Báo chí và Đảng Cộng Hòa cố tình che khuất mọi thành tựu của TT. Joe Biden
Heather Cox Richardson - Mike Wilson (2021-12-12)
GOP, media obscure Biden successes
Nate Cohn noted in the New York Times last week that the policies President Joe Biden and the Democrats are putting in place are hugely popular, and yet Biden's own popularity numbers have dropped into the low 40s. It's a weird disconnect that Cohn explains by suggesting that, above all, voters want "normalcy." In her own piece, journalist Magdi Semrau suggests that the media bears some responsibility for this disconnect, since it has given people a sense of the cost of Biden's signature measures without specifying what's in them, and ignored that Republicans have refused to participate in any lawmaking. As Semrau puts it: "Democrats want to fix bridges, provide childcare and lower drug costs. Republicans don't. These are political facts and voters should be aware of them." Republican attacks on Democrats, which are simple and emotional, get far more traction and thus far more coverage in the mainstream press than the slow and successful navigation of our complicated world. Biden's poll numbers took a major hit between mid-August and mid-September, dropping six points. That month saw the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was widely portrayed as a disaster at Biden's hands that had badly hurt U.S. credibility. In fact, Biden inherited Trump's deal with the Taliban under which the U.S. promised to withdraw from Afghanistan by May 1, so long as the Taliban met several requirements, including that it stop killing U.S. soldiers. Republicans reacted to the mid-August chaos by calling for Biden's impeachment, and the press compared the moment to the 1975 fall of Saigon. That coverage overshadowed the extraordinary fact that the U.S. airlifted more than 124,000 people, including about 6,000 U.S. citizens, out of Afghanistan in the six weeks before the U.S. officially left. This is the largest airlift in U.S. history — the U.S. evacuated about 7,000 out of Saigon — and evacuations have continued since. By comparison, in October 2019 under Trump, the U.S. simply left Northern Syria without helping former allies; And yet, that lack of evacuation received almost no coverage. Aside from getting the U.S. out of Afghanistan, is it true that Biden has not accomplished much? Biden set out to prove that democracies could deliver for their people, and that the U.S. could, once again, lead the world. He promptly reentered the international agreements Trump had left, including the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization, and renewed those Trump had weakened, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Biden set out to lead the world in coronavirus vaccinations, making the U.S. the world's largest donor of vaccines globally. In March 2021, the Democrats passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan stimulus package to rebuild the economy, and it has worked spectacularly. Real gross domestic product growth this quarter is expected to be 5%, and the stock market has hit new highs, as did Black Friday sales. The Biden administration mobilized workers, industry leaders, and port managers to clear the freight piled on wharves. In the past three weeks, the number of containers sitting on docks is down 33% — and shipping prices are down 25%. With more than 5.5 million new jobs created in 10 months, unemployment claims are the lowest they have been since 1969. Workers' pay has jumped as much as 13% in certain industries, and there are openings across the labor market. The American Rescue Plan started the reorientation of our government to address the needs of ordinary Americans rather than the wealthy who have dominated our policymaking since 1981. It provided more than $5 billion in rental assistance, for example, and expanded the Child Tax Credit, so that by the end of October, $66 billion had gone to more than 36 million households, cutting the child poverty rate in half. Biden negotiated an extraordinarily complicated infrastructure package, winning a $1.2 trillion bipartisan bill that will repair roads and bridges and provide broadband across the country, and getting the larger, $2.2 trillion Build Back Better bill through the House. Now before the Senate, the bill calls for universal pre-kindergarten, funding for child care and elder care, a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and protection against climate change. Has the Biden administration accomplished anything? It has created a sea change in our country. Heather Cox Richardson, a Boston College professor of American History, wrote this for her blog, Letters from an American. "Democrats want to fix bridges, provide childcare and lower drug costs. Republicans don't." Magdi Semrau Journalist