By frequently repeating a go-to line, Joe Biden sent me into flashbacks about the late New York mayor Ed Koch.
“Let’s finish the job,” Biden said time after time in his State of the Union speech. It’s a line cooked up for a re-election campaign, and we’re certain to hear it endlessly if the president follows his plan to seek a second term.
There’s the rub and it’s where Koch comes in.
In 1977, New York Mayor Abe Beame used a refrain similar to Biden’s as he sought his second term. Those were among the darkest days in Gotham as crime surged, municipal unions went on strikes and the city was frozen out of the credit markets because it had borrowed way beyond its means. Beame was befuddled and no match for the mayhem he helped to unleash.
Koch, running against his fellow Democrat in the primary, picked up on Beame’s “finish the job” pitch in a deadly effective commercial of his own.
“Finish the job?” Koch deadpanned into the camera. “Hasn’t he done enough?”
Thankfully, Koch went on to victory and managed to bring New York back from the brink during his three terms in City Hall.
A similar argument against Biden in 2024 should be similarly effective. America is a mess no matter how you slice it, and the befuddled man who bears much of the blame wants to finish the job?
No thanks!
In fairness, Biden’s speech was well-written and reasonably well-delivered. The only problem is that so little of it was true.
Joe’s alternative USA
As such, it provided ample evidence he’s still not on speaking terms with facts. Unpopular, faced with mounting problems at home and growing aggression around the globe from China, Russia and Iran, the president demonstrated that he doesn’t live in the same America as most people.
The one he described is far, far better than the real one. He even had the chutzpah to refer to the spy balloon incident as proof he’s standing up to China.
Beijing must have gotten a laugh out of that. Maybe his Commie paymasters will send Hunter Biden another big fat check.
The White House is so full of it these days that aides are whispering to the media that Biden’s tenure is so successful that he should be thought of as the second coming of FDR or even Lyndon Johnson.
True story. To believe it and argue it with a straight face is possible only for those who don’t get out of the office enough. Either that or they don’t believe in truth in packaging.
In any event, they are detached from reality. As a Wall Street Journal story gently put it: “Recent surveys indicate the president’s agenda isn’t resonating with many Americans. A Washington Post-ABC News poll published this week found that 62% of the public thinks Mr. Biden hasn’t accomplished much during his first two years.”
Smart people those Americans, despite Biden’s attempt to hoodwink them.
We’re all worse off
That poll also finds that 41% of respondents say they are worse off financially since Biden became president. Other polls are even worse. One shows that only 37% of his fellow Dems want him to seek a second term, down 15 points in five months.
So he wants six more years in the Oval Office, but with Republicans taking the House and already starting probes into Biden family corruption, he should count himself lucky if he manages to finish the next two.
If he does, he’ll probably owe his survival to Vice President Kamala Harris, the world’s greatest living example of impeachment insurance. Even Democrats concede she’s a dud, and an unpopular one at that, so removing Biden mid-term could be even more dangerous for national security.
Failing politicians always want to say their messaging is the problem, and messaging may be a problem. But the real problem is always the same: They have bad ideas and bad policies.
That fits Biden to a T, which is why he has to resort to fiction to sell himself.
Take his appeal to national unity, which especially rings a false note given his scurrilous smears of anyone who disagrees with him. He has cheapened the word “racist” by applying it, for example, to those who fought against Washington control of state election laws — even when members of his own party didn’t support his plan.
Distorted race grievance
He did something similar Tuesday. After saluting the grieving parents of Tyre Nichols, the young black man beaten to death by five Memphis police officers, Biden launched into the loaded subject of “The Talk” and went on about how some black parents warn their children to interact carefully with police.
That part is true in the real world — but The Talk had nothing to do with the case at hand. That’s because the five Memphis cops were, like their victim, black males.
Biden never mentioned that fact, thus simultaneously distorting a tragedy and smearing white cops for the sake of an applause line.
He did similar things elsewhere, using wild accusations of greed to tar banks, oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, credit card companies, airlines, cable and Internet providers.
All of them, he said, were cheating customers and he was going to stop it.
All we have to do is give him a second term so he can finish the job.