A Lump of Coal

This Christmas Eve, many economists and pundits are predicting a continuously improving economy for 2024 and a job market that remains strong,  as more of President Biden's investments in infrastructure start to be implemented.  So certainly, despite low poll numbers, President Biden must have greatly improved chances for re-election going into the new year, right?

Actually, none whatsoever.  Inflation remains stubbornly high, despite early signs that it's cooled off, and people have been struggling with the high cost of living, and short of robbing a giant snow globe full of money in a shipping mall court,  there's no way to beat it.  Which means there is a way for Trump to beat Biden next year.  This is all reflected in polls taken over the past several months, and a leading pollster made this plain in talking with Jim Acosta of CNN.

"What the President currently is doing, is still talking about progress," he said to Acosta. "And you can’t talk about progress when three-quarters of the country think we’re on the wrong track. So you have to stop on the notion that we’re making progress. You have to get where people are, and where they are is on the rising prices.  They need to stop with their own voters and say, 'We get it. If inflation is the biggest problem, we get it. We know. We know what you’ve been through. We’re in touch with that. Here’s [how] we’re dealing with it.'"

The pollster's name?  Stanley Greenberg.  If that name sounds familiar to you, that's because is married to U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut.  Which happens to work out fine, because Greenberg is also a Democrat.

So this is a Democratic pollster saying that Biden has the whole damn thing all wrong.  A Democratic pollster.  And he didn't say all of this on Fox.  He said it on CNN. 

This all contrasts sharply with the Biden campaign's attitude, as reported by Gabriel Debenedetti in New York magazine.  Debenedetti's article essentially explain that, while Democrats and even some Biden insiders are more or less running around screaming that the sky is falling, Biden himself is like, "Calm down, people - I got this."

What he got is a lump of Christmas coal, boys and girls. The Biden campaign is carrying on as if everything's hunky dory, ignoring discontent in the nation at large, dismissing dissent in the Democratic ranks,  and convinced that Donald Trump will immolate himself politically.  If that sounds like the modus operandi of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign in 2016 to you, congratulations - now you know what I'm driving at.  And you also understand why I'm hoping to use my passport to get out of the country before Trump takes over in January 2025 - and before Trump invalidates all U.S. passports to prevent a human capital outflow and to avoid the indignity of the world seeing Americans leave en masse a country that's supposed to have had its greatness restored.  (More on that later.)

And don't tell me how the Biden re-election effort is going to bounce back or get its mojo working, because I've come to a decision: I don't want to hear it!  😬