Joe Biden Discussion

[PoplarSoul]

Regardless Canadians, Americans and the free world are indebted to President Biden for defeating Trump with his landslide election victory. A lasting legcy.

Yes. Forever grateful.
Listening to his speech today and answering questions afterwards, what a contrast from Trump.
Leadership, empathy, respect.
Sanity in the White House is restored.
President Biden did an awesome job getting rid of the clown.
I don't know anyone who could have done it better.

[The Green Barbarian]

Sure he is!

No, he's not.

[Pappywinkle]

President Biden News Conference on Midterm Election Results

https://www.c-span.org/video/?524153-1/ ...

Another awesome and amazing speech by President Biden

[The Green Barbarian]

Listening to his speech today and answering questions afterwards, what a contrast from Trump.

Yes, and that's the problem. It's a contrast, in that senile Joe is even worse than Trump. The clown can barely string 3 words together, and it's totally embarrassing.

Leadership, empathy, respect.

Not one of the above words applies to the idiot Senile Joe.

Sanity in the White House is restored.

It was restored, and now since 2020 has been sliding into total chaos. Thanks in part to a senile idiot named Joe who was ballot-harvested into office.

President Biden did an awesome job getting rid of the clown.

I agree on this one, if Pelosi is booted out as speaker, that will be one less clown the US will have to deal with. And thanks to Senile Joe, she is looking like she is toast.

I don't know anyone who could have done it better.

Me neither! At least senile flatulent Joe is good for something.

[Pappywinkle]

Yes. Forever grateful.
Listening to his speech today and answering questions afterwards, what a contrast from Trump.
Leadership, empathy, respect.
Sanity in the White House is restored.
President Biden did an awesome job getting rid of the clown.
I don't know anyone who could have done it better.

[liisgo]

President Biden News Conference on Midterm Election Results

https://www.c-span.org/video/?524153-1/ ...

Another awesome and amazing speech by President Biden

Agree, it was pathetic for sure, including in the first 2 min reference to crime and inflation that they are responsible for was awesome for sure. And the bit about high-speed rail service that has been in the works for the last 6 years was funny to take credit for. It would be nice to see some integrity from these politician's just once. But, it did make good use of manipulation tactics, so again awesome for that.

[Pappywinkle]

Here's why Joe Biden is smiling this morning, even after U.S. midterm setbacks

Joe Biden might someday look back fondly on the first two years of his presidency as a carefree ride in his beloved convertible Corvette.

Because the next two could be more painful.

His party's potential loss of the U.S. House of Representatives in Tuesday's midterm elections would mean both personal and professional turmoil.

It likely means a hostile legislature that blocks his legislative agenda and investigates his son, his family businesses, his administration officials, the FBI, even Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Here's the most surprising part, however: Biden may be celebrating.

That's because an unusual thing happened on the way to Democrats' widely anticipated drubbing: It didn't quite happen.

"Definitely not a Republican wave, that's for darn sure," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham lamented on NBC.

The incumbent president's party appeared to lose its razor-thin majority in the U.S. House of Representatives while remaining unexpectedly competitive.

It defied historical trends in the process.

This was not the type of midterm pounding habitually administered to incumbent presidents from Lyndon Johnson, to Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

The results are laden with silver linings for Biden. And they include lumps of coal for his opponents, including his chief nemesis, Donald Trump.

Republicans netted far fewer seats than average for an opposition party in a midterm — they may barely win the House and may not win the Senate at all.

It was closer than the generations-long norm for the midterms, where the opposition party almost always dominates with an average gain of 27 House seats since the Second World War.

But Republicans actually lost previously held governorships and legislative seats. Several election-deniers lost races to control the voting process in swing states.

The anti-abortion side lost referendums. Trump's hardest-core allies lost or under-performed, as in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race, and Georgia and New Hampshire Senate races. Mainstream Republicans did better.

Case in point, Georgia: Trump-backed Republican Herschel Walker, the football legend, got way fewer votes in a Senate race than a Republican foe of Trump, Brian Kemp, got in the state's gubernatorial race.

Democrats retained control in multiple swing states: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and unexpectedly won new power in some state legislatures.

Wisconsin's re-elected Democratic governor listed issues that contributed to his win, then concluded with the bigger picture: Voters mostly rejected conspiracy-theorists and election-deniers.

"You showed up because you saw our democracy was on the brink," Tony Evers said in his victory speech. "And you decided to do a damn thing about it."

In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer celebrated her own re-election, and a victory by the pro-choice side in a referendum that will preserve abortion access in her state: "We are thrilled."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/midterm-m ... -1.6645292

[The Green Barbarian]

Agree, it was pathetic for sure, including in the first 2 min reference to crime and inflation that they are responsible for was awesome for sure. And the bit about high-speed rail service that has been in the works for the last 6 years was funny to take credit for. It would be nice to see some integrity from these politician's just once. But, it did make good use of manipulation tactics, so again awesome for that.

[Pappywinkle]

Another awesome and amazing speech by President Biden

Agree

[The Green Barbarian]

Biden's lesson from the election is that he's doing a great job

It appears that President Joe Biden and his party are about to lose control of the House. Democrats did not suffer the political beating that everyone had expected.

Biden's resultant attitude seems to be that he successfully fooled everyone with those grim lectures about democracy being on the ballot. As a consequence, he has announced that he will change "nothing" he has been doing.

In his post-election press conference, when asked what he might change going forward, he answered, "Nothing. I’m not going to change anything in any fundamental way.”

So he will continue with the same policies and agenda that have earned him his minus-12-point net approval rating and have 68% saying the nation is on the wrong track. So it probably won't be long before the voters and the abstainers feel some regrets.

Biden's record so far does not contain much to be proud of. For starters, he created a massive and unnecessary crisis at the southern border by repealing the "Remain in Mexico" policy for migrants seeking access to the United States. His American Rescue Plan, as predicted, helped cause the worst inflation in 40 years. Inflation continued to erode paychecks in October as it rose again by an alarming 7.7%.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/other/bi ... b084768850

[Pappywinkle]

Warren says midterm victories ‘belongs to Biden’

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Sunday said the surprising Democratic victories in the midterm elections “belongs to Joe Biden” after the party retained control of the Senate and while a handful of still-to-be-called House races will determine who controls that chamber.

“It belongs to Joe Biden and the Democrats who got out there and fought for working people,” Warren told NBC’s “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd. “The things we did were important and popular.

“Remember, right after Joe Biden was sworn in, all of the economists and the pundits in his ear were saying, ‘Go slow, go small,'” she said. “Joe Biden didn’t listen to them. And in fact, he went big.”

Warren listed a number of achievements, including the Inflation Reduction Act as successes.

“The President’s leadership put us in a position, every candidate, up and down the ballot, to talk about what Democrats fight for and what we deliver on,” the senator said. “And by doing that, we were able to address the values and the economic security of people across this country. And it sure paid off. It paid off at historic levels.”

Democrats managed to capture a majority in the Senate after a projected victory in Nevada on Saturday, while a runoff in Georgia will determine if they gain one more seat.

In the House, Democrats have a potential path to the 218 seats needed to win a majority, but they are behind the GOP’s share of seats.

The victories were surprising given that Democrats were the party in power and, historically speaking, should have lost a number of seats given a Democratic president. Republicans also slammed Democrats on the economy, which was a top issue ahead of Election Day.

https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-tal ... -to-biden/

[Saviour]

*removed*

[Pappywinkle]

President Biden has masterminded the biggest Republican upset in decades, which is just so humiliating for those who desperately tried to claim Biden wasn't competent. Thankfully, President Biden has made all of his haters look like absolute fools with his amazing midterm successes!

Great work, Joe!!

Joe Biden Could Have the Most Successful Midterms for Democrats in 60 Years

In a huge win for President Joe Biden, Democrats kept control of the Senate in last week's elections, but they also could score their biggest midterms victory since John F. Kennedy was in the White House.

This year, Democratic Senate candidates held 11 seats and flipped one in Pennsylvania, retaining control of the evenly split chamber. Although Republicans were able to hold on to more seats, 20, their failure to flip Nevada and Arizona, combined with their loss in Pennsylvania, prevented them from taking over the Senate.

Georgia's Senate race is still to be decided in a runoff election next month. But even if Republican Herschel Walker unseats Senator Raphael Warnock, the Democrats will have 50 seats—along with Vice President Kamala Harris's tie-breaking vote.

If the runoff vote goes in the Democrats' favor, it will be the first time the party has made a positive net gain in the Senate during the midterms since 1962, when the Democrats gained two seats. Should Warnock be ousted by his Republican challenger, the Democrats would still have their biggest Senate gain since the 1998 midterms, when Bill Clinton was president and the party had a net gain of zero Senate seats.

In last Tuesday's elections, Democrats managed to keep more Senate seats than they did in both the 2010 and 2014 midterms, when Barack Obama was president. In 2010, Republicans had a net gain of six seats—winning four seats held by retiring Democrats and defeating two incumbents. However, Democrats were able to maintain control of the Senate with 51 seats. That was also the last time the party had outright majority control of the chamber.

This year's midterms were also better for the Democrats than the 2014 midterms, when Congress was hit with a massive red wave that saw the largest Senate gain by either party since 1980. In 2014, Republicans not only made a net gain of nine seats but won control of the Senate after defeating five Democratic incumbents and picking up four open seats.

Compared with the last midterms, when Donald Trump was in the White House, Democrats failed to make as many gains as the party of the sitting president did in those 2018 races. Four years ago, Republicans made a net gain of two seats, bringing their total to 53 and making it easier for Trump to pass more of his agenda with a GOP-controlled Senate.

If Democrats lose in Georgia next month, the party will continue to be confronted with an evenly divided Senate. Political scientist Steven Schier predicts that will mean the second half of Biden's presidency will be marked by the same partisan conflict that occurred in the first half.

American University government professor James Thurber said that because neither party will have the 60 votes needed to overcome a Senate filibuster, the next Congress will reflect the same polarization and gridlock that took place over the past two years, even if Warnock wins reelection.

As national politics have increasingly bled into state and local politics, midterms have become largely viewed as a referendum on the sitting administration rather than on individual politicians. Winning an outright majority in the Senate would be a way for the White House to show that it's still "keeping their heads above water" with the American public, Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, told Newsweek.

https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-coul ... rs-1757583

[Pappywinkle]

Joe Biden Was Right

Joe Biden took a risk in making the midterms about democracy. I cheered that decision, because I thought it was the right issue—in fact, the only issue. But even I started to lose confidence as the election approached. America’s voters, however, affirmed Biden’s gamble, and our democracy is better for it.

It’s been a rough ride for democracy in the United States and around the world. We’ll talk later in the week about the setbacks for authoritarians overseas in Brazil and Russia, but for now the results of the 2022 elections are good news for American democracy. Biden took heat from friends and foes alike for making closing arguments in favor of democracy instead of prosaic “kitchen-table” issues, but the president—a man with half a century of experience in elected politics—knew the voters better than his critics did.

Consider the magnitude of what happened last week. The Republicans went into the midterms as heavy favorites, with advantages that included the patterns of political history, some star power, money from churlish billionaires, and—in theory—Donald Trump. The Democrats had every headwind imaginable, including an unpopular president, a fractious coalition, and an economy beset with high inflation.

The misfit flotilla of Republican election deniers, conspiracy theorists, and other assorted flakes and phonies was poised, it seemed, to board the American ship of state without much resistance. Instead, much of the Republican fleet sank within sight of the shore. A few survivors (such as the reprehensible J. D. Vance) made it to the beach, and the GOP seems likely to control the House by the thinnest of margins. But the Republicans fell short when the voters noticed their extreme positions on almost everything, including January 6, elections, and abortion.

Jim Marchant of Nevada, for example, put together a slate of fellow election-denying secretary-of-state hopefuls under the banner of “America First.” This congerie of conspiracy theorists ran as a bloc that promised to make voting more difficult and hold up election results they didn’t like. The gang included Arizona’s Mark Finchem, an extremist whose bio notes that he is a “Six Sigma practitioner” but leaves aside that he was also a member of the Oath Keepers. Arizonans, who kept some of their other races close, had no trouble rejecting Finchem by more than five points. Marchant and the rest of the deniers lost, except for one candidate in Indiana (not exactly a battleground state).

Pennsylvanians elected Josh Shapiro their governor in a double-digit drubbing of the Christian nationalist Doug Mastriano, and they seem close to flipping the state’s House to the Democrats. In Michigan, Tudor Dixon—another out-of-nowhere candidate endorsed by Trump—lost and took the weird secretary-of-state candidate Kristina Karamo down with her, while Michigan voters placed their state under unified Democratic rule. And in Wisconsin, the Democrat Tony Evers beat Tim Michels—a man who said that if he won, the GOP would never lose another election in Wisconsin—by three points.

The challenge to American democracy is not over, but the 2022 results should give the prodemocracy coalition hope, for many reasons.

...

We should not lull ourselves into believing that the fight for democracy is over. The local governments, state houses, and the new Congress will still have plenty of odious characters in them. There’s still a lot of work to be done.

Nonetheless, the gloom and gathering darkness I felt last week has dissipated to a considerable degree. The president and the prodemocracy forces issued a call to the public to defend the American system, and the public responded in force. I regularly criticize the public for a lack of civic virtue; I even wrote a book about it. But I must give credit where it is due: The voters, this time, proved me wrong—and showed that Joe Biden was right.

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters ... ht/672118/

[The Green Barbarian]

Afghanistan mess: Biden’s national security agencies cite growing problems 15 months after withdrawal
The group responsible for the death of 13 American service members is now operating outside Afghanistan

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/afghan ... withdrawal