Category: 2022 American Elections

So, read this recently:

Makes the point pretty clearly, I’d say. Even people I know who hate Trump admit he did more for them than any other President of their life. People who got the additional unemployment, in particular, often had the longest good period of their lives — where they didn’t have to work and had enough money.

Whatever you think of the policy, Trump gave people money or helped with their student loans, and Biden is taking money away from them and leaving them vulnerable to eviction.

I can’t see how there is any way, absent some big surprises, that the Democrats don’t get wiped out in 2022, and it won’t just be “off years, we lose.”

(I am fundraising to determine how much I’ll write this year. If you value my writing and want more of it, please consider donating.)

The problem is that Republicans now feel more populist than Democrats; they appear more willing to just give money or help. It may be true that Republicans and a couple Democratic senators de-railed a lot of the good Biden wanted to do, but that doesn’t matter on the ground. If Biden can’t do good things or doesn’t want to (the truth is both), who cares? The end result is the same if your student loans re-start, your unemployment checks stop, and you get evicted.

DONATE OR SUBSCRIBE

Not only isn’t Biden FDR, he isn’t even going to look as helpful as Trump.

One thing I admire about Biden is his principles. He’s spent his life hurting little people, and something as minor as holding Congress isn’t going to make him change his ways now. Make a promise, win an election, break your promise in the most weasely and public way possible.

I’m talking about $2,000 checks. There is no question this is what Democrats promised if Georgia elected two Democratic Senators.

And Biden promised this specifically:

A day before Georgians head to the polls to decide control of the Senate, President-elect Joe Biden sought to cast the election as a choice between immediate stimulus relief or months of gridlock, promising that victory by Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff would mean $2,000 stimulus checks would be sent out “immediately.”

After Georgia did, indeed, give Biden two Democratic Senators and control of the Senaate. Biden walked this back to $1,400 — saying that the previous stimulus bill had already paid $600. Now he’s been saying that perhaps the checks should be means tested, so only some people will get $1,400 checks.

This is all weaseling. It is recognized as such by ordinary people. Biden is proving that he simply can’t be trusted to do what he says, when he makes a clear promise.

Now perhaps the bill can’t pass: perhaps. But you still do it: you bring and simple up and down bill with only the checks and make people vote for and against it. Odds are some Republicans will vote for it (Hawley, for one) so you can lose a Democrat or two.

Failure to do this will be remembered. People thought they were going to get $2k, they aren’t going to get it, and they will hold a grudge on this. No ordinary person will trust a word Biden says from this point on.

Nor should they.

Billionaires, on the other hand, will find he remains a good friend.

All the content here is free, but subscriptions and donations do help, a lot.