Dan Balz over at the Washington Poast gives the Win to Joseph Biden……
It IS my belief that Joe Biden will look MUCH Better in the history books then he does right now….
He’s NOT noise…
He’s working to try to get stuff done….
His polling number’s don’t show it…
He’s actually been a lousy salesman …
But a Good American President..…
Those early months offered Trump opportunities that could have affected future events. Instead, he squandered those opportunities with decisions that cost his party in the midterm elections and appear to have cost him politically as well.
Trump spent the year clinging to the lie that the 2020 election had been stolen and demanding that others in the Republican Party embrace those conspiracy theories. From his outpost at Mar-a-Lago in South Florida, he sought to show that he was the party’s kingmaker, offering endorsements to like-minded politicians. That saddled the Republicans with candidates not ready for general elections. Were it not for that, arguably, Republicans would now have a majority in the Senate rather than a net loss of one seat.
In the spring and summer, Biden made decisions that ultimately paid off. They included the steady pursuit of legislative victories that eventually resulted in the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (with only Democratic votes); bipartisan passage of a bill to invigorate domestic semiconductor manufacturing;a measure to care for veterans suffering from the effects of toxic burn pits; and a modest gun safety bill, the first such measure in a decade.
Biden also pursued a messaging strategy designed to brand much of the Republican Party in Trump’s image: the MAGA (Make American Great Again) Republicans, as he called them. With an assist from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Biden sought to make concerns about the state of U.S. democracy part of the midterm dialogue.
Some Democrats wondered whether that tactic was misplaced, given polls showing Americans most worried about inflation and the economy. Biden stuck to it. He said democracy was on the ballot in November, and many voters agreed, to the detriment of the former president and his party.