For those of us who view Donald Trump as a cross between a tyrant and a clown, the idea that Joe Biden isn’t mopping the floor with him still seems crazy. We’re left scratching our heads and wondering why Biden isn’t a) winning big, or b) getting credit for his accomplishments.
What did he do that made him almost as unpopular as Trump?
The answers to these questions tend to fall into two categories, including problems that were out of Biden’s control and disasters he invited into his presidency. I want to focus on this last group because I believe Biden would be on his way to re-election if he had simply not been a victim of avoidable mistakes.
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These do not include things that Biden has no control over, such as his advanced age. It is entirely possible that Biden will lose because he is perceived as too old to be an effective leader. If that happens, there is little Biden could have done about it (other than step aside, of course).
Other problems arose during his tenure, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s attack on Israel. The war in Gaza may cost him the election, as progressives and younger, left-leaning voters express anger at his staunch support for Israel. Perhaps he could have handled these international crises differently and been perceived as more successful. Still, it’s hard to argue (although some people do) that Biden is the cause of these conflicts.
This brings us to the focus of this column: the three big disasters that could have been avoided. They would be inflation, the border crisis and the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Biden’s fingerprints are everywhere. They are yours.
Let’s start with Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief/economic stimulus bill that made inflation worse. Even more frustrating was Team Biden’s insistence that inflation was not a big problem and that it was “temporary” or “transitory.”
Having learned too much from the lessons of the Obama era, Biden and his team were convinced that the biggest danger was spending too little. Biden’s mistake here appears to be a penchant for fighting the last war, coupled with a sense that progressives were promoting inflation as an antiquated problem.
I warned about this precisely in May 2021: “…Joe Biden, who hoped his big spending would make him the modern FDR or LBJ, could become Jimmy Carter or Gerald Ford. Voters could find themselves wistfully remembering the halcyon days before COVID-19 ruined “the greatest economy we’ve ever had in our history.” “If you are looking for a nightmare scenario in which Donald Trump is miraculously (re)elected in 2024, this could be it.”
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Inflation is currently the most important issue for voters, according to a recent Gallup poll.
Biden’s next problem was also caused by a decision he made early on (on his first day, in fact): the border crisis. (In that same Gallup poll, immigration ranked first among voters’ concerns when respondents were asked the question without being prompted.)
Even before he was sworn in, Biden rhetorically lured desperate immigrants to try to cross our border illegally. And on his first day as president, in what may prove to be a fateful mistake, he reversed some of Trump’s border policies. As He New York Times In a story about migrant children crossing the border, it was noted: “President Biden’s more welcoming approach to immigration encouraged their parents to send for them.”
As with inflation, Biden also spent considerable time denying the border problem, refusing to even refer to it as a “crisis.”
The last straw was Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, where, regardless of the details of his and his predecessor’s policies, he also failed in optics and expectations. This was a disaster of Biden’s own choosing.
Yes, Biden inherited a withdrawal date from Donald Trump, which he later delayed. He should have learned from President Barack Obama’s mistake in Iraq and maintained a residual force. Instead, the United States left Afghanistan in chaos and with the impression that the Taliban expelled the largest military force the world has ever known from the country.
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He first insisted that a Taliban takeover was anything but inevitable, a claim that almost immediately proved wrong. Biden and his team later launched a message counterattack, insisting that chaos was inevitable. Instead of accepting the blame or firing his incompetent team, he chose to blame “Afghanistan’s political leaders (who) gave up and fled the country.”
This was the turning point for Biden, and his approval ratings plummeted as a result. He has never recovered from that tragic mistake, no matter how many political achievements he has accumulated or how (inflation aside) most economic markers are trending positively.
It’s worth noting that these three (avoidable) problems occurred early in Biden’s presidency, and he either chose them or exacerbated them.
If Trump ends up winning this November, Biden will have planted the seeds of that victory with these three big, avoidable, stupid mistakes.
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