How to Lose Friends and Influence the Enemy...
Love him or hate him, Biden's legacy is forever tainted by an ideology and an administration full of sky-high goals and minimal results, results that, for some reason, could not be explained to millions of people currently operating just below Hooked on Phonics standards.
Biden's administration, as well as Democrats in general, as evidenced by walking, talking failure Jaime Harrison's DNC "leadership", were either too myopic to understand the need to focus on messaging or were too arrogant to make the shift.
Biden's accomplishments were noteworthy but, these are not what resonated with average citizens. Regular people didn't care about infrastructure or the CHIPS and Science Act, let alone even understand it and for a good while, those became rallying cries for the Dems, and these fell on deaf ears.
Messaging, be a key failure of Biden's became interwoven throughout the entire admin, right down to Press Secretary and, nothing against Karine Jean-Pierre but, people who did tune in to hear updates were often met with her participation in condescending, banal and inane exchanges with condescending, banal and inane news correspondents who were only there to cause disorder and confusion, not what most citizens are interested in.
Making matters worse was, on several occasions, she was caught bending the truth or outright lying.
Democrats didn't do themselves any favors by not curb-stomping Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema's cash grabs and clout-chasing either. Instead, Democratic leadership on the federal level stayed mostly silent and inactive, something that angered and caused a rift within their own party.
Manchin and Sinema betrayed the American people. As they got rich, Americans continued to struggle and, with their “No.” votes on filibuster reform, those two ultimately destroyed much of Biden’s entire agenda, including the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the Freedom to Vote act, which would have prohibited Gerrymandering by the way, police reform, universal background checks on firearms, protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination, the right for workers to organize and equal pay.
And, seemingly, Democrats did not think that, somehow, someway, punishing other Democrats for nuking the Democratic agenda, an agenda that helped them get elected and re-elected, would look good to Democratic voters. They were afraid the media would skewer them and, in the end, the media didn’t give two shits but, the people did and that included a lot of Independent voters whose mindsets were altered or completely flipped when it came to favorability of Democratic office-holders.
It also helped paved the way for Manchin’s obliteration this past election and fast-tracked yet another far-right Republican’s entrance in the Senate but, Manchin and Sinema won’t feel any sting from their departures, they made their bags, while knowingly harming the American people.
Biden’s administration, his dogma, his policies and decisions, have mostly been met with scrutiny, scorn and mediocre results, punctuated by Biden’s notorious flip-flopping and noncommittal approach. Many of these situations he found himself in were sinkholes, septic tanks and trenches dug by Trump but it’s how Biden responded to these that cause people, such as myself, to shake their heads in frustrated disbelief.
Something that should have been seen as clear setups by the GOP, including Trump, like inflation, unemployment, gas prices, etc. were handled with such a cavalier attitude that it turned off far too many people to his agenda’s goals.
No one cars about infrastructure and microchips when there is a baby formula shortage, they cannot afford gas, COVID loans are being handed out to people who A) absolutely did not need them and B) were allowed to not have to pay them back.
Environmental advocates and champions were also betrayed by projects like the Willow Project oil drilling project and the Ambler Road mining project.
People were perplexed and eventually angered by his decision to not shoot down a Chinese spy balloon despite having ample time and land area to do it without much risk to the safety.
The involvement with Israel became a point of combustion, ultimately leading to a criticality event with Progressives and an arms embargo and verbal warnings, in the public’s perception, did nothing to tamp down outrage about innocent women and children being literally blown up by rockets, and with our support and, let’s be real, the majority of us, while supporting Israel, absolutely do not support that.
The reaction by the administration to college protestors, by ignorant, brain dead people with zero understanding of what they were even protesting was a point of combustion as well.
It was seen as catering to these protestors, even pandering to them, all while they caused millions of dollars in damages by vandalizing facilities, trespassing, resisting arrest, with and without violence, leaving a ton of litter, including human waste, behind, ruining the rite of passage graduates had worked their asses off and accumulated a mountain of debt for, actively engaging in sex acts, drug use and drug sales in public. They interrupted people’s work commutes by clogging traffic, vandalized libraries and schools and even glued themselves to the streets during the Macy’s Day Parade and this was something the general public was disgusted by.
The administration continued to push the notion that this was somehow protected peaceful protest and that their cause was noble and, the public, for the most part, wholly disagreed.
And then there is the most useless, feckless and cowardly person in the administration: Merrick Garland.
Long before federal judges went out of their way to subvert the will of the people, proving they were spineless and putting politics and publicity over their oaths, there was Merrick Garland. Garland 100% is a failure and probably the biggest and most consequential failure of the administration.
Garland had no interest in or intention of pursuing Trump or his crime syndicate until it was too late and even then, he had to cower behind Jack Smith to do so and it wasn’t until June of 2022 when any investigative action really started.
As the Washington Posted stated, Garland’s reasoning behind not aggressively pursuing the most dangerous threat to our nation since Osama bin Laden was: “Wariness about appearing partisan, institutional caution, and clashes over how much evidence was sufficient to investigate the actions of Trump and those around him,”
Trump made it crystal clear that his intention was to cause an insurrection and to stage a coup, we all saw it happen real-time. Garland saw it as well, yet was too scared of optics to answer the call to protect our nation, the Constitution and its people. We all knew what Trump intended for this country and Garland should have too. He failed.
As US News contributor Dean Obeidallah stated:
First, Garland helped normalize Trump. The longer the Justice Department stalled before investigating the former president, the more the GOP and the media embraced Trump as the Republican front-runner for 2024.
Second, by slow-walking the case, Garland undermined all of us who said that Trump had attempted to overturn a free and fair election in 2020, and was a clear and present threat to our democracy. The absence of charges sent a message to America that what Trump did could be that serious.
Because of Garland’s foot-dragging, it took Smith until August 2023 to gather evidence and build the case against Trump for seeking to overturn the 2020 election. By then, we were in the heat of the 2024 presidential race and Trump was far and away the front-runner in the polls. This gave Trump plenty of ammunition to say the entire prosecution was an effort by Biden to hurt his likely 2024 opponent. The first GOP primary debate was held before the charges were filed, and even Trump’s Republican opponents slammed Biden for “weaponizing” the DOJ against Trump. The timing made the whole endeavor backfire.
In January 2022, I warned that if Garland didn’t move swiftly to hold Trump accountable, “historians will count it among the key mistakes that ultimately led to the end of the United States as a democratic republic.
Dean was absolutely correct and, his article’s headline sums up everything up perfectly:
Forget Matt Gaetz. Merrick Garland Is America’s Worst Attorney General.
His abject failure to hold Trump accountable doomed us.
