Robert Kuttner, editor of The American Prospect, predicts that Biden will turn around public opinion before the mid-term elections. Biden has been the target of endless media speculation about his failures. Kuttner thinks this will change.
Here is how Kuttner thinks he will do it.
He writes:
| How Things Will Get Better for Biden and the Dems |
| We can count on Trump to seize defeat out of the jaws of victory. |
| It is just sickening to watch the media pile on Biden. OK, Manchin and Sinema are holding the administration hostage. The signals from the CDC on COVID have been mixed, and Biden stepped on some of his lines at his recent press conference. The man doesn’t walk on water. But compared to … what? Here is a scenario for a Democratic comeback. Within the next month or two, my sources indicate that Biden will get about $1.5 trillion of his Build Back Better program. The reconciliation process cannot be filibustered, and Manchin will eventually support a lot more than zero. At that point, Democrats-in-Disarray stops being the slow-drip, day-after-day headline. And the herd-instinct, echo-chamber press has to find a new story. One leading candidate is Republican cannibalism, which has been proceeding right on schedule. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis broke the unwritten norm that nobody challenges Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination, by suggesting that Trump is a wuss for urging people to get vaccinated. This in turn made Trump predictably apoplectic. If DeSantis can hint at a presidential run, others will follow. Trump will do more damage to his party by running lunatic unelectable MAGA candidates in primaries. And then the story becomes Republicans in disarray. Just in case the public needs another reminder of just how deranged the Trump and congressional Republicans are, in February and March the January 6 Committee investigation of the attempted coup will reveal more and more details. All of that will also dominate the headlines. And a massive election-year grassroots mobilization of Democrats will take shape this spring. Pundits, seeking a new morning line, will start remembering the larger stakes for our democracy and start writing about Biden as the comeback kid. Needless to say, I can’t guarantee that this will happen. But don’t rule it out either. |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Don’t tell me that the party that is trying to get us into war with the second largest nuclear armed power – against the explicit wishes of the country we are allegedly defending – is the “lesser evil”. Even if Biden started actually delivering on any or even all of his campaign promises, that would not outweigh once again being lied into war. The last war cost at least a million Iraqi lives and several thousand American lives. How many lives will this war cost? Eight billion?
Yeah, shame on Biden for amassing 130 thousand troops and massive numbers of missiles, tanks, field artillery, fighter jets, helicopters for evacuating wounded, blood for the wounded, logistics personnel, and so on in a circle around Ukraine.
Oh, wait. It isn’t Biden who is doing this, is it?
Dienne, this post of yours is self-parodying.
Bob, you seem to be deluded. Don’t you know that while Putin was busy ending the war in Afghanistan, arranging for all American troops to withdraw, and directing the safe evacuation of 120,000 civilians, Biden and “his party” were conspiring to get us into war with the second largest nuclear armed power, which is only now coming to fruition.
We can only pray that Putin is able to end Biden and “his party’s” evil plan as masterfully as Putin ended the war in Afghanistan. If only our country was led by someone who valued peace the way Putin does.
Terrible how the Nobel Committee passed over Tsar of All the Russias Vladimir Vladimirovich for the Peace Prize, given his tireless work developing hypersonic nuclear missiles, ridding the Rodina of tiresome troublemakers, charitable redistribution of the wealth of the Russian people to himself and his siloviki, killing the Open Skies and INF treaties, his humanitarian effort in Donbas, and his current work to unite Russia and Ukraine as one people! LOL
Agreed.
77-
What was Russia’s impact on Afghanistan while it was fighting there?
Are the women in Afghanistan better or worse off after U.S. withdrawal? How’s the economy without American dollars?
Has Russia conceptualized and implemented anything like the Marshal Plan?
But yes, the Iraqi war was criminal and breathtakingly stupid (like the planned invasion of Ukraine). And none of the U.S. perpetrators of the Iraqi bloodbath have been brought to justice or ever will be.
Biden is trying to stop a war. He is trying to persuade Putin not to invade Ukraine.
Wake me when the C5s with American troops on them take off for the UKRAINE . I wont speculate as to Zelensky’s motive. As we can not know what people actually think. I think you and I would have two different takes.
Anybody ever see alligator “wranglers” flip them on their backs and rub their tummies claiming to pacify them? I think that is what Zelensky is attempting to do. He certainly does not want to appear in any way threatening. Putin doesn’t need Lithuania handing him an excuse to invade. He is perfectly capable of manufacturing his own.
Washington Post Doom & Gloom Prognosis For Public School 1/31/2022
By Laura Meckler
Test scores are down, and violence is up. Parents are screaming at school boards, and children are crying on the couches of social workers. Anger is rising. Patience is falling.
Remote learning, the toll of illness and death, and disruptions to a dependable routine have left students academically behind — particularly students of color and those from poor families. Behavior problems ranging from inability to focus in class all the way to deadly gun violence have gripped campuses. Many students and teachers say they are emotionally drained, and experts predict schools will be struggling with the fallout for years to come.
A McKinsey & Co. study found schools with majority-Black populations were five months behind pre-pandemic levels, compared with majority-White schools, which were two months behind. Emma Dorn, a researcher at McKinsey, describes a “K-shaped” recovery, where kids from wealthier families are rebounding and those in low-income homes continue to decline.
Some students have shifted to private or charter schools. A rising number, especially Black families, opted for home schooling. And many young children who should have been enrolling in kindergarten delayed school altogether. The question has been: will these students come back?
http://www.washingtonpost.com
WaPo has NEVER been a friend of public education (except for Valerie Strauss). With headlines like this, profits for McKinsey & Co will certainly get much better.
You are right about Washington Post. Valerie Strauss is great. The education editorial writer idolized Michelle Rhee and every reformer lie.
Public schools have been under stress from the pandemic as have other institutions and businesses. Much of the so-called frustration with public schools is the result of the continuous bashing from right wing propagandists. Conservatives are taking their fight to the local level. As a result we have intimidating ‘Proud Boys’ with weapons at school board meetings because we have idiotic laws that permit such outrageous behavior. School districts also face contrived outrage from some right wing parents and reading list censorship. I hope the public and the left will see that the irrational attacks on public education for the most part are based on politics, not reality. As for McKinsey & Co, I wouldn’t believe much of what they claim as they are are corporate enemy of the common good.
The Laura Meckler WAPO article was a smear campaign, pure and simple. Your “retired teacher” summary should have been the outline they followed.
But the real WAPO Valerie Strauss countered it today with this.
“Education Secretary Miguel Cardona laid out four key priorities for U.S. public education in a major address last week, as many schools still struggle to keep teaching and learning on track during the pandemic.
There are several important issues on that list, but there’s one the secretary didn’t mention: the sorry state of many of America’s school buildings.
A coalition of education, health, environmental, labor and industry organizations sent a letter to Cardona earlier this month urging him to give school districts more time to use federal pandemic relief funding for school construction and capital projects. Such efforts take time even without a pandemic, but, the letter said, limited contractor availability and supply chain disruptions will make it impossible for many districts to use the money by the September 2024 deadline.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com
The tragedy here is that anyone running schools pays money to McKinsey for advice. They & their McKinsey types from business schools should be banned from influenceing any public policies. “The War in Afghanistan Is What Happens When McKinsey Types Run Everything” https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-war-in-afghanistan-is-what-happens
Jcgrim,
McKinsey is deeply involved in education policy. They give very bad advice. They know data, not children or education.
We’ve been hearing Democrats exclaim, “Trump is worse!” for several years. If Democrats pass Medicare for All, a $15/hour minimum wage, and cancelled student debt, they’ll not be worrying about losing in 2022 or 2024. (Alas, it’s too bad the donor class doesn’t want such reforms passed.)
Are Manchin and Sinema “the donor class”? If you want to see the changes like Medicare for All, stop attacking Biden and use your energy to elect more Democrats to the Senate so the Loathsome Twosome can’t block progressive programs.
California has a veto-proof supermajority in Sacramento, and the Democratic Party’s “leadership” just killed off a bill for universal health care. Manchin and Sinema are NOT “the donor class; instead, they are politicians working on behalf of the donor class–the real owners of the U.S. and its bought-and-paid for government. Based on his four decades as a politicians, I strongly believe that it is impossible to be too critical of Joe Biden.
And yes, Trump is worse, a million times worse.
James Eales,
And we have been hearing folks like you exclaiming “Trump is NOT worse!” for 6 years.
The folks like you who believe Trump is NOT worse are never going to vote for Democrats because they obviously have a moral compass that will never respond to anything the Democrats do.
Clearly, it takes a certain type of person who believes the Trump-adoring Republicans are no worse and then is upset at the Democrats because all the Republicans got 2 Democrats to join with them to block legislation.
Unless you are fighting for Democrats to win a lot more seats in the Senate, James Eales, your professing to support Medicare for All and a $15/hr minimum wage for all sounds false
I’m neither a Republican or a Trump supporter. In 2020 Biden said he’d veto Medicare for All, even if Congress passed the bill. Even with a veto-proof supermajority in Congress, I suspect that Medicare for All would have a tough time passing, as the ‘designated villains’ would help sink it. The Democrats are a center-right political party catering to their well-heeled donors. The Democratic Party’s “leadership” doesn’t care about working class Americans.
So James, you have a choice between a Democratic Party that’s centrist and a Republican Party that’s toadying to a racist, xenophobic, authoritarian narcissist who wants to ban all abortions, gut environmental protections, destroy democratic norms, use the government for his self-enrichment, and thinks that the Justice Department and the military belong to him. Would you choose a centrist or a rightwing extremist? Or neither?
I’ve chosen neither! I’m a registered member of the MPP (Movement for a People’s Party) in California. The Democrats are no longer even worthy of my contempt. Progressives must look beyond a single election cycle and build a viable third party. As an educator with 30+ years of teaching experience, I can’t support a political party knowingly and repeatedly shortchanging teachers and students on behalf of its well-heeled donors.
I hope that Robert Kuttner is right, we would all greatly enjoy a GOP civil war with DeSantis and Trump savaging each other to the death. But they are both vile gargoyles from the bowels of hell, whoever wins this grudge match bodes ill for the nation. And we still have horrible far right wing nuts like Gosar, Greene, Gaetz, Gohmert, Cawthorn, Boebert, Massie, Foxx, etc., ad nauseam in the Congress.
The New York Times did a series of focus group studies. Yeah I know, the Republican wordsmith Frank Luntz led the discussions, but the responses were telling. In the group of independents there was a lot to digest, but what came out loud and clear is that Democrats continue to do a terrible job getting the good word out over the media echo chamber. The main concern for these voters was simply the economy and conservative media, aided by the main stream media lap dogs, has hammered the dystopia being created by inflation while no one talks about the vigorous growth, employment, and income improvements. The 1/6 investigations remain a slog and are taking too much air time over the efforts of democrats to get resources to the public. The Democrats simply don’t seem able to brag effectively. Biden has done a great deal with two huge legislative successes and the largest first year contingent of judicial appointments in decades. Frank Luntz and the Republican Party have been having a field day with the Democratic Party since the early 1990s because Democrats just explain too much. I keep hoping a turn around is in the offing, but I’m not holding my breath.
The Democrats have no long term strategy to build a progressive infrastructure in all 50 states; plus they have nothing that can counter Fox News.
So much, so much depends on the upcoming midterms, possibly the most important election in U.S. history. If the Repugnicans win back the House and secure control of the Senate, Biden’s administration will be even more hobbled than it has been by the quislings Manchin and Sinema.
And I suspect that Trump, Donnie Jr., and Eric are the only ones stupid enough to think that Trump has a ghost of a chance of becoming the now Fascist Republican Party’s candidate in 2024. Everyone else, just about, has just grown tired of the Trump show.
No. The next one will share Trump’s amorality and fascist instincts but will be much smarter and more knowledgeable than Trump is, which, of course, isn’t saying much. My kids had gerbils smarter than Trump is. I couldn’t help thinking, listening to Tucker (spell that with an F) Carlson’s love letters to Putin that perhaps he was angling for the support that Trump got from Prince Vlad.
SAHZAM, Bobby K., editor of the
American Prospect, that claims to be
“Devoted to promoting informed discussion
on public policy”, resorts to
seeking solace through PREDICTIONS.
He was a 20-year columnist for Business Week.
No stranger to mainstream economics with
their ever mysterious “models” of
PREDICTIONS.
Kuttner is also one of five 1986 co-founders
of the Economic Policy Institute, and currently
serves on its executive committee.
Kuttner has served in several capacities
within the federal government, including as
an investigator for the Senate Committee
on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs,
as well as serving as Executive Director
of former President Carter’s National
Commission on Neighborhoods.
Geeze Bobby, after all your ring-side
seats on the action, how can you NOT
see?
It’s the SYSTEM not the THRONE.
I find Kuttner to be a thoughtful, well informed observer of government policy. EPI is a wonderful organization.
The key is to reveal the cause of Biden’s alleged failures and that answer is an obstructive Republican Party mostly controlled by Traitor Trump and/or Moscow Mitch McConnel.
As the fascist wing of the GOP obstructs most of what Biden wants to accomplish and even takes credit for some of his successes in spite of the attempt to kill those, too, they keep spewing lies, lies, lies, endless lies to stir up fear and hate.
The Democratic Party must get its act together and fashion a wide spread and relentless multi-media campaign that reveals what’s really happening and generate a message of fear among the majority of Americans that the GOP’s Trumpist, MAGA fascists are coming for all of us if they are not stopped.
Has anyone else read what the traitor said at his Texas hate rally Saturday, January 29?
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-calls-for-mass-nationwide-protests-prosecutors-investigating-him-2022-1
And to the traitor’s fascists, hard core, hate filled, angry MAGA mob “anything illegal” is whatever Trump says it is as he expands his big lie to eat the justice system.
You can be sure that if any jury indicts Trump for his financial and political misdeeds, he will call it “illegal.”
Here’s the Biden Administration goals for public education:
https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/secretary-cardona-lays-out-vision-education-america
Pretty good! I really appreciate how it isn’t larded with ed reform slogans, so doesn’t read as if it was issued directly from the Gates, Walton and Koch Foundations and written by their employees.
It’s positive too, making it the first positive goal statement for public education out of the federal government in the last 20 years.
I don’t know what to think about Biden. I guess he’s been “uneven” is how I would describe it (but that could change) and I really, really appreciate his administrations support of public education. It has been YEARS since we’ve gotten even a glimmer of that. I’ll forgive him a lot if he can resist being captured by the ed reform echo chamber. That alone is good news.
Given ivy leaguer, Josh Edelman’s role in education in the Biden Admin (the Gates Foundation’s guy) ….
I wish I shared his optimism. After non stop hysterics all summer about Afghanistan, all about the30,000- 40,000 Afghans who had worked embedded with American forces who were going to be left behind. . . One Hundred and Thirty thousand evacuees later the Press moved on.
September’s Job creation numbers missed the expectation of the same economists who could not see a housing bubble as big as Stay Puft Marshmallow Man before it burst. Almost taking down the entire banking system with it. Yes 212 thousand Jobs proved that Biden’s economy was failing in spite of trillions added to the debt. Never mind that if you went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Data release 212 k. would probably be in the top 12 months in the 120 month series. Then came October’s report, the August number was revised upward by 100k , September adjusted upward 150k and a whopping 500k Plus jobs created in October. In the same sentence that the numbers were released the press moved on to inflation. No interviews with all those leading economists to see why all their instant analysis had been so wrong in September.
That narrative has been playing out ever since . One might even question if the reporting itself was aimed at raising peoples expectations of inflation. Allowing corporations to tack on record profits on top of rising costs.
Even this morning ” housing/rental costs were up a staggering 14% .” No mention of up from where . Well in NYC that would be up from 2020 where rents had dropped down to 2010 levels in 2020 as people fled the City. Add this to the $7 a gallon gasoline going into a 1973 muscle car that only the NY Times was able to find . Or the family with 9 kids who goes through a tanker truck of milk that CNN or PBS found . Inflation caused by Covid disruptions and distortions is up but only up 3.5 % each year from 2019 pre pandemic . That is quite a different story then 7%, the highest rate since 1982 . By the time the reader gets to Krugman or Neil Irwin for the explanation, if they get that far the “consent has been manufactured” ” Biden sucks ”
Another past President of EPI Dean Baker called it right . Trump may have been right about one thing the press
Intentionally or not they are dragging Biden down and empowering fascists.
Agree. But you probably already knew that 🙂
That was your shortest reply ever, LOL.
Exactly, Joel. The media aren’t giving Biden his due!
I was watching Bill Maher the other night and he was going bonkers over daffy local initiatives as if it was the entire Democratic Party. He, like many pundits, has gone off of the rails and is now wallowing in his recent recognition as a “liberal slayer”. I simply don’t understand why there never seems to be a concerted effort among the Democratic establishment to tighten their message. The leaders of the Democratic Party continue to seem content with their position on the coasts and never seem interested in engaging with the rest of the country. It’s frustrating because good things are happening.
Biden would improve his favorability if he made a big show of routing the ivy league neoliberals who took over the Democratic Party (accompanied by cheerleading from Clinton and Obama)
I speculate that an ivy league school like Yale teaches its students to fight against politically powerful groups as long as those groups are populated with average citizens trying to get a livable wage and trying to protect the common good and Main Street’s assets. I speculate that richly-endowed private schools also teach that crises present great opportunities for privatization of a community’s assets and for the community to lose out on democracy.
Arena’s Ravi Gupta (his political group writes about supporting the new faces of democracy i.e. political candidates) was interviewed at The 74 five years ago (7-7-2016).
A few quotes follow, “Ambassador Susan Rice (Biden’s very rich, current domestic advisor) put me on a project building partnerships in the education community.”
Btw- Gupta subsequently founded the first charter school in Mississippi and founded a couple in Tennessee.
About Gupta’s personal history – “I saw a couple of great networks in action, Democracy Prep…I asked… Seth Andrew how to get involved.”
About opposition to ed reform- “Barring a widely acknowledged crisis, its hard to sustain major reforms in a system.” (I presume New Orleans which closed its last remaining public school would be an example. Evidently, where there is no crisis), “politically powerful and privileged folks who have something to lose”, thwart reform. (Gee, in my world view, Gates and DeVos are politically powerful and privileged.)
What Gupta saw for the future- “I think we’ll see a new group of reform leaders who will talk differently, look different and have different priorities.”
I hope that the future brings Democratic politicians who don’t deliver for ALEC and Wall Street and Silicon Valley billionaires. I hope the Gates-funded Aspen Pahara Institute abandons its first priority goal as described in an interview with its founder, “brands on a large scale.”
Gupta concluded the interview by saying he wanted to “promote empathy”.
Just curious- would Biden find more empathy at state universities or at Ivy League universities?
Do the American people have any role in electing officials who then carry out these policies. I know you are talking about Political appointees. However political appointees don’t actually write law. The politicians who appoint them do. I have not voted for the winner of a democratic primary since perhaps Walter Mondale or maybe George McGovern. That applies to most lower level offices as well. So who should we blame? Who is voting for these people? .
“The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased.”
― Howard Zinn
Blame’s all around, politicians need money to win. Money makes some everyday folks betray their communities in service to the villainthropies that pay them. Voters hear the word “progressive Democrat” from people who know it’s untrue but, the voters themselves are too busy with jobs and families to check it out. That’s what happened in Ohio when fossil fuels’ Shontel Brown beat out Nina Turner. (Brown got the support of Hillary and Clyburn). The conservative religious want God to replace democracy.Sociopaths care only about power.
An exercise in ranking most culpable
would be something a person could do.
“Things may get better” for someone or, somewhere but not for public universities. CAP has a new (Gates) senior VP for Education, formerly Director for Federal Policy at the Lumina Foundation. I hope public university communities are better at fighting back than the communities of public K-12.
Big surprise! CAP’s new education guy says he’s going to push for more personalized pathways in K-12.
Credentials- Georgetown, of course.
If only Gates and Koch’s tentacles could be removed from D.C. and state capitol policy decisions. .. but then, the U.S. would have a democracy, not an oligarchy.
Agreed.
Bill/ Melinda Gates and Charles Koch put the screws to the American people in different ways- outcome the same- libertarian oligarchs rule.
Off the topic of Biden’s approval ratings:
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/28/1075842341/growing-calls-to-take-masks-off-children-in-school
Thanks! Read it.
“…. is a mother of two. She thinks masks should be optional for kids in schools and child care….Her 3-year-old son is in a preschool that mandates masking…”
This story presents an anti-mask parent who chooses of her own free will to put her 3 year old in a preschool that mandates masking – doesn’t that undermine the entire anti-masking movement?
That would be a great discussion to have!
Do all the anti-mask parents who voluntarily send their children to private schools that have mask mandates undermine the entire anti-mask movement? Yes or no, and please be specific about whether they undermine the movement entirely, undermine the movement some, or just undermine the movement a little bit.
I am looking forward to that very important discussion that this article brings up because it is extremely important to have a discussion about how much those anti-mask parents who intentionally send their children to private schools that have mask mandates UNDERMINE the entire anti-mask movement.
Flerp– I would highlight a couple of paragraphs from the link to add nuance.
“Yet as the omicron wave begins to peak in some parts of the U.S., some pediatricians, neuroscientists, special education teachers and parents like Dingle are talking more about the potential negative impacts of prolonged masking.” The message I’m hearing here: Omicron is on the wane so let’s hurry up and change policy. It’s the same hurry-hurry message my husband and I are getting from our social [book club, choral, band] groups: as soon as the peak was predicted in NYC area (but had not yet occurred), everybody was in a hurry to “get back to normal,” not even wait until the case numbers supported it. I’m fine with changing policy when numbers warrant.
“Others are questioning the fairness of continuing to require masks for children indefinitely, especially when they are less often required in many of the places adults gather, such as restaurants and bars.” Never mind the 2nd clause, which refers to our ridiculous American policy of prioritizing adult non-essential gatherings over in-person schooling during high community spread. What I’m hearing here is INDEFINITELY. This is a favorite word for all those who have decided that covid protocols [including vax!] are useless, covid is here forever, so just drop all that crap & go back to “normal.” Normalizing, apparently, thousands dying daily from a novel virus, despite tools to combat it.
Meanwhile we have another NPR article that is wholly behind masking in schools, based on the science as of Delta spread [which is even more necessary with Omicron spread]: https://www.npr.org/sections/back-to-school-live-updates/2021/09/10/1035954587/yes-gov-desantis-studies-do-show-masks-curb-covid-19-in-schools
OK, here’s your really depression news for today. Ahead of the midterms this fall, 61 percent of Republicans but only 47 percent of Democrats, say that they have “high interest” in the upcoming elections.
cx: depressing news
And you just described the off year state election results. The media narrative is total horse manure. Swing voters (there are none) did not become book burning,anti vaxx, right wing culture warriors overnight. The fascists came to the polls in record numbers for an off year local election. While Americans did not.
Now the question is how do you motivate people to get off their butts.
Simply pointing out that your opponent is a book burning demagogue,corrupt, thieving, hypocrite does not do it . Unless you can show people how it affects them. Most policy prescriptions do little until people see them as benefiting them and then losing them.
So tell me again why the Republicans and the unvaxxed, unmasked mob have not been turned into the Willie Hortons and Welfare Queens of 2021 and 22, since June of 2021 when the whole nation could have been vaccinated. Coming after your immune compromised Grandma while you picked up the tab for them.
The Republicans knew that the longer the virus continued the worse it would be for the economy and for whoever was in office and did their best to keep it going . Very content as long as more minorities were dying than supporters. When that changed even Trump tried to end the death cult they had created.