greggerypeccary wrote on Jul 1^st, 2024 at 6:32pm:


Trump was never a successful businessman, He was a reality show host acting as a businessman.

https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2024/6/29/in-post-debate-poll-voters-think-...

Interestingly voters say they are more concerned with Biden's mental and physical health than Trumps court cases.
They also strongly prefer Kamala to any other as a replacement.

https://www.economist.com/interactive/us-2024-election/trump-biden-polls

Several features of the situation are surreal. One is that Donald Trump is quietly avoiding attention. Perhaps for the only time in Trump’s adult life, he’s politely standing back and letting someone else hog the limelight. The structure of the campaign is now the exact opposite of what Biden and the Democrats wanted.

Biden has been a poor President, producing inflation, disastrous failure on the southern border and a mixed foreign policy record at best. This is the view of American voters. By a large margin they have an unfavourable opinion of Biden, and even more of them think their country is on “the wrong track”.

This was the situation well before Biden’s disastrous TV debate performance. Quite rationally, therefore, Democrats planned to make the election all about Trump. A relatively small percentage of Americans would vote FOR Biden, but Democrats hoped huge numbers would vote AGAINST Trump.

Most presidential elections involving an incumbent are a referendum on the president’s performance. Democrats don’t want a judgment about Biden, but rather another judgment about Trump.

They were failing in this project anyway, but now Biden’s debate performance has blown their strategy to bits. Nobody is talking about anything except the oddity of having a President who is plainly not up to the job at the level of basic mental competence.
Greg Sheridan

greggerypeccary wrote on Jul 9^th, 2024 at 11:07am:

Bollocks.


Biden has been a poor President, producing inflation, disastrous failure on the southern border and a mixed foreign policy record at best. This is the view of American voters. By a large margin they have an unfavourable opinion of Biden, and even more of them think their country is on “the wrong track”.

This was the situation well before Biden’s disastrous TV debate performance. Quite rationally, therefore, Democrats planned to make the election all about Trump. A relatively small percentage of Americans would vote FOR Biden, but Democrats hoped huge numbers would vote AGAINST Trump.

Most presidential elections involving an incumbent are a referendum on the president’s performance. Democrats don’t want a judgment about Biden, but rather another judgment about Trump.

They were failing in this project anyway, but now Biden’s debate performance has blown their strategy to bits. Nobody is talking about anything except the oddity of having a President who is plainly not up to the job at the level of basic mental competence.
Greg Sheridan

Frank wrote on Jul 9^th, 2024 at 11:39am:


Nah.

He's been pretty good.

Not the best ever, but certainly up in the top 15 or so.

Biden may have finally found the labor market’s sweet spot. The economy added 14.8 million jobs over the first three years of his term, more than any president in US history over the same period. What’s more, unemployment has held below 4% for the longest stretch since the 1960s.

American households are wealthier and in better financial shape than ever before by almost any measure. Even with a bear market in stocks in 2022 and elevated inflation, Federal Reserve data show household net worth rose to a record $156.2 trillion at the end of the fourth quarter of 2023, from $131.4 trillion at the end of 2020. The stock market, where more than half of all households are invested, has surged. And as Bloomberg Opinion contributor Claudia Sahm has pointed out, household debt burdens are near historic lows.

For a supposedly unpopular president, the US stock market sure seems to like Biden.
Since his inauguration, the S&P 500 Index has returned about 45%, more than double the total returns of the rest of the world’s developed-market equities.

The US was in the midst of its worst spasm of violence in decades when Biden took office, with the homicide rate rising 29% in 2020. It rose again slightly in 2021, but started to fall that autumn. There was a slight year-over-year decline in 2022, then an 11.8% drop last year — the sharpest on record ­— according to estimates by AH Datalytics.

greggerypeccary wrote on Jul 9^th, 2024 at 11:55am:


Official statistics from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics show that manufacturing employment has risen by 789,000 since Biden took office in January 2021.

Quote:


Kiev maidan 2014 is a classic example of that.