Why are you so irritable, Mr. President?

On January 6, President Joe Biden delivered a strangely bitter speech.

“He values ​​power more than principles,” the president taunted of the man, who he would not name. “He cannot accept that he has lost even though that is what 93 US senators, his own attorney general, his vice president, governors and state officials in every battleground state. They all said: He lost.

Why are you so irritable, Mr. President?

Perhaps that’s because his victory in November 2020 by a record 81 million votes turned into a dismal 41% approval rating, with 53% of respondents in a nationwide survey saying they disapprove of the president’s performance.

The recently released Umass Amherst poll also found that 55% of Americans say Biden has fallen short of their expectations, and nearly two-thirds of Americans say the country is “going in the wrong direction.” .

In the same poll last April, Biden had an approval rating of 51% and a disapproval rating of 44%, with only 36% saying he had failed to meet their expectations.

What happened from April 2021 to January 2022 to convince tens of millions of Americans that Biden was doing a terrible job as president despite every Democratic communications consultant turning like Kenmore’s pinwheel to convince voters he’s doing a great job?

There are space limitations in this newspaper, but here are some highlights.

In late August, President Biden brutally withdrew US forces from Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of 13 US service members in an avoidable bombing raid. immediate country of the Taliban, who find the gift. giving the Taliban billions of dollars worth of advanced American military equipment left behind, and the unforgivable abandonment of Americans and others who were supposed to fend for themselves in Afghanistan after the US withdrawal.

The COVID pandemic, which candidate Biden pledged to destroy, is still here. Biden has now adopted the previous administration’s policy stance, acknowledging that states must lead the response. This comes after Biden defied court rulings and pressured private employers to enforce vaccine regulations through federal workplace safety regulations. , an act of exaggeration that the US Supreme Court has now charged.

Biden ignored warnings that excessive federal spending would drain the inflation genius, and in December, inflation spiked to 7%, the highest level since June 1982. is really a regressive tax, putting people under unprecedented stress. -higher prices for goods and services essential to everyday life. Only the government benefits from inflation, as higher prices generate revenue from higher sales taxes, and the wage price spiral pushes insufficient income into the higher tax bracket.

Inflation is only part of the reason why gasoline prices are so high. Before the Oval Office chair warmed, Biden shut down construction on the Keystone XL pipeline, which would deliver more than 800,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta, Canada, to Nebraska, and he suspended contracts. new oil and gas drilling field on federal lands and waters. It wasn’t long before the president begged OPEC to pump more oil, a humiliating plea that OPEC ignored. By October, Americans are paying the highest gas prices in seven years.

Biden’s response to all of this has been to push — so far unsuccessfully — for a monstrously expensive “Rebuilding Better Act” that would create new benefits programs and mandates. More “green energy” services of the kind have given California the highest electricity prices in the nation, as well as the highest percentage of electricity imports, due to the problem of the constant setting of the sun. Senator Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, cited California’s failed policies when he refused to vote for the Better Rebuilding Act, effectively killing it.

The president’s plunging approval rating may not yet reflect the next crisis with Russia, as Russian troops are getting ready on Ukraine’s border and a “senior Russian diplomat” has been cited. in the New York Times said negotiations with the West were approaching “death to an end.” The US lost important negotiating leverage when Biden reversed the previous administration’s decision to block the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, and gained nothing by allowing the project to empower Russia to continue. customary. The pipeline passes through Poland and Ukraine, cutting them off from business and revenue, and giving Russia control of liquefied natural gas supplies to Europe.

Talk about borders — don’t even ask. Space not allowed.

Likely the president’s sunk approval ratings are an indication that many Americans are offended by his remarks comparing tens of millions of law-abiding Americans to terrorists, political leaders, and political leaders. Civil War secessionists, mid-century separatist politicians, and the Klansmen, simply because they showed up at school board meetings to complain about what their children were being taught, or because they supported support voter ID legislation to protect the integrity of the election, or because they support their predecessor.

Biden compared the events of January 6, 2021 to the American Civil War in his speech on Capitol Hill and again in a speech in Georgia, as he pushed for ailing election laws. on Capitol Hill for lack of votes in the Senate. The president accused 19 states of enacting laws that “attack the right to vote” and called the work of these elected state legislators “Jim Crow 2.0.” He warned the senators that if they did not support the federal election law he supported, they would side with Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy.

And that ends the first year of Biden’s presidency. Sadly, America’s civil wars lasted for four years.

Write to Susan at Susan@SusanShelley.com. You can follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley

https://www.ocregister.com/2022/01/16/why-so-grouchy-mr-president/ Why are you so irritable, Mr. President?