Biden’s Biggest Problem is Being a Loser
The Fed is a clown show run by a country club bobo
Our president is a loser.
More than anything else, that tangible intangible—that gut perception that a narrow majority of voters seem to grasp instinctively—risks costing the Democrats a second term in the White House.
Americans are elegant, unemotional, and ruthless when it comes to choosing their president. With the bygone exceptions of long periods of Republican dominance (most of 1860-1932) and the Democrats’ New Deal era (1932-1952), voters tend to switch parties in the White House every eight years, but seldom deny a party at least two terms of office after a change from the other party.
There are exceptions. Ronald Reagan was such a winner that he got two terms and was able to hand pick his successor, George H. W. Bush. Jimmy Carter’s administration was the sole instance in the 20th century of a party only getting a single term before a switch back to the opposition. But generally, you get two terms unless you screw up bigtime in which case you’re fired. Donald Trump appeared set to follow Carter’s fate due to the COVID pandemic and peculiarities of the 2020 election, but is now positioned possibly to put himself in the rarest of categories of winning presidents who serve two non-consecutive terms.
Why might Biden fall into the ultimate loser category? Simply because he keeps losing at each and every feat he attempts or crisis he fails to address.
Legions of political analysts take to cable news and other venues to parse data, demographics, and trends, all of which indicate Biden is in trouble. Karl Rove, the architect of George W. Bush’s presidential elections, can often be seen on TV with his annoying white board of data. Others infer what they can from polls, events, history, special elections, and the media echo chamber.
As noted however, most voters take a more simple and elegant approach to voting. Every four years they conduct a generalized assessment of how they and the country are doing and vote accordingly. In 2024, the inescapable reality is that our president is a loser who ought to be fired.
Specifically:
Biden got the USA humiliated at the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which sapped American power globally.
Biden took away about 30 percent of Americans’ savings and purchasing power because of the inflation he caused and continues to cause.
Biden is a dotard.
Biden romanced China and Iran and has nothing to show for it.
Biden is facilitating a slow-motion invasion of illegal immigrants across the USA’s southern border.
Biden is beholden to the woke, progressive kiddos who really run the White House.
One could haul out economists to parse the data on inflation, wages, the trade deficit, and looming fiscal crisis due to the federal budget. Retired generals and admirals can speak to the reasons our military can rack up huge bills but not win wars. Law-enforcement officials can explain the different immigration policies Biden has implemented compared to Trump. Public health officials can detail how fentanyl from China and Mexico kill more Americans each year than died in the Vietnam War. Statesmen can explain how diplomacy depends more on national power and pursuing actual national interests rather than flying rainbow flags over U.S. embassies. Sixth-grade math students could explain the problem with the national debt.
But all of those important technical features of national debate miss the main point, which is that Biden has the stink of a loser. By all indications, the stink has become indelible.
People also look back on the Trump years as a time of winning generally. Trump enabled the hard work of the American people to create three fat years of economic and real wage growth unknown since the 1980s (until China inflicted the COVID pandemic on the world). On trade, he began to turn the tables on China, Mexico, and other places that are crazy about pollution, corruption, and low wages. Other than promptly defeating ISIS, he didn’t commit America to any new wars, and repaired some of the damage inflicted on our military by his predecessor, Barack Obama. He also revealed that nearly every institution in America had been corrupted by progressive politics, which have subverted American meritocracy.
Do voters expect Trump to switch America from losing to winning on day one? The hole that Biden and the political establishment has dug it far too deep. Eliminating the annual $2 trillion deficits the federal government now incurs out of a total budget now exceeding $7 trillion (it was $4 trillion when Trump took office) will lead to the biggest leftwing hissy fit in history. Our military is too expensive and still too focused on fighting counterinsurgencies in backwaters rather than becoming the force we need to deter China and Iran, while securing our own hemisphere. Correcting unfair trade practices will require tariffs on friends and foes alike. Ending the war in Ukraine will require prolonged and ugly dealmaking with Moscow rather than a quick fix.
But what matters as much as the outcome, at least early in a presidency, is the trend. A reelected Trump would immediately return to the country a confidence in itself and its future. America would have a wily scrapper in the Oval Office, not a senile shouter. Trump would move rapidly to lower the cost of energy, which in turn would lower the cost of everything from food to housing. There would be no question as to whether he sides with hard-working and fair Americans versus the woke, McCarthyite America-haters who run our institutions.
Polls indicate a narrow majority of voters perceive this situation. Of course, victory for Trump is not assured and much can happen between now and when voting begins in October. Certainly, Trump will make mistakes in campaigning and governing, and has never pretended to be Mr. Rogers like other presidents.
But Trump can always adjust his policies or messages as necessary. Biden cannot stop being a loser.
Capitalist Notes - The Fed Has No Credibility
As a mentor in finance and diplomacy observed to me, despite having been initially appointed by Donald Trump, Federal Reserve boss Jerome Powell and his family would like to pass for polite company with his elite friends at the Chevy Chase Club. The same is true of Chief Justice John Roberts, who despite being appointed to the Supreme Court by George W. Bush, has a family who would really love to get along with their Democrat pals in the posh Washington suburb—a scene dominated by lefty, wealthy Karens.
As such, doing the job that one is sent to do takes a back seat to fitting in. And what better way to fit in than help Joe Biden beat the brutish Trump by goosing the economy and stock market in the months before an election—the economic version of whatever shot they give Biden to hop him up before an important public appearance.
Last Wednesday, the Federal Reserve signaled that it would still cut interest rates three times this year despite persistently high inflation and low unemployment. No one seems to care much about the law guiding the Fed anymore, but there is one and it mandates balancing the risks of inflation and high unemployment. With the former very real and the latter entirely elusive, the task for the Fed should be obvious: use monetary policy to cut inflation and point out that the government’s profligate debt spending is making that task harder.
The market obviously ignores Powell’s tough talk and believes he will cut interest rates to help Biden. Uncoincidentally, there is also talk anew about stopping the modest reduction in the Fed’s “balance sheet” (i.e., inventory of government debt and mortgages the Fed bought with money it created out of thin air), which beyond interest rates, is another way to impact money supply and monetary policy. The balance sheet has only come down to $7.5 trillion from a high of $9 trillion; it was at a “mere” $4.1 trillion when the COVID crisis began (and about $1 trillion before Financial Crisis “quantitative easing”/dollar-printing era). All of that creation of currency—the same as banana republic firing up the peso printing press—is why the dollar in your pocket today is worth much less that it was four years ago.
With valueless Bitcoin trading at $65,000, up from $28,000 a year ago, and gold up to $2,200 from $1,940 a year ago, there should be little doubt of another Fed-driven bubble afoot.
Net net, Powell inherited an economy that was fundamentally improving during Trump’s Three Fat Years. After reasonable steps to ensure liquidity early in the COVID crisis, he failed to stop after the crisis peaked, and became the chief enabler of Biden-era profligate spending. If you are upset at the cost of things like steak and other grocery items, don’t worry. Soon Powell and his progressive friends will have you eating Hamburger Helper and Meow Mix in retirement instead of the surf and turf you envisioned.
If Trump is elected, he should fire Powell on the afternoon of inauguration day, January 20, 2025, just to show that he can.
“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”
- U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 1
The independence of the Federal Reserve is a sham and coincidentally unconstitutional. Even the inevitably Wall Street-dominated Treasury Department is at least answerable to the president who is answerable to the people. Advocating a return to the gold standard, under which America prospered mightily, gets one cancelled intellectually in the same way as expressing doubts about taking a fourteenth COVID booster, but is worth considering.
Barring that admittedly drastic step, the Fed could be taken down a notch by requiring it to publish a formula that dictates what interest rates and open-market operations will be for any given rate of inflation and unemployment. In effect, replace the Fed and its legions of unreformed, always-wrong Keynesians with a math formula. Capitalism and free markets are the creed of this nation and there is no reason Jerome Powell or whoever succeeds him should dominate the economy so much instead of actual wealth creators.
Woke Corporations Take Hit
The state of Texas divested $8.5 billion from the Wall Street liberals at Blackrock since that company and its pinko boss Larry Fink are part of the Biden-led capital strike against investment in oil and gas. It’s not a big hit considering what Blackrock has under management, but the sniveling of its PR people indicates the damage and risk of future divestment are more than negligible. Very enjoyable.
Sorry Larry, the eyes of Texas are upon you.
Meanwhile, Hertz fired its CEO for making a bad bet that people renting its cars wanted electric vehicles. Can you think of anything more fun after a long flight for work or with kids than finding a place to charge a beat-up Tesla? Hertz used to the be the #1 car rental company in America, beating Avis, which was not a surprise given that Avis’s cars and rental facilities are plain and dumpy and its service is poor. Beware of executives who believe the zeitgeist or who allow themselves to get bossed around by pink-haired Karens in their marketing or PR departments.
Unilever is ending its 24-year mistake of owning Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. Originally a tasty desert company whose hippie executives promised to give one percent of its profits for peace (was I wrong to assume this meant it went to nuclear missiles and submarines?), the company has become rabidly woke in recent years. Last year the company proclaimed on our Independence Day that the United States was founded on “stolen indigenous land.” Happy 4th! Oddly the company gave none of its own stolen land back to the Indians. Unilever stuck with the nutso company during the Trump years but has finally exited the market segment.
When in doubt, shut up, make a tasty desert, and keep politics out of the workplace.
Ukraine
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is making sounds that he is willing to move some aid to Ukraine through the House. This makes sense after the recent reasonable delay during which the public and members of Congress have debated the usefulness and moral hazard of such aid, and whether risking World War III with Russia is a good idea when we face a serious aggressor in China and an Iran that is once again kidnapping and killing Americans through proxies.
There is also the small matter that Russia has slowly turned the tide against Ukraine, which is what one would expect when a country wages a war of attrition against a power like Russia. Of course, nearly the entire national security establishment and commentariat predicted the opposite, presuming a quick Ukrainian victory with NATO support and perhaps even a fall from power for Russian President Putin.
In reality, as noted by Reagan official Stephen Bryen of indispensable “Weapons and Strategy” on Substack, the USA is poised to lose another war, albeit a proxy war. It is possible that even the Biden administration has begun to sense this reality by dismissing from the State Department Toria Nuland, the Foreign Service Officer and former Dick Cheney advisor who has done more than any American to bring war to Europe on terms ultimately favorable to Moscow. She has demonstrated the fecklessness of both the U.S.-U.K. national security establishments and that of obsolete NATO as a whole.
As Ukraine unfortunately begins to lose more noticeably, it is important for Republicans not to take the fall for what is actually the result of deficient Biden policy and, more broadly, the failure of neocons like Nuland and hawks like John Bolton. They along with every major news organization on the Left and Right thought a proxy war with Russia along with energy sanctions that saddle Americans higher energy costs and undermine the dollar were great ideas. The key for Johnson and his fellow Republicans is to allow some additional aid to Ukraine, but much less than the Biden administration wants and what Captain Undershirt in Kiev demands. The blame must rest where it rightly belongs—on Biden and his failed Europe First foreign policy. Then it will be up to the next president to flick the Ukraine booger off of the majestic finger of state with a negotiated peace and end to energy sanctions that hurt Americans more than Russians.
Parting Shot
Trump has been wisely wily about whom he will choose to join him as vice president on the Republican ticket, although Ben Carson probably tops the list. Keep the media guessing and the headlines rolling.
Recently, talk has included some fellow Floridians, which has drawn some concern since Trump switched his residency to that state from the backward hick state of New York. There is chatter about both of Florida’s great U.S. senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott.
But isn’t its unconstitutional for a president and vice president to be from the same state? Alas, this is one of those truisms that isn’t true.
What the Constitution says of the Electoral College is: “The electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for two persons, of whom one at least shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves.” What that means is that Florida’s electors must cast their votes for a non-Floridian for veep if their choice for president is Trump as expected. They can vote for one of my favorite write-in options: Bernie Goetz, Roy Cohn, or John Wayne.
If Trump won the Electoral College handily it would make no difference. If it were an unusually tight race in the Electoral College, the vote for veep might be thrown into the Senate if no one gets a majority. The choice would fall to the new Senate elected this year, which is likely to be Republican.
At any rate, who really cares? The current vice president, Kama-lama-ding-dong, has made the strongest case ever for eliminating the position of vice president. In the absence of a veep, succession could run through the original 1789 cabinet offices (State, Treasury, Defense, Justice), followed by governors of states that voted for the departed president, ranked either by population or their order of admission to the Union. Such a revision would also remove the absurdity of having legislative branch critters like the Speaker of the House and the (usually ancient and drooling) President Pro Tempore of the Senate (the oldest fart among old farts) in the line of succession. It’s also the best way to nuke-proof the line of succession, lest the executive branch be governed by some EPA or HUD administrator during a national crisis.
Recommended Reading
Mark Simon on Substack
Weapons and Strategy by Stephen Bryen
I hope we're not going to lose the Simon-Whiton podcasts. Very enjoyable--and it's hard to find informed perspectives on Taiwan/China elsewhere.