – even if it did take fraud to deliver the win. Biden has probably been told that his poll numbers reflect his amazing ability to make really hard decisions and that the public will realise his true brilliance shortly.
Given that assumption, Biden’s handlers will also have decided that he has a “use by” date and will treat him as an asset that can be consumed over time. In other words, they don’t care about his poll numbers as long as he commands obedience because Biden’s re-election is not part of anyone’s strategy.
I therefore expect Biden to do many more shameful things.
I have watched and even participated in the manipulation of a vain and stupid company president. It’s not too hard if a few people with access can coordinate their messaging.
walrus
You are right about Biden’s temporary value to his handlers. The committee-that-is-Biden may soon be dead. Long live the soon-to-be-committee-that-is-Harris.
Having reflected on the question posed in the title of this post I’d now like to venture an opinion on it. Why are Biden’s numbers still so high? Why? Because a very significant proportion of the country has not yet come to terms with the reality of the “Biden” presidency and of those that have, a good number are perfectly happy with that reality.
To the “well-funded cabal of powerful people” (Time’s phrase) who engineered the election outcome and now run the US government, our opinion of Biden is about as relevant as our opinion of the chair he occupies. He is a merely a tool, to be replaced as and when necessary. In fact if they could get away with the chair remaining empty that would be just fine. Perhaps they’ll actually try that and Biden will retire to his basement permanently. Basement dwelling didn’t seem to dent his popularity before and I see no reason why he couldn’t ‘win’ another election without ever again seeing the light of day.
The unpalatable reality, the abyss which many people are understandably unwilling to stare into, is the fact that the US government has been taken over by a group of people who care nothing for America. The manner of the exit from Afghanistan has made this glaringly obvious. National pride is a meaningless concept for these people. In fact I think it goes beyond that, I suspect that the motivations of the cabal include destroying American prestige abroad and deliberately demoralizing the patriotic section of the domestic populous into submission. Post Westphalian thinking is in vogue among this group and national pride is anathema to their world view.
Biden’s selection as the DNC’s candidate against Trump was bizarre. The guy could hardly string a coherent sentence together and would have been eviscerated in a debate. He had no chance surely – or so we thought. At the time I opined here that the selection of such a poor candidate seemed almost gratuitous – a deliberate demonstration that the cabal could and would beat Trump with anyone. Since taking power it seems to me that the cabal is emboldened to the point of simply no longer caring about public opinion. How else can we explain the abandonment of several hundred Americans in Kabul? The usurper Trump was ejected, they are in power and retaining power at all costs is all that matters.
“But what about the midterms?” you may cry. Well I’ll be delighted to be proven wrong, but I fear the cabal simply will not permit the democratic process to stand in their way. I see no reason why the almost full spectrum media control and every increasing censorship of social media will not now escalate to the point where dissatisfaction with the Party will no longer be tolerated. My expectation is that having gotten away with the shenanigans in the 2020 election this will become the low bar by which all future election shenanigans will be measured. Again, I look forward to being proved wrong.
In summary, I believe it would be an enormous mistake to underestimate the delusional state of mind that afflicts the cabal. They believe they control all the levers of power and consider themselves invulnerable. Their disdain for the system which allowed Trump to come to power (the Constitution) is absolute. I expect the full might of the security state to be brought to bear on any credible opposition to de facto one party rule. Notions that the tried and tested democratic process will rectify this situation simply fail to grasp the nature of the takeover that has been accomplished.
This comment is not a call to disregard constitutional order. It is merely a view that this has effectively already happened. It is also a warning that the longer this fact goes unrecognized the harder it will be to address the problem. \end polemic
Some have a sensible solution. 🙂
https://twitter.com/TimRunsHisMouth/status/1432793806764711942
Agree with you. The takeover has taken place over many decades. Now the “cabal” who control all levers of power act with impunity as any opposition can be disregarded and if they get too uppity can be squashed.
I repeat myself -measure the country’s slow decline after JFK unionized government employees, outsourcing our government to a small cabal of public sector union bosses who still float out there under the radar.
The massive public union and their bosses do not fall under any level of public accountability or recourse, despite the fact wet payers fund 100% of their union operations. Such is the bizarre nature of public sector employee unions. Private in their own protection; but 100% public in their source of revenues.
Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government is the first task of the statesmanship of today.
– Theodore Roosevelt
https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1433889639295766531?s=21
The wealth of the Top 0.00025% as a ratio to GDP during the pandemic. Says a lot in one chart. But ….Tweedle Dee vs Tweedle Dum.
https://twitter.com/ssharmaus/status/1433932362929344516?s=21
This is a fascinating thread about Texas and how the Republicans work to further big corporate interests not the interests of their people. Story of Uber/Lyft, a ballot measure and how the Republicans used their legislative majority to back them. This is about how Big Government create monopolies through legislation using the rhetoric of free markets & choice.
https://twitter.com/jeffreyatucker/status/1433775581246763013?s=21
Yup. Going on 50+ years. Yet….Tweedle Dee vs Tweedle Dum.
When poll numbers reflect the demographic distortion of both the Far East Left and Far West Left coasts, we should all light candles for the wisdom of the Founders.
The Founders rejected pure democracy, and put in buffers between the mob and our treasured form of governance. All hail.