President Joe Biden is seen as both too old and having mishandled the economy since becoming president in January 2021. Most Americans fundamentally understand that, despite what the Biden Campaign argues, the economy is awful right now. Interest rates are at 22-year highs, dragging the rest of the economy down.
Those interest rates are high because the Federal Reserve had to combat record high inflation. And for all the blame being thrown at former President Donald J. Trump’s spending (most of which came about in response to the unique COVID-19 pandemic that occurred during his final year in office), few appear willing to acknowledge that Biden’s nearly $5 trillion in deficit spending since taking office has done little to ameliorate the inflation crisis.
In a Labor Day speech, President Biden attempted to lay the blame for everything that’s gone wrong under his watch at the feet of the “other guy” (Donald Trump).
Biden’s Alternative Reality Show
According to Biden’s Swiss cheese-like memory, Trump was the reason why jobs were lost to China and why U.S. pensions are at risk. Biden is a known fabulist, having once claimed to be of Puerto Rican descent in a brazen attempt to win over some Puerto Rican votes.
He infamously ripped off an entire speech during his failed 1988 presidential bid from British Labour Party leader, Neil Kinnock. Not only is Biden known to lie, but as the poll indicates, most Americans believe the forty-sixth president is cognitively impaired due to his advanced age.
It’s a weird accusation that Biden lobbed at his potential Republican Party presidential challenger, Donald Trump. Either Biden is outright lying, or he truly is confused. Because the actual historical record proves that jobs began being shipped over to China from the United States in the aftermath of the Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, and Jimmy Carter presidencies—long before Donald Trump was ever in politics.
And Joe Biden, who was serving as a powerful senator for the Democratic Party at the time, was one of the loudest and most consistent voices calling for greater dealings with China at that time.
Donald Trump has always been a protectionist at heart. Going back to the 1980s and early 1990s, when he was one of the loudest voices warning about the dangers of “free” trade. Back then, he was worried about what America’s neoliberal elite, of which Joe Biden is a card-carrying member, were giving away to the Arabs and Japanese.
Eventually, as Japan’s economic challenge to the United States subsided, Trump’s concerns shifted to China—where Trump’s trade ire remained fixated for the bulk of the twenty-first century. Once elected, Trump was the toughest American leader on China in decades.
One of the main reasons behind Trump’s antipathy to China was because the Middle Kingdom has taken so many once-high-paying middle-class and working-class jobs from America, ever since Nixon (and, by extension, Biden) supported greater relations with China.
Trump attempted to enact policies during his four years in office that protected jobs. And as for pensions, most Americans’ pensions during the Trump Administration were going gangbusters because the Trump economic policies had created a boom on the stock market.
Joe Biden, as vice-president, presided over a crushing of non-unionized workers’ pensions (and other benefits) in the auto industry as part of former President Barack Obama’s auto industry bailout in 2009-10.
Even today, as the car industry’s major union, the Union for Autoworkers (UAW), prepares to strike against their management, one of the chief complaints is that the Biden Administration doesn’t appear to have the UAW’s backs on things like better pension plans and other benefits.
That’s because Joe Biden, a Democrat, has gotten into bed with the corporate masters of the auto industry in order to get them to enact his extreme Green energy policies (without major corporate buy-ins to Biden’s climate agenda, his much-ballyhooed “Green” policies are dead on arrival).
An Act of Flagrant Projection
Every attack on former President Trump by Biden in his Labor Day speech was an act of flagrant projection. For example, contrary to his implicit statements on the matter, most Americans do not believe housing prices have gone in the right direction.
In fact, under Trump’s presidency, the average cost of housing—as well as the cost of entering the housing market for most young families—was much lower than it is today. Biden’s profligate spending since taking office has forced The Fed to raise interest rates astronomically, thereby pricing out most middle-class Americans from the housing market.
Despite these negative factors working against Biden, his reelection remains a statistical probability, if only because Donald Trump is such a terrible alternative in the minds of many Americans to Joe Biden.
Having already lived through one tumultuous term of Trump as president, many Americans—even those who disagree with Biden that things are going great in the economy presently—are disinclined to vote for Trump again in 2024 because he’s viewed as unstable.
Haven’t We Had Enough of These Angry Old Guys?
What’s more, many independents are likely going to be turned off by the multiple (politically motivated) indictments that the former president is currently being subjected to.
If anything, neither Biden nor Trump are very popular in the minds of the American people. They’d be smart to simply abandon their quests for the presidency in 2024 and letting a younger cohort of candidates take their place.
Instead, we are subjected to two of the most corrupt politicians in recent history, battling each other by name-calling, yelling at each other, and blatantly lying about each other.
Haven’t we had enough?
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert occasionally serves as a Subject Matter Expert for various organizations, including the Department of Defense. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
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