President Biden’s job approval rating is on the downslope. As of Friday morning he was at 45.8 percent approval and 48.5 percent disapproval — from a high of 54 percent approval, 41 percent disapproval at the end of his first 100 days.

There is a laundry list of reasons for this. Not only is the United States still in the grip of a pandemic, but also the Delta variant of the coronavirus has led to record infections and deaths in Florida, Texas and other states with relatively low vaccination rates (and where officials have taken a stand against mitigation efforts). At the same time that Delta took hold, Biden also faced a huge backlash from the press and his partisan opponents over the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, which began in chaotic fashion with the collapse of the Afghan National Army, the subsequent advance of the Taliban and of course the suicide bombing in Kabul that killed 13 U.S. service members.

The administration quickly adjusted to the chaos, though, and by the time the last American soldiers left on Monday, the U.S. military and its allies had evacuated around 124,000 people, including thousands of U.S. citizens and tens of thousands of Afghan nationals. And as seen in the latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy is growing at a slower rate than it did at the start of the summer.

Taken together, you have a pretty good explanation for why Biden is doing much worse with the public than he was at the beginning of the year.

With that said, there’s another dynamic at work, one that should guide our expectations for how popular Biden is and how popular he could become. Put simply, we’re still quite polarized.

One of the most consistent findings from the past 20 years of public opinion research is that each new president is more divisive than the last. George W. Bush was more divisive than Bill Clinton; Barack Obama was more divisive than Bush; Donald Trump was more divisive than Obama; and Biden may well end up more divisive than Trump, at least in terms of approval rating by partisan affiliation. Some of this reflects circumstances, some of it reflects the individuals, but most of it is a function of partisan and ideological polarization. Modern presidents have a high floor for public opinion but a low ceiling.

This is a major change from the 1970s and 1980s, when the public was less polarized and numbers could swing from the low 30s (even the 20s) to the high 60s and beyond. At the peak of his popularity, in the wake of the Persian Gulf War of 1991, George H.W. Bush had a job approval rating of 89 percent, including 82 percent among Democrats and 88 percent among independents. Those numbers are just not possible in today’s environment.

Biden’s slide is noteworthy, but it is also exactly what we should expect given the structural conditions of American politics in the 21st century. But this cuts against the unstated assumption that a president should have an approval rating above 50 percent. It’s an assumption that, as Sam Goldman, a professor of political science at George Washington University, observed, is “another example of how we’ve adopted the deeply exceptional midcentury interlude as our baseline — partly because it remains our vision of normality, and partly because that’s when reliable data start.”

The “deeply exceptional midcentury interlude” — roughly speaking the years between the end of World War II and the election of Richard Nixon in 1968 — is the source of a lot of our normative understandings of American politics, despite the fact that the conditions of that period are impossible to replicate. When politicians and political observers pine for an era of bipartisanship, they are pining for the 1950s and 1960s (and to an extent the 1970s).

If we were to look farther back in time, to say, the late 19th century, we might find an era that, for all of its indelible foreignness, is closer to ours in terms of the shape and structure of its politics, from its sharp partisan polarization and closely contested national elections to its democratic backsliding and deep anxieties over immigration and demographic change.

We don’t have polling data for President Grover Cleveland. But we do know that he won his victory in the 1884 election by 37 votes in the Electoral College and a half-a-percent in the national popular vote. His successor, Benjamin Harrison, lost the popular vote by a little less than 1 percent and won the Electoral College by 65 votes. Those narrow results suggest, I think, a similarly narrow spread for presidential approval — high floors, low ceilings.

American politics eventually broke out of its late-19th-century equilibrium of high polarization and tightly contested elections. In the 1896 presidential election, William McKinley became the first candidate in decades to win more than 50 percent of the popular vote, beating his Democratic opponent, William Jennings Bryan, by 4.3 percent. He won re-election in 1900 and after his assassination the following year, his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, would win in 1904 by the most lopsided margin since Abraham Lincoln’s 1864 re-election victory.

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/04/opinion/biden-job-approval-rating.html

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW, MR  BIDEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Speaking during the fifth day of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly on Saturday, Lavrov ripped into the current US foreign policy, accusing Washington of trying to split the international community into Cold War-style blocks.

In August, US President Joe Biden floated the idea to convene a “Leader’s Summit for Democracy” – and this, according to Lavrov, is a glaring example of this divisive policy.

The participants, of course, will be determined by Washington, that claims the right to determine a country’s degree of compliance with democratic standards. In its essence, this initiative – quite in the spirit of the Cold War and launches a new ideological crusade against all dissent,” Lavrov stated.

Despite the US administration's claims that Washington does not want to split the world into ideology-based blocks, such events only serve to prove it is indeed its goal, Lavrov suggested.

In reality, the ‘Summit for Democracy’ will become a step towards splitting the world into ‘us’ and ‘them’

The proposed summit is expected to take place on December 9 and 10, with the US-selected leaders of the ‘democracies’ convening for the virtual conference. The stated goals of the event have been extremely vague, with the White House describing it as “as an opportunity for world leaders to listen to one another and to their citizens, share successes, drive international collaboration, and speak honestly about the challenges facing democracy.”

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/535841-lavrov-biden-democracy-summit/

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assangez

The White House’s decision not to invite Hungary to the vaunted ‘democracy summit’ has been met with a response from Budapest that could see the EU unable to attend, striking a simultaneous blow to Washington and Brussels.

There’s always a sense of satisfaction when you see a bully get his comeuppance. You know, when the underdog knocks out the champion boxer, or George McFly bopping Biff at the end of ‘Back to the Future’ and getting the girl. Well, I feel a similar sense of satisfaction today, as Hungary takes revenge on both the Biden administration and the European Union.

Viktor Orban’s government is as disliked in Washington DC as it is Brussels, and that takes some doing. For the Biden administration, Orban was just too illiberal and too close to President Trump, which makes him persona non grata in the current West Wing.  

Whereas the EU pursues its vendetta against Hungary through financial threats and the courts, the Biden administration is attempting to do it through humiliation. The latest example of this came last week, when it was announced that Hungary would be the only EU member state that had not been invited to Biden’s feted virtual ‘Democracy Summit,’ which is due to take place next week. 

Somehow, Hungary was not deemed democratic enough to make it on a 110-strong list that includes such fine examples of democracy as Pakistan, Iraq, and the Republic of Congo. If this sounds farcical, that’s because it is. You see, if you scratch the surface you’ll find that this ‘summit’ is more about Biden’s agenda and public relations than it is about democracy.

Anyhow, another name on Biden’s list of not-so-illustrious invitees is the European Union. Now when you consider that the only elected institution in the EU is the European Parliament, which cannot initiate any legislation, you really have to question its democratic credentials. But for this summit, that doesn’t seem to matter.    

You see, regardless of this blatant contradiction, Biden is fond of the EU. So fond, in fact, that he routinely backs the EU over the so-called ‘special relationship’ with Britain. I presume therefore that the EU’s High Representative, Josep Borrell, will have a seat on the virtual top table for the Democracy Summit … or will he?

What some White House or State Department pen-pusher failed to realise was that foreign policy initiatives in the EU require ‘unanimity,’ which means that every member state has to agree. It only takes one to object and the whole house of cards falls to the ground. There’s no wriggle room, or there shouldn’t be, as it’s written into the treaties.  

This problem has irritated the Germans for years, and the new government, which is hell-bent on constructing a “United States of Europe”, has vowed to push for a treaty change and be rid of it. Nevertheless, as things stand, these are the rules, and believe me, Brussels loves rules, so Eurocrats will have to suck it up.

It therefore gave me great pleasure to read that the Hungarians have objected to the EU representing the member states at the virtual Democracy Summit. It seems that if Biden wants to play petty politics, then two can play at that game.

At a joint meeting of EU ambassadors on Wednesday, the Hungarians made their objections known. Indeed, a spokesman for the Hungarian PM’s office has since said, “if Hungary is not invited to participate, there can be no common EU position, as a common position may only be established with the agreement of all the members.”   

He also then said, with more than a hint of sarcasm, “if we can help and America thinks it needs our advice, we are available. In Hungary, we are not at a point where nearly a third of the electorate thinks that the democratic election has been rigged.” The irony is just beautiful.

So, what happens now? Well, either the Biden administration performs one almighty humiliating U-turn and gets an invite in the post to Budapest pronto, or the EU will not be at the summit formally representing the member states … that is unless it is prepared to break its own treaties.

In the event of the former, the 26 member states – minus Hungary – will have their own representatives attend, but not under the EU umbrella. If the latter happens and the EU simply ignores Hungary’s objections, then it opens a nasty can of legal worms, and one that I am sure Hungary will pursue with gusto.  

Overall, this whole scenario is embarrassing for the White House, and it was all so avoidable. Not inviting Hungary in the first place was both churlish and childish in equal measure, and now the Biden administration look like fools because someone didn’t bother to find out how the EU works. From where I’m sitting, it looks like checkmate Hungary.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/542162-democracy-summit-hungary-us-biden/

Note: 

President Joe Biden has invited around 110 countries to a virtual summit on democracy in December, including most of Western allies but not Hungary and Turkey, according to a list posted on the State Department website on Tuesday (23 November).

China, the United States’ principal rival, is not invited, while Taiwan is — a move that risks angering Beijing. Turkey, which like the US is a member of NATO, is also missing from the list of participants.

Among the countries of the Middle East, only Israel and Iraq will take place in the online conference, scheduled for 9-10 December.

Iraq, India and Pakistan are invited, while traditional Arab allies of the US — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, are not.

At this level, Saudi Arabia isn't a democracy, NOR IS IT A COUNTRY. It is a fiefdom owned and rules by former bedouins, now the "royal" family...

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FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW. (IF ASSANGE IS STILL IN PRISON BY THE BEGINNNING OF THE "SUMMIT", THEN THIS WHOLE THING IS A FARCE)

WASHINGTON — President Biden’s Summit for Democracy was intended to rally the world’s democracies against the authoritarian models of Russia and China in what the president called on Thursday “the defining challenge of our time.”

Speaking by video from a White House auditorium, Mr. Biden welcomed officials from more than 100 countries that have multiparty elections, as well as civil society activists, business leaders and journalists, to strategize ways to strengthen and defend democracies.

“In the face of sustained and alarming challenges to democracy, universal human rights, and, all around the world, democracy needs champions,” the president said.

But in a sign of the difficult times, even organizing the summit, which goes through Friday, raised murky questions about the definition of democracy, and who should and should not be invited. It was no surprise that China and Russia were not included, but the administration was second-guessed for its decision to invite other countries with checkered human rights records, like the Philippines and Nigeria, while excluding NATO allies Turkey and Hungary, both led by rulers with authoritarian streaks.

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/us/politics/biden-democracy-summit.html

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FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW. (IF ASSANGE IS STILL IN PRISON BY THE BEGINNNING OF THE "SUMMIT", THEN THIS WHOLE THING IS A FARCE)