Joe biden

What a civil rights legend is Joseph R. Biden. You can almost picture it if you daydream hard enough: the discordant chants of "we shall overcome, man! I mean, c'mon!"; the sermons that sound just a bit too identical to the previous speaker; the Millions Against Malarkey March of '67. Naturally no one spends more time daydreaming about this than Biden himself. So it was that last week, the president falsely asserted again that he'd once been arrested as a young man during a civil rights march. It was a claim he’d made previously and been forced to retract, and it was such an obvious fib that even the Washington Post took a break from fact-checking Tucker Carlson’s facial expressions to award the president four Pinocchios.

President Biden’s wisdom and penetrating intelligence sometimes escape him. So far, they have stayed away for fifty years and show no signs of returning. They are often accompanied by wild exaggerations, invented personal stories and hyperbolic attacks on opponents. Examples are not hard to find, and the public is catching on. The latest fulmination came during a campaign-style rally in Atlanta on Tuesday, aimed at supporting his bill to nationalize election laws. Since that bill contravenes America’s long, constitutionally enshrined tradition that state legislatures control voting rules (as long as they don’t violate individual civil rights), the bill will fail in the Senate, blocked by the filibuster. Biden, once a man of the Senate, has long supported the filibuster.

Joe Biden usually likes being compared to Donald Trump. During the 2020 presidential campaign the media often contrasted the two figures in order to highlight how much more decent and compassionate and normal Biden is, as opposed to Orange Man. However, the empathizer-in-chief might not be as crazy about the latest parallels emerging thanks to his poll numbers. A headline in Newsweek, not exactly a right-wing rag, reads, “Joe Biden’s Approval Lower Than Donald Trump’s at Same Stage of Presidency: Poll.” The president’s current approval rating according to the Quinnipiac poll is a dismal 33 percent. Considering how slanted these polls can be, the real number might be even worse.

President Joe Biden delivered one of the worst and most widely condemned speeches of his presidency earlier this week in Georgia while lobbying for a federal takeover of elections. He asserted that Americans who do not support the Democrats' bill are "domestic enemies" who stand on the side of segregationist George Wallace. White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended the unifier-in-chief on Wednesday by asserting that Biden's foes had nothing to say about former President Donald Trump's controversial use of language. "I know there have been a lot of claims of the offensive nature of the speech yesterday, which is hilarious on many levels, given how many people sat silently over the last four years for the former president," Psaki argued.

Was there an ayahuasca retreat for normie Democratic pundits last weekend that Cockburn didn’t get an invitation to? He asks because recent days have seen the proliferation of hot takes best explained by the ingestion of psychedelics. In particular, Cockburn is confused by a series of kooky suggestions as to who might make good Democratic presidential and vice-presidential candidates next time around. In the Wall Street Journal, Douglas E. Schoen and Andrew Stein say that Joe and Kamala have become too unpopular to run again and that it might be time for a “change” candidate: a tough broad who goes by the name of Hillary Clinton. Yes, that’s right: Hillary could be back.

The one-year anniversary of the January 6 riots unfolded in a manner as dramatic as it was predictable. The Pearl Harbor and 9/11 comparisons were uttered before noon — not by some media hack on MSNBC, but by our own vice president. Democrats, led by Speaker Pelosi, stood on the steps of the Capitol adorned with face masks and holding fake candles to hold a prayer vigil. At one particularly bizarre point during the day’s ceremonies, Pelosi introduced playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda, who in turn introduced cast members from his hit musical Hamilton to sing a virtual rendition of "Dear Theodosia.” If that last sentence confuses you, don't worry: I’m also not sure exactly what I just wrote.

Joe Biden delivered. There was no somnolence, no quiescence. Instead, Biden lashed into his predecessor in unprecedented fashion to offer the most important speech of his presidency. It was a well-struck blow. Donald Trump cannot take Biden’s speech detailing his serial infamies lying down. Biden’s remarks were calculated to nettle, inflame and enrage Trump into further tipping his hand, such as it is. Biden, who was careful never to dignify him by mentioning his actual name, depicted Trump as a dissembler, a knave, a poltroon, a “remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain” of Shakespearian proportions who is scheming, as far as possible, to subvert American democracy, whenever and wherever he can.

The first workday of 2022 and already Washington, DC has been paralyzed by snow. That isn't saying much, given that half an inch is enough to shut things down around these parts. As a kid growing up in Connecticut, I remember countless snowy mornings when I'd wake up early, pad downstairs, turn on the listings, only to be devastated to learn that school was only delayed by half an hour. Cut to DC, where they'll close the schools because it's cold outside. So it goes in our thin-blooded nation's capital. And in fairness, the fact that many federal employees are still working from home has mitigated the paralysis somewhat. Still, a city needs to move in order to work, and it's there that the literal gets at something figurative.

If you think politics was insufferable in 2021, just wait until the New Year. The midterms are around the corner, so before the incessant campaign ads begin, I’d like to suggest a few New Year’s resolutions for our political class. Let’s start at the top with the president of the United States, Joe Biden. Perhaps Joe, who as usual is on vacation in Delaware, could begin 2022 off by firing his speechwriters. I have long suspected that saboteurs lurk in the White House. Who in his right mind would put the word “Galapagos” into a Biden speech? There is a double agent in the Biden-Harris administration who is trying to trip up the 79-year-old — so whoever it is needs to hear two of the last president’s favorite words: “You’re fired.

The thing about an annus horribilis is that eventually it's supposed to end. Yet this has not been the case with 2020, which incidentally, according to the Chinese calendar, was a Year of the Rat, proving that the universe can be just a bit too literal sometimes. Dashed were the hopes that 2021 would be a fresh start, that the endless problems of 2020 would dissolve into the ether like so much smoke at a mostly peaceful protest. Instead this year began like it was going to be even more 2020 than 2020 was. Six days into 2021 and we'd already suffered an event so jarring that it's now denoted by just a date.

We’ve all learnt to wash our hands more carefully over the last couple of years, but no one has soaped his dirty digits as fastidiously as Joe Biden. His announcement that “there is no federal solution” to Covid-19 puts him up there with history’s greatest handwashers. Like Pontius Pilate, Biden is leaving it to the mob: “this gets solved at the state level.” Unlike the procrastinating procurator who surrendered his responsibilities to the jeering Judeans, Biden’s got it right. But it won’t save him from the jeers — and nor should it. Biden won the presidency on a promise of the federal solution that he now says doesn’t exist. It didn’t exist in 2020, either.