A Democratic Pollster says that This Is Grim

What Will I Do About Donald J. Biden During the 2020 Presidential Campaign? A Commentary on the Critique of the Democrats and the Politics of Black Lives

Although he described himself as “a bridge” to the next generation during his 2020 campaign, a comment that some interpreted as a hint that he would serve only one term, Mr. Biden has concluded that he is best positioned to beat Mr. Trump again, justifying a re-election campaign. He is the only one facing a long shot challenger in the Democratic primaries.

Mr. Trump, who is 77 and has demonstrated his own cognitive issues lately, has outpaced his rivals for the Republican nomination by double digits in the polls and appears poised to steamroller to his third general election. That is despite the fact that there are at least 91 counts of illegal trying to overthrow an election, endangering national security and other charges. A survey shows he is tied with Mr. Biden in the battleground states, or slightly ahead in the race for the Electoral College.

The president said if he was re-elected, he would work on a radical agenda. Among other things, Mr. Trump or his allies have talked about prosecuting political foes and former Trump aides who have criticized him; eliminating civil service protection for many government officials to make them more personally loyal to him; setting up detention camps for illegal immigrants; backing off NATO treaty commitments; and sending the military into the streets to quell protests.

Mr. Biden spoke at a fund-raiser on Tuesday, saying that Trump was not hiding the ball anymore. He is telling us what he is going to do. He’s making no bones about it.”

Biden’s basic problem is that the Democratic Party keeps shrinking, leaving it with a drastically slender margin of error. It is losing working class voters who are white by huge margins, but nonwhites with college degrees are going the other way.

Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard, warned that there are major consequences that could result from the weakness of Biden’s support. In a letter, Enos wrote:

Conservative media have relentlessly focused on this critique and there’s strong evidence that media framing shapes how voters view the parties. The media’s role in shaping the negative climate should not be overlooked. Mainstream newspapers and broadcasters emphasize their criticisms of the Democrats in part to uphold their nonpartisan ideal because of the obsession with right-wing media with the ‘wokeness’ of the Democrats.

Democrats have not changed their orientation nearly as much as critics of the party argue. In particular, the party has not shifted its emphasis from economic to social/identity issues, nor has it moderated its economic positions overall. Instead, it has placed a high priority on an ambitious economic program that involves a wider spectrum of policy aims and instruments than the past, including industrial policy and pro-labor initiatives, as well as levels of public spending that dwarf those contemplated.

Hacker and three colleagues looked at the Blue Divide and the Democrats’ new Metro coalition in a paper that was due to be published in a few weeks.

According to Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at Yale, the view of Biden and the Democratic Party as elitist and weak on the values of the past does not have a foundation in practice. The negative portrait of Democrats is a huge success for the right-wing media and the mainstream media because it shows a lie about the party.

have been aiming at the wrong target and have less than a year to adjust their sights. That means putting high prices and living costs front and center, embracing cultural pragmatism, confronting left-wing radicalism on the border, public safety and Israel and embracing a post-populist economics that speaks to working Americans aspirations for growth and upward mobility rather than their presumed sense of economic victimhood.

pushed Democrats far to the dogmatic left, even as their base grows smaller. Young Progressives have seen the party’s stance on immigration, crime, gender, climate change and Palestinian resistance as far away from mainstream sentiment and think they can even eclipse Trump’s views.

The president of the Public Policy Institute sent me an email asking why Biden was not leading Trump by more than 15 points.

because these are issues on which our active, progressive base is split. But if you are silent on these issues, it is like an admission of guilt to voters. They believe you do not care or are dismissive of their very real concerns. The left must be allowed to hold onto their grip to get the story out to the middle.

That, in Kessler’s view, “is not the Joe Biden voters are hearing today. Voters actually hear almost nothing from the Administration on crime or the border, and this allows the opposition to define them on an issue of great salience.”

Biden was the only candidate onstage not to raise his hand on a question that essentially could be interpreted as wanting open borders. He also loudly and repeatedly voiced his opposition to “defund the police” and never ran away from the 1994 crime bill that he authored in the Senate.

The Democratic Party saw Biden as having a more positive brand than it did. That brand advantage over the Democratic Party is now gone. Exhibits A and B are crime and immigration. Biden was seen as a bit harsher on crime in 2020 than the typical Democrat.

Gas Market Fluctuations in the Last Three Months and Implications for Inflationary and Core-Collapse Rates

The average price of a gallon of gas has fallen by 20 cents in the last week. After beginning their final descent, headline and core inflation have reached historic levels. Interest rates have fallen about 40 basis points in the past several months. The so-called Misery index may be at a level that is incumbent friendly.