PARTY OF YOUTH UPDATE: Biden Turns 81 — Say, How’s That ‘Bridge’ Coming?
On the menu today: Don’t expect the White House to make a big deal of it and remind everyone about one of Joe Biden’s biggest campaign liabilities, but today is the president’s 81st birthday. NBC News greeted the president with a new poll showing him trailing Trump nationally and his approval rating hitting the lowest number ever recorded in its survey. Even young voters, traditionally a demographic that Democrats win handily, appear surprisingly split about their options in a Biden–Trump rematch. Finally, former Obama chief strategist David Axelrod warns that Biden’s odds in a matchup with Trump are less than 50–50, and that, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016, Biden is relying on Trump’s odiousness to put him over the top — an unsafe bet. And if Axelrod is saying that publicly, how likely is it that former president Obama concurs privately?
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Back in 2019, Biden himself reportedly signaled to aides that he would serve only a single term. There was a lot of talk back then about Biden being a bridge to a new generation of Democratic leaders, and more than a little of that talk came from Biden himself. “Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden said at a March 9, 2020, campaign rally with Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Gretchen Whitmer. “There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.” (Looking back at historical events from early March 2020 feels like watching events from the first ten days of September 2001. The world’s about to suddenly change, and nobody on screen knows it.)
But Biden clearly hasn’t been a “bridge” to anyone or anything. If you wanted Biden to be a transitional president, then the work of preparing the American public for President Kamala Harris would’ve had to start much earlier.
Well, Biden has certainly tossed many projects towards Harris to, depending upon how charitable you are, either demonstrate that she’s ready to take over, or (more likely) as revenge for her calling him a racist during the 2020 primaries:
● Psaki insists Harris still border czar after Guatemalan leader claims no contact.
● “Biden announced that Harris would head up the administration’s efforts to monitor and combat what he called the Republican Party’s ‘unprecedented assault on democracy.’”
● Biden: I’m putting Kamala Harris in charge of getting voting rights legislation passed through Congress. “Ah, that’s nice of him. Something new for her to fail at instead of just failing to ease the border crisis.”
Flashbacks:
● How Joe Biden is Hanging Kamala Harris Out to Dry.
● DOCTOR Jill Biden Told Kamala ‘Go F*** Yourself’ for Attacking Her Husband.