Joe biden

Atlanta, Georgia “Ms. Abrams, public opinion polls in our state show support for the right to abortion, Medicaid expansion and banning assault weapons. You are on the side of public opinion on each of these issues, yet you are behind in almost every poll. Why?” Conservatives snorted at veteran Georgia newsman Chuck Williams when, in his decidedly Appalachian tones, he asked that as his opening question during Stacey Abrams’s first debate with Brian Kemp. Many on Twitter considered it the ultimate softball: why don’t voters like you as much as us journalists, Ms. Abrams? You’re so great! I didn’t see it that way — Williams’s question could be read as a damning indictment of Abrams’s fortunes in the years since she first stood for the Georgia governorship.

It’s not often that a senator launches a brutal, frontal assault on a president from his own party. It’s even rarer when he does it just before a national election. But that is exactly what West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin just did to Joe Biden. At issue was Biden’s recent speech attacking coal, a bedrock of the West Virginia economy. Manchin was furious over Biden's promise to shut down all of America’s coal-fired power plants. That view might be red meat for Biden’s audience of green-power advocates and rich California donors, but it is poison in West Virginia. And it is those West Virginians who elected Manchin, the only Democrat still standing in a state that is now deep red. Manchin didn’t just criticize Biden.

In the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, the national media and the Hillary Clinton campaign devised a plan to elevate Donald Trump and so-called “lunacy” over a field of up-and-coming Republican politicians. According to New York Times journalist Amy Chozick, who was embedded with Hillary Clinton’s campaign from inception to death, campaign manager Robby Mook called a meeting with an agenda of specifically asking “How do we maximize Donald Trump?” Chozick also noted how Mook “salivated when a debate came on, and Trump would start to speak. ‘Shhhhh,’ Robby said, practically pressing his nose up to the TV. ‘I’ve gahtz to get me some Trump.’” We all know how that worked out.

Last night’s debate between Pennsylvania US Senate candidates Republican Mehmet Oz and Democrat John Fetterman, was, as The Spectator’s own Ben Domenech described it, “political malpractice.” Watching Fetterman mumble, stumble, stutter, and glitch his way through answers made Joe Biden on a bad day sound like FDR delivering his stirring “Fear Itself” speech. But stroke or no stroke, Fetterman has no record to laud, and the policies he promotes are indefensible. Fetterman showed why he is unfit to serve right off the bat when the moderators (the real stars of the show) asked the candidates, “What qualifies you to be a US senator?” Both Oz and Fetterman seemed to confuse this basic question with “Why are you running?

As the November midterms draw closer, the spotlight isn’t just on the Democratic politicians: Their spouses are making waves too. A piece in Monday's New York Times fawned over First Lady Jill Biden, or “Dr. B”, as her students call her. The paper of record reports that according to a senior White House official, Jill “is the most requested surrogate in the administration.” That’s right. The best surrogate the White House has to offer midterm candidates is the woman who compared Latino Americans to breakfast tacos. That says as much about the numerous “rising stars” in Biden’s cabinet as it does about Jill. Her supposed popularity isn’t the only interesting tidbit in the piece.