All Things Biden: Is It Over Yet?

[Scot Dutchy]

He is too old and it says everything about the American election system.

[Tero]

Other than trump supporters for 5 years now, Americans see presidens as disposable. Second term voting goes down, nobody cares, normally.

The Oct. 6-7 survey of more than 1,000 Americans showed 48% of adults approve of the Democrat’s performance in the White House — four percentage points up from a poll about two weeks ago. In late September, a Gallup poll showed just 43% approved of Biden, one of several polls showing concerns with the highly contagious delta variant and disapproval with how the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan was handled.

Back in August, fifty-three percent of NBC News’ 1,000 respondents said they approve of Biden’s handling of the pandemic — still a majority but a far cry from the 69% support he saw in April.

Biden also saw his support from independents nosedive during the delta surge, from 81% who backed his pandemic efforts in April to 52% in late August, the NBC News poll showed. Overall, 46% of independents backed Biden’s performance in the White House, compared to 61% in April.

https://www.masslive.com/coronavirus/20 ... sides.html

[Tero]

CNN
Biden has been in Washington nearly 50 years, so he may be more sanguine than most about the boom and bust cycle of presidencies that has been rendered more extreme by social media and corrosive national polarization. Yet with his approval ratings slipping fast, the President faces a political imperative to impose his authority amid a nagging national sense that a lot is going wrong. Democrats already fear midterm elections next year will be a Republican rout. And ex-President Donald Trump is prowling, gleefully painting a horror show about Biden's struggles to fuel the sense of chaos in which his demagoguery thrives ahead of a potential 2024 campaign.

The decline in Biden's numbers is almost entirely attributable to independents souring on him. In June, 55% of those not affiliated with either party approved of how Biden was handling the presidency. Today that number sits at just 37%. As Gallup's Megan Brenen notes: "Two-thirds of Biden's slide among independents since he took office has occurred in the past three months."

The (other) purely political problem that Biden's declining numbers creates is that Democrats in swing districts and states start to get very jumpy when they see the incumbent president of their party struggling in the polls. History tells us that the first midterm election for a president's party is usually tough for his party in Congress. And that goes double when the president's approval rating is below 50% -- as Biden's is now.

What that likely leads to is individual Democratic members looking for ways to break with Biden in hopes of convincing their voters that there is some significant distance between themselves and Biden. (Side note: This attempted distancing almost never works.)

[Tero]

[Tero]

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"My voters don't want free stuff from the government. Especially not free college."

[Tero]

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[Sean Hayden]

Do we need more schools? What about giving the money to employers to train workers? We could definitely use something like that for our many juvenile detention centers passing themselves off as schools....

[Tero]

We don't have special vocational schools, they are contained in community colleges. My former employer had a plant in a small town. They undertook an effort to put in training for lab technicians for 2 years.

It's not a waste of time as they will then know why they are doing most things rather than blindly following written instructions.

[Scot Dutchy]

This is exactly where the Dutch and German education systems give a third path. We still have the Hogerschools where the attention is given to practical education. The Brits used to have the polytechnics where you attained a HNC or LNC but you had a practical side that was not achieved in uni. But now it is all uni.

[Sean Hayden]

We don't have special vocational schools, they are contained in community colleges. My former employer had a plant in a small town. They undertook an effort to put in training for lab technicians for 2 years.

It's not a waste of time as they will then know why they are doing most things rather than blindly following written instructions.

We have them here. It's a good idea in my opinion. Especially if the option to return to school later remains open.

[Tero]

A single Democrat makes us burn coal all of Biden's term. Offshore wind farms scrapped.

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[rainbow]

This is exactly where the Dutch and German education systems give a third path. We still have the Hogerschools where the attention is given to practical education. The Brits used to have the polytechnics where you attained a HNC or LNC but you had a practical side that was not achieved in uni. But now it is all uni.

Meh.

The University of Amsterdam barely makes the top 40, and none of the German universities do.
... whereas 6 UK universities rank in the top 40.

Dumbed down education.

[Scot Dutchy]

This is exactly where the Dutch and German education systems give a third path. We still have the Hogerschools where the attention is given to practical education. The Brits used to have the polytechnics where you attained a HNC or LNC but you had a practical side that was not achieved in uni. But now it is all uni.

Meh.

The University of Amsterdam barely makes the top 40, and none of the German universities do.
... whereas 6 UK universities rank in the top 40.

Dumbed down education.

A totally unsupported claim.
Who can afford them? The same is true of American ivy league universities all supported by foreign money. What is the top forty and how are they defined? Fairy data of course.

[Tero]

"I'm Joe Manchin. Count me with the 50 Republicans."
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/1 ... per-516115

[Tero]

We can't give you stuff. Like college and child care. But you can have coal.