Doubt is a funny thing. Once it creeps inside your mind it spreads like water overflowing a bathtub rim, going wherever there’s the least resistance with nothing to stem the current.
Such is the case in today’s political environment. “If Joe was wrong about Afghanistan, what else was he wrong about?” These days, a lot of Biden supporters must be thinking this thought about their commander in chief, even if they remain convinced that ol’ senile Joe was the best choice in last year’s election against the hated (to them) Donald Trump. Doubt certainly must’ve crossed their minds a number of times even before the Afghanistan travesty, but now that everyone knows our country’s longest war has resulted in utter ruin, it’s certain people will take a closer assessment of everything the aged president says from now on.
If Biden’s most recent approval ratings are any indication, Americans have already begun the process of reexamining the wisdom of granting doddering dunce Joe Biden so much authority.
“President Joe Biden's approval rating has taken another hit and now sits at the lowest of his presidency.
“According to the latest Rasmussen Reports survey, 45% of likely voters approve of the job Biden is doing. Some 54% disapprove of Biden, a rise that is starting to parallel the often poor polling of former President Donald Trump.
“In a bad sign, 45% of likely voters said that they ‘strongly disapprove’ of Biden, equal to his total approval, which includes 27% who strongly approve of Biden.”
Ouch! Wow, observers are now comparing Biden’s poll numbers to Donald Trump’s -- something that can’t be taken happily in Democrat-land. Remember how liberals propped up Biden as the anti-Trump, the bosom buddy-type who could just as easily stand-in for your next door neighbor as approachable, friendly and a problem solver?
Instead, as demonstrated by the “strongly approve” vs. “strongly disapprove” figure cited above, ol’ senile Joe is seen as just as divisive as Trump. On top of this, Bedard additionally reported, “[W]hen asked about the direction of the nation under Biden, 63% said the nation is heading in the wrong direction, 33% said it is heading in the right direction.”
As I’ve caught myself saying a lot lately, these are numbers that Biden won’t ever recover from. Practically every president -- at least the ones not named Trump -- enjoys a honeymoon period with public opinion. The COVID suppressed American electorate was somewhat willing to give Biden a chance to “heal the nation” and “bring people together” again in 2020, but now that folks have tired of seeing senile Joe’s muttering mug on the evening news, the luster has worn off. And it ain’t comin’ back either.
In addition to everything else he’s botched, the word “Afghanistan” will act as a veritable dead weight around poor Joe’s neck, just as Vietnam did to a succession of presidents in the 60’s and 70’s.
Democrats and liberals’ attempts to pin the Afghanistan debacle on Trump will bear little political fruit, no matter how hard they push it. While Trump did foolishly suggest to try and negotiate a peace deal with the backwards Islam-driven radicals a couple years ago, there was no face-to-face meeting and the Republican retracted the notion later on when discussing a possible pullout from the war-torn nation. And, more importantly, it wasn’t Trump behind the microphone giving a speech trying to explain how things went sour so quickly (revisit the water flowing over the tub vision above).
That dishonor was squarely in Biden’s hemisphere, and to his (somewhat) credit, the president didn’t back down from his campaign pledge to bring the boys and girls back home. But the Democrat’s lame hope to pin the entire mission on Trump won’t get him anywhere with an electorate that was stunned to the core by images of panicked people sprinting towards and then climbing on top of planes headed out of the country.
We should not forget that it was Biden himself who touted to the nth degree his foreign policy bona fides and his presence at innumerable foreign crises throughout his nearly half century in U.S. politics. Heck, if anyone should recall how bad it was in Saigon during the last days of the Vietnam war (in late April, 1975), it would be Joe. Biden was already into his third year as a U.S. senator at that time, so he’s basically one of the few remaining first-hand witnesses to how injurious it looks to Americans and the world when conditions on the ground unravel so dramatically.
Hint: People blame leaders when something catastrophic happens, with good reason.
Like every presidential candidate, in 2016, Trump boasted of his many years of traveling abroad and his business deals with foreign entities. All well and good, but the New York-based real estate mogul wasn’t making policy. Biden, as a longtime member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (serving both as Chair and Ranking Member a number of times), often mentioned how the knowledge he gained from his experience would prove invaluable if and when he became president.
It doesn’t matter much now, but last year in the nationally televised Democrat candidate debates during the primary season, senile Joe perked up like a freshly watered flower in the midst of a heat wave whenever foreign policy was raised, because, unlike something like immigration or healthcare, he could draw from his fading memory and still sound intelligent and capable. People trusted the Delaware senator because he’d been there and learned stuff.
Who would understand the subject better -- Bernie Sanders? Pete Buttigieg? Kamala “I haven’t been to Europe” Harris? Beto O’Rourke? Amy Klobuchar? Andrew Yang? Michael Bloomberg? Corey Booker? You get the idea.
As Obama’s veep, Biden was supposedly “in the room” for all of the Big O’s major operations, including the raid that bagged Osama bin Laden. Biden reportedly counseled against the historic takedown of the Al Qaeda leader, deeming it too risky to attempt. Epic fail on that one, Joe! If nothing else stems from yet another Biden blunder in Afghanistan, it should serve to question his judgment.
What was it that former Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates said about Biden? Oh yeah, that he’s "been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” For you math challenged folks, that’s forty years. It’s been six years since Gates’ memoir was published, so you can tack on an additional half-decade plus to the tally!
As president, the buck stops at your desk. If Biden was dissatisfied with the Afghanistan situation he inherited from Trump, his former boss and George W. Bush before them, why didn’t he change course? The keeper of such an immense store of foreign policy experience and knowledge should’ve devised the elusive but magic solution and ran with it.
The fact there was no policy to protect Afghani allies reinforces doubt in Biden’s competence. For a leader already rocked with questions on his mental faculties, that’s not a good thing. Florida Sen. Rick Scott suggested that maybe it’s time to reconsider removing Joe from office using the 25th Amendment. Similar calls may soon be coming from Democrats as well.
Biden’s formerly favorable approval ratings largely stemmed from the perception that he’d carried out a plan to distribute the COVID vaccine and cases and deaths were way down under his watch, accordingly. With the emergence of the “delta” variant and cases springing up in people who’ve previously been vaccinated, Americans no longer trust what he says (this includes Anthony Fauci, too).
Senile Joe’s goodwill “honeymoon” period is over. Doubt was released like a genie from a bottle, and there’s no putting it back in. Biden isn’t capable of such miracles.
As long as Joe Biden and the Democrats continue to deflect blame for everything that goes wrong as well as point the finger at Trump-backing, liberty-loving Americans as the real security threats to our nation, his approval ratings will sink well below the 50 percent surface. There’s no way but down to go for Joe -- and this time, there’s no doubt about it.
U.S. military
Joe Biden
Barack Obama
Taliban
Afghanistan
Al Qaeda
Islamic Law
Political Correctness
cultural advisors
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken
CIA Director William J. Burns