01-26-2021, 03:06 AM
(01-26-2021, 01:53 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(01-23-2021, 01:58 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I suppose that it is time to see how different things are with Joe Biden than with Donald Trump.Biden is a one term President at best. I seriously doubt he'll be able to finish his term. You can't hide him forever. The government is on trail now and Biden is more or less a side show at this point. You better start paying attention to what the polls have to say about it instead of Biden.
A hint: my blood pressure seems to have gone up. Coincidence or cause? I'm back on blood-pressure medicine.
Quote:First Reuters/Ipsos poll on Biden-
Approve: 55%
Disapprove: 32%
Trump's first poll had him at 43%.
https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/file...2_2021.pdf
Assessment:
Expectations were far lower for Donald Trump than for Joe Biden. Hillary Clinton tore deeply into Trump without defeating him where it counted (the Electoral College), and Trump started with little room for failure.
Although it is possible to begin with astronomical support at the start of one's Administration and still lose a re-election bid (Jimmy Carter, and had there been polling in early 1929 it would have almost certainly given high hopes for Herbert Hoover) it is far more difficult to be President if one's initial support is shaky.
President Biden has much more political capital at his disposal than did Donald Trump. We all know what Trump did as President (satisfying his Base but doing little for anyone else)... and it obviously did not work to get him re-elected. It is never enough to please the Base and not seek new supporters unless one starts with a clear majority. Add to this, Donald Trump is a terribly-flawed person who had no preparation for the Presidency. Experience in business has little relevance to success in public office because government does not operate as a profit-and-loss entity. The only political systems in which government activity largely operates on a profit-and-loss basis are "socialist" states in which the government owns and operates practically all economic activity, as in North Korea today and the Soviet Union in its infamous past.
With more political capital and fewer deficiencies of character (admit it, Republicans -- Donald Trump is a loathsome character, and you would have been better off with someone more like Mitt Romney or the late Gerald Ford as President!) Joe Biden will be able to take more chances to appeal to people not in the Democratic base through legitimate achievement.
At this point I am getting into the realm of prediction without having adequate data. It is possible to have 45% approval at a low point and get re-elected. Incumbents do that more often than not for Senatorial and Gubernatorial offices. There will be people who expect certain things out of President Biden and do not get them. They will not vote for him in 2024.
Cultural change did not work in Trump's favor. I cannot assume that it will for President Biden. I cannot predict how strong an opponent he will face in 2024. I cannot predict whether America will be in hard or easy (or clearly improving) economic times.
We have this poll. President Biden got 51% of the popular vote while barely winning the Electoral College (a 0.32% even shift of the popular vote would have put the election in the House of Representatives in a tie at 269-269, which Trump would have won) which is far better as a prospect of the next election than getting just under 46% of the popular vote but winning the Electoral College because one wins the "right" states.
I do not know what conclusion to draw from Biden getting a share of the total popular vote higher than that of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Nothing says that Joe Biden will be more successful as President than Ronald Reagan in getting re-elected in the next election.
It's too early to say anything that isn't already obvious.
My only questions of Biden running for a second term are, as I assume a competent Presidency on his part, are of his health. Anyone 80 years old is living on luck even if he had good habits going into old age. I am reasonably certain that he has already contemplated this. A try for a second term may be stopped by his perception of health.
He may see himself as a transition to something very different from what we now have... but not the person who will be around when that transformation goes beyond the initial stage. An America tied to the last completed Skowronek cycle in which nothing matters except elite power, indulgence, and gain will seek to bring America back to such. Reactionaries with the means have always done that, and American reactionaries with such means will be no different from those of other times and places.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.