President Joe Biden’s job approval remains entrenched in the low 40s, having registered 42% or 43% in four separate Gallup polls since September, including 43% in a new December survey. Biden began his term with relatively strong approval in the high 50s and stayed above the 50% mark through June. […] Read more »
Democrats self-destructing after Manchin’s maverick move
President Biden has no one to blame for the collapse of the Build Back Better legislation but himself. … There was no way that Manchin could ever have supported such an expensive social-spending package, at least if he wanted to win another election in Trump-friendly West Virginia in 2024. … […] Read more »
Don’t care about the Build Back Better Act? Hearing people’s personal stories might change that
Reporters waiting outside a private meeting between advisers to President Biden and Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema about the Build Back Better Act on Capitol Hill, Sept. 30, 2021. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik Angela Bradbery, University of Florida When U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said that he wouldn’t support President […] Read more »
Will Trump Ruin a Red Wave in 2022?
… Mr. Trump remains the central figure in the G.O.P. Party elites try to ignore him as he spends many days fighting Republicans rather than Democrats and plotting his revenge against the 10 Republican House members who voted for his second impeachment, the seven Republican senators who voted to convict […] Read more »
How to Tell When Your Country Is Past the Point of No Return
Political analysts, scholars and close observers of government are explicitly raising the possibility that the polarized American electoral system has come to the point at which a return to traditional democratic norms will be extremely difficult, if not impossible. … The activist anti-democratic Trump wing of the Republican Party, committed […] Read more »
Why the 2022 midterms look like the opposite of 2018
What a difference four years makes in politics. At this point in 2017, Democrats were about to pull off a stunning Senate win against a very flawed opponent in the deeply red state of Alabama. It was one of many indications that Democrats were on their way to a big […] Read more »