E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

Are the Good Times Over for Biden?
[TownHall] - Are the Democrats headed for their Little Bighorn, with President Joe Biden as Col. Custer? The wish, you suggest, is father to the thought. Yet, consider.

On taking office, Biden held a winning hand.

Three vaccines, with excellent efficacy rates, had been created and were being administered at a rate of a million shots a day. The pandemic was at its peak but looking certain to turn down, and it did.

This welcome news lifted national spirits, and the economy with it.

And the new president was taking office in a brief era of good feelings produced by the departure of the party and president who had given us the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Thus did Biden begin his administration with his approval at a level his predecessor never reached in any year of his presidency.

Happy days were here again.

But now the storm clouds are gathering and rumbling.

By last week, Biden's disapproval rating had risen into the 40s, and half the country believed America was "on the wrong track."

Yet it is not what has happened but what impends that appears ominous for Biden's and his party's prospects.

With not quite 70% of U.S. adults having received a vaccination, a new and more contagious delta variant of the disease is spreading worldwide, and an uptick in new U.S. infections has been reported.

In the economy, with markets at an all-time high, an old demon has reappeared. Writes today's Wall Street Journal:
    "Americans should brace themselves for several years of higher inflation than they've seen in decades, according to economists who expect the robust post-pandemic economic recovery to fuel brisk price increases ... If the economists prove correct, Federal Reserve officials might have to raise (interest) rates sooner or more than they expect to keep inflation under control."

Inflation and rising interest rates to combat it is usually a near-fatal cocktail for a party in control of the White House and Congress in the year they face the electorate.

In addition to warning lights flashing in the economy, Biden has presided over a sudden crisis along the southern border, where 170,000 illegal migrants are being apprehended every month.

"Getaways" — border-crossers who sneak in and evade contact with the Border Patrol — now number 30,000 a month.

Who these people are and whence they came, we know not.

Former President Donald Trump's policies secured the border, and this new invasion is traceable to Biden's trashing of Trump's policy.

Indeed, Biden's designation of Vice President Kamala Harris as point person on the border crisis, and her reflexive recoil from the duties of that assignment, testify that this latest invasion could be a killer issue for Democrats in 2022.


Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2021-07-13
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=607100