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By Larry BellMonday, 25 April 2022 09:34 AMCurrent | Bio | Archive
President Joe Biden recently reportedly told former President Barack Obama that he plans to run for re-election in 2024 because he’s his party’s best candidate to beat presumptive opponent former President Donald Trump.
However unlikely it is for that “win strategy” to succeed, it offers additional evidence of Joe’s dangerously delusional lack of self-awareness regarding his failing cognitive state and falling public polling leadership assessments.
This leaves two plausible explanations: either no one is telling him; or if they do, he’s too disconnected from conscious reality to have it register.
Whatever each of our various partisan and policy propensities, it’s both terrifying and embarrassing to witness the leader of our nation and free world incapable of staying on message during off-scripted comments; being blocked from speaking to an attendee at a Easter event by a White House staffer in a bunny costume; or conclude a prepared talk attempting to shake hands with an imaginary person.
Serious consequences of Joe Biden’s confusion, however, are far from imaginary.
Such spectacles might be perversely dismissed as funny, were it not for the fact that this same guy is negotiating trade deals on our behalf with President Xi Jinping and heading our national defense strategies throughout the world.
As Commander in Chief, Joe Biden’s first attempt to score a vainglorious Sept. 9 Afghanistan photo op withdrew our military troops before civilians; left 13 of our service personnel dead; and abandoned more than $80 billion of modern weaponry along with our vitally strategic Bagram Air Force Base under Taliban control.
Meanwhile, America’s allies can draw little confidence from slow, indecisive responses to urgent Ukrainian weaponry defense requests against brutal Russian assaults on civilian populations by those same top Biden State and Defense Department “experts.”
On the domestic front, Joe’s far-left progressive handlers have convinced him that his destined legacy is to be the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Inflation, reaching 8.5 percent in March, a worst level in 40 years, is a product of trillions in excessive Democratic party-line social spending excesses.
Much of this is directly attributable to gasoline prices which are highest in U.S. history, breaking a 2008 record. Recall that having inherited an America that was not only energy independent, but also a net exporter, Biden made good on his 2019 campaign pledge that “I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuels.”
According to a recent Quinnipiac University National Poll, 41% of Americans — including 82% of Republicans and 39% of independents — attribute rising gas prices mostly to Biden administration economic policies.
Immediately upon taking office, Joe Biden revoked a permit essential for the Keystone XL pipeline to deliver oil from Canada.
Shortly thereafter, his administration launched an effort to overturn an oil drilling program in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska, and empowered Department of Interior regulatory efforts to delay drilling permits.
A year later, our U.S. leadership was pitifully pleading with OPEC, Russia, Venezuela, and Iran to pump more oil…impacts on that greatest “existential threat,” climate change, be damned!
Although Joe Biden’s administration had also inherited three largely uncredited vaccines and several therapeutics from his predecessor, U.S. COVID-19 deaths during his first year in office were higher than under President Trump (446,197 in 2021, vs. 385,443 in 2020).
As the COVID pandemic drags on, nearing its millionth U.S. fatality, deadly crime rates are also surging in predominately Democrat-controlled cities amidst defund police efforts.
Of at least 12 large U.S. cities that have broken annual homicide records in 2021, all are Democrat-controlled: Albuquerque, New Mexico; Austin, Texas; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; Louisville, Kentucky; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Portland, Oregon; Rochester, New York; St. Paul, Minnesota; Toledo, Ohio; and Tucson, Arizona.
On January 20, 2021, Joe Biden solemnly pledged to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States,” and to the best of his ability, to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Since then, he has welcomed more than 2 million unvetted and unvaccinated illegal migrants across our open southern border for distribution at taxpayer expense throughout the country in the middle of a pandemic.
This national sovereignty invasion will be dramatically exacerbated beginning on May 23 when his administration terminates a Trump-era Title 42 policy which allowed border agents to expel migrant arrivals under CDC COVID regulations.
Most people understand this. Biden’s polling disapproval on immigration is as high as 60%
Joe Biden promised, above all, to be a uniter, a president who would restore normalcy to the Oval Office. That certainly hasn’t occurred, with the country remaining deeply polarized.
Perhaps no issue has riled more anger among conservatives and independents than Biden administration-endorsed attacks on patriotism through portrayals of America as a “systemically racist society” and indoctrination of K-12 public school students with critical race theory (CRT) and “1619 Project” propaganda which recasts our great nation’s founding purpose being to institutionalize human enslavement.
This broad public malaise is reflected in Joe’s plummeting poll job approval stats.
Similar to a recent FiveThirtyEight average of recent polls which puts Biden’s approval rating at just under 42%, RealClearPolitics puts his average performance approval at just 41%.
An April CNBC survey found Biden’s approval numbers in the high 30s, and an earlier January Quinnipiac University poll had already recorded an even lower 33% positive.
According to an April Reuters/Ipsos poll, 61% believe the country is moving on the wrong track with just 25% who say it is headed in the right direction. An Economist/YouGov survey taken around the same time showed a similar split: 60% wrong track, 28% right direction.
As for Joe’s confidence regarding a successful 2024 re-run attempt, a March Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll found Trump would beat Biden by 6 percentage points in a rematch of the 2020 election. The poll also found Trump would trounce Vice President Kamala Harris by an even wider margin of 11 percentage points.
Although nothing is reported regarding Obama’s response to Biden’s April conversation noting his intent to seek another term, we might hope that the former president would offer exactly the same advice he once did regarding Joe’s planned 2020 candidacy.
The New York Times reported that Obama told Biden: “You don’t have to do this, Joe, you really don’t.”
The Times also reported that Obama met with top Biden advisers in March, and according to the sources, requested that the ex-veep’s team do what they can so that Biden does not “embarrass himself” or “damage his legacy.”
Joe has already accomplished both.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 11 books, “Beyond Flagpoles and Footprints: Pioneering the Space Frontier” co-authored with Buzz Aldrin (2021), is available on Amazon along with all others. Read Larry Bell’s Reports
