By Princely Onyenwe, Abuja
In this Edition, alot of ratings are credited to the US PRESIDENT Joe Biden in the way he applies technicalities to stabilize US politics before the global Community.
According to Thomas Edsall, a major Strategist who contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C on Politics, Demographics and Inequality, “there are glimmers of hope for Biden”
This rating can be correct despite the terrible reality of the war in Ukraine. In managing the rising inflation and record of gas prices, a faint ray of sunshine is said to have fallen on Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.
According to strategists for both parties, the Democrats now have a 50-50 chance of retaining control of the Senate in the midterm elections, crucial for the appointment of Federal Judges, but nowhere near enough electoral strength to give them a shot at keeping their House majority.
Buttressing my points, Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, agrees that “Biden is finally getting some good news after a long period of horrible events,” but those pluses stand against the more sustained setbacks the president has experienced.
Ayres argued in an email that Biden drove his own job approval down by hanging onto an obviously hopeless BuildBackBetter, muddying his bipartisan success on the infrastructure bill.
He ran as a center-left moderate but tried to govern as a progressive.
That had two results which are raising the hopes of liberals, when it was obvious he was never going to get Manchin or Sinema, before dashing those hopes, leaving liberals demoralized. Secondly, on top of that, he left a bunch of people who voted for him thinking they were sold a bill of goods. Along with the fiasco of the Afghanistan withdrawal, he squandered majority job approval.
Ayres noted that It’s hard to imagine Republicans not winning the House, given historical trends and Biden’s lousy job approval ratings. Control of the Senate depends on the kinds of candidates Republicans nominate.
Nominate sane governing Republicans like Rob Portman, Richard Burr and Pat Toomey, and the Senate is theirs. Nominate far-right wing-nut cases and the Senate stays in the hands of the Democrats.
Still, Biden has had some significant success and Republicans face serious obstacles.
On the plus side for Democrats, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in February, employers added 678,000 new jobs and unemployment fell to 3.8 percent.
Meanwhile, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection disclosed on March 3 that it “has a good-faith basis for concluding that the president and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
Politico reported on March 8 that President Joe Biden’s approval rating is on the rise — for now — in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Biden’s State of the Union address last week.
Multiple surveys over the past week, including a new Politico/Morning Consult poll out Tuesday, show a modest-to-moderate uptick in voters’ views of Biden’s job performance, up from his low-water mark earlier this year.
And then there is the setback that never materialized: While many predicted the post-2020 census redrawing of congressional districts would be a disaster for Democrats, in practice the new congressional lines are a wash.
“We now estimate Democrats are on track to net 4 to 5 more House seats than they otherwise would have won on current maps, up from two seats in our previous estimate,” David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report wrote on Feb. 24.
On the negative side for Republicans, Donald Trump’s admiration for and long courtship of Vladimir Putin has begun to backfire, causing conflict within Republican ranks and these intraparty tensions have been compounded by Mike Pence’s growing willingness to challenge Trump, as well as by an internal strategy dispute between Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, and Senator Rick Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Steve Rosenthal, a former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. who now heads The Organizing Group, a political consulting firm, contended in an email that the Biden administration has done a poor job promoting its successes.
In his words, “We’ve been canvassing white working-class voters in Southwestern PA and in the Lehigh Valley.
“They have no idea what the president and the Democrats in Congress have already done that directly impacts the issues they raise.
“When they hear about Biden sending $7 billion to PA for their roads, bridges and schools, they’re moved by it. This isn’t rocket science.
“It’s a volatile environment,” Rosenthal adds: “Covid, war in Ukraine, inflation — and a lot can happen between now and November.
But I definitely like the hand the Democrats are playing better this week than last. For now, let’s take it one week at a time, Rosenthal concludes.
However he added that Dean Baker, a co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal-leaning think tank, made a similar case in his emailed response.
On the economic front, President Biden and the Democrats really need to up their game in pushing their record and their agenda.
We have had record job growth since Biden took office, and somehow the economy is supposed to be a liability for the Democrats? If the shoe were on the other foot, the Republicans would be plastering the job numbers across the sky.
Report has it that this is the best labor market in more than half a century. Workers can leave jobs they don’t like for better ones; that is a really great story.
In Baker’s view, Biden and the Democrats really need to move forward on what they can get from his Build Back Better agenda.
This means sitting down with Senator Manchin and figuring out what he will go for. It is kind of mind-boggling that they didn’t do this last spring.
The point, Baker argued, “is to get something that will have as much benefit as possible — climate tops the list — and push it through quickly.”
Baker wrote that he has “no idea if the Democrats can hold one or both chambers in November, but things are looking somewhat better,” especially in the Senate, where “the Republicans are having trouble getting strong candidates in many potential swing states like New Hampshire, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia and possibly even Ohio.
This raises the possibility of the Democrats picking up seats.” Control of the House, where Democrats hold a slim 222-211 majority, will be another matter after the coming election.
March 8, 2022, Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, made the case in an email that: It would be a major HISTORICAL ANOMALY if Democrats retain control of the House in 2022.
One of the most predictable features of American politics is the loss of seats in Congress for the president’s party at the midterm.
Even presidents with majority public approval still almost always see losses for their party in Congress. With Democrats’ margin so narrow, the party just cannot spare any losses.
Biden’s favorability rating, currently averaging 41.6 percent according to Real Clear Politics, would have to rise “above 60 percent — like George W. Bush in 2002 or Bill Clinton in 1998 — before it would become reasonable to expect Democrats to avert a loss of House control,” Lee observed.
“Since the advent of public opinion polling, all presidents with approval ratings below 60 percent have seen losses of congressional seats at the midterm, in every case more than the 5 seats that Democrats can spare in 2022.”
It is therefore the most predictable feature of American politics by the loss of seats in Congress for the president’s party at the midterm.
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