Category Archives: Joe Biden

Joe Biden

‘Normal’ looks so special

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A brief conversation with a member of my family brought to mind something I have thought since the Donald Trump Era came to a halt and we welcomed in a new era of “presidential normality.”

My family member couldn’t speak angrily enough about the way Trump conducted himself in office. I responded that my own view is that a “non-traditional presidency” wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if the president exhibited any form of competence. That is one of the many shortcomings that Trump brought to the office; he didn’t know anything about government and his actions reflected a knee-jerk, chaos-driven philosophy. The man is incompetent. Not to mention crooked, amoral/immoral and narcissistic. Oops, I just did.

Which brings me to this point.

President Biden’s normal approach to governing now looks special in its own right. It’s not that Joe Biden has scored dozens of key legislative victories. He has just one so far: the COVID 19 relief package that passed with zero Republican help. He well could roll up some more wins with only aid from fellow Democrats. That’s fine.

The Trump method just didn’t work. The Biden method — which features attempts at compromise and jaw-boning with the loyal opposition — holds considerable promise … if only the GOP members of Congress would cut the POTUS just a bit of slack. The problem, though, is that the GOP caucus is being dominated by the Loony Bin Wing, the Trump adherents who keep fomenting the Big Lie about 2020 presidential election vote fraud that did not exist.

I am going to stick with the guy who ran for office vowing to “restore our nation’s soul.” He’s got a ways to go before he can declare full restoration. The normal approach to governing, though, looks pretty good to me.

Joe Biden

Allegations were all phony

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz says his effort to derail the 2020 presidential election was not about keeping Joe Biden away from the presidency.

It was about answering “unprecedented amount of allegations” about the integrity of the election.

What a crock of sh**!

The allegations all were phony. They were meant to delegitimize President Biden’s election. They were all about the Big Lie that Donald Trump kept fomenting, even after the Electoral College had met and certified the results in accordance with the U.S. Constitution.

Ted Cruz said his election objections weren’t about blocking Biden. Then someone asked about it. (msn.com)

I just am not going to accept any sort of flim-flam coming from the one-time and likely future presidential pretender.

Joe Biden, national news

Biden faces steep hill

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden wants to go big.

Republicans in Congress want to go … nowhere.

Who wins this argument? I’ll go with President Joe Biden every time I get the chance.

Biden spoke to the nation Wednesday night in tones that were alternately vociferous and reassuring. He whispered at times and all but shouted at other times during his hour-plus long speech to a joint session of Congress.

In a certain sense he was preaching to the proverbial choir when we tuned in to watch President Biden. I’ll declare flat out that I want him to succeed. I endorse the essence of his policy platform, which is that he wants to bring government back from the shadows and into the lives of those who need help.

I concede that President Biden is proposing an expensive set of plans to restore this nation’s role as the world leader. Biden and Congress already have agreed to spend $1.9 trillion in COVID relief funds to help Americans harmed in some manner by the pandemic. There is more spending on tap.

However, the intent of that spending is to help all Americans. Yet the president continues to run face-first into resistance from Republicans in Congress who keep insisting that the nation cannot afford to do damn near anything. Joe Biden is having none of that. He tells us that doing nothing is “not an option.”

Here, though, might be the greatest dichotomy between what GOP politicians are doing and what the public favors. Public opinion surveys tell us that American citizens — such as yours truly — favor what Biden wants to do. The GOP pols? They are on the wrong side of public opinion and quite probably on the wrong side of history as they continue to dig in against the president’s agenda.

Are those politicians smarter than the rest of us? Do they know something we don’t know or understand? Hell … no! They do not!

They work for us. Not the other way around!

I wish I could report that government works again now that we have a president who understands how to govern. Good government remains a team sport that requires the executive and legislative branches to put the country first.

One of them — the exec branch — has done so. We’re still waiting on legislators to do their job.

Joe Biden

Not a SOTU, but it sounded like one

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden never once tonight uttered the words “The state of our Union is … “ whatever, but he might as well have said as much.

His speech that went more than an hour long before a sparse gathering of members of Congress had the sound and feel of a State of the Union speech.

It was his first such speech and it took place in an extraordinary environment. The COVID pandemic is still raging and it kept most of those who normally attend presidential speeches before a joint congressional session away.

Biden spoke to us in varying vocal tones. He whispered at times. Biden didn’t bellow exactly the way his immediate predecessor would do.

Yeah, I noticed that he got few hand claps from Republicans gathered before him, although he did get them to stand and applaud when he declared his intention to rid the world of cancer “once and for all.”

So here we go. President Biden is now 100 days into a new administration. The second 100 days well could be even more consequential than the first 100.

I will wait patiently for when we can see the president deliver a speech to us before a packed House chamber.

Joe Biden

Who will cheer this POTUS?

(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Presidential speeches to joint congressional sessions have devolved over many years into partisan events.

Presidents of one party stand before senators and House members and deliver lines designed to draw applause. The way it usually plays out is that lawmakers from the president’s party stand and cheer while those on the other side of the room sit silently while their “friends” offer the cheers.

So that will be the backdrop next week as President Biden strides to the podium to tell Congress about his big plans to help the nation continue to recover medically and economically from the pandemic that has ravaged us.

Joe Biden has trumpeted himself as being a politician with plenty of friends on the other side of the room. He is a Democrat who has worked well — in the past — with Republicans in the Senate, where he served for 36 years before becoming vice president in 2009. Why, he’s even drawn high praise from his GOP colleagues over those many years.

They aren’t about to praise him now. The mood is markedly different these days from the time in 1973 when Biden first joined the Senate. There’s a whole lot of snarling taking place these days.

He’ll have a Democratic House speaker sitting behind him at the joint session, along with the vice president, Kamala Harris. We’ll get to watch them cheer the president’s remarks.

My curiosity will be piqued, though, when President Biden enters the room as the sergeant at arms announces his arrival. Will congressional Republicans have enough good manners about them to stand and cheer when our head of state enters? Or will they continue to exhibit their petulance over losing the 2020 presidential election?

I am willing to acknowledge that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at times bristled openly at Donald Trump’s remarks and behavior during his speeches to Congress. Her anger manifested itself spectacularly when she stood and tore up the text of Trump’s speech to pieces in front of the whole world.

If only we could expect better behavior this time around.

Joe Biden

Biden keeps going big

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(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden isn’t wasting a moment of time in pushing hard for an agenda he hopes will transform the nation and perhaps the world.

I welcome the president’s intensity.

He went hard in declaring his intention to get 100 million COVID vaccines into Americans during his first 100 days in office. He has doubled that goal by getting 200 million vaccines injected … and the 100 days isn’t even here yet.

Biden pushed for a COVID relief bill that has helped millions of American affected by the pandemic. The Democratic Party majority in Congress listened and got it done.

Now he is imploring other world leaders to join the United States in battling climate change. Biden took part in a virtual summit of heads of government and state and declared his intention for the United States to cut its carbon emissions in half by the end of this decade. President Biden said, in effect, it’s now or never for the world to act to combat what he has called the world’s greatest existential threat.

I agree with the guts of Biden’s agenda so far. I  want him to succeed. I also agree that climate change poses the most serious threat to our lives — and not just our way of life.

President Biden is making me proud of our head of state again. Many millions of Americans agonized during the previous four years living in a nation governed by a carnival barker who had no prior government experience before taking the presidential oath of office. His ignorance was on full display damn near daily.

I intend to keep pulling for President Biden as he seeks to go big on all manner of important issues.

Joe Biden

‘President’ returns to this blog

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It clearly is no surprise to regular readers of this blog that I am thrilled to be able to speak of the president of the United States the way I normally speak of that individual.

That is, I have restored the use of the term “President” directly in front of the name of the person who holds the title.

As in “President Joe Biden.”

I have written previously of my boycotting of that terminology during the presidential tenure of Donald J. Trump. I refused for four years to attach the title “President” directly in front of Trump’s name; indeed, I will continue to follow that dictum even in Trump’s blessedly forced retirement from political life after the 2020 election.

My desire was to see a return to normal dignity and decorum in the nation’s highest office. It returned when President Biden took his oath on Jan. 20.

Trump’s conduct after the election was even worse than the four years prior to it. He incited the insurrection on Jan. 6 and got impeached a second time by the House of Reps. Indeed, he still hasn’t formally acknowledged that Joe Biden is the duly elected president.

That’s in the past now. Perhaps soon it all will be forgotten. I welcome that day.

For now I will just relish the notion of being able to comment on presidential activities by referencing President Biden the way I have (almost) always referenced presidents of the United States. Yes, even those for whom I didn’t cast my vote.

Along came Donald Trump to relegate that title to the back of the lowest shelf I could find.

President Biden will make mistakes. He’s made a couple already. His behavior while serving as our head of state/commander in chief, I am certain, will be fitting that of our president.

Joe Biden

Biden still deserves benefit of doubt

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden is closing in on the 100-day mark of his term as president of the United States.

I remain hopeful that he will succeed in office. Just as I detested Donald Trump from the beginning of his term, I am willing to give Joe Biden the benefit of the doubt as he continues to secure his footing as the commander in chief.

There have been some missteps. The crisis on our southern border is one of them. Yes, it is a crisis. The unaccompanied, underage immigrants are causing a serious bottleneck at holding areas. President Biden needs to recognize what many of us already can see with our own eyes, that we have a crisis down there.

The president has been forced to pull the nomination of his first pick for director of the Office of Management and Budget. Surely, though, he will find a suitable No. 2 selection.

I have lauded Biden’s extensive legislative experience. He will need all of it as he continues to go big on his domestic policy program. The president already has delivered on a COVID-19 relief package. Now comes the infrastructure proposal that he should work extra hard to get done.

The economy is starting to rev up. The accelerated vaccination rate against the pandemic is helping restore confidence in our business community.

I want the president to succeed. Truth be told, I wanted his predecessor to succeed, too, even though I was consistently critical of his ignorance of government and of the way he treated his political foes. He called them “enemies,” whereas President Biden takes a kinder, gentler approach to speaking to and about his foes.

I am going to remain optimistic about the future of the presidency under Joe Biden and the course the nation will follow under his leadership. I just don’t want him — nor do I expect him — to mess up.

Donald Trump, Joe Biden, media news, medical news, national news

Polling data: What does it say?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Public opinion polling has been vilified over the course of recent election cycles, frankly for reasons that astound me.

Major public opinion polls actually had the 2016 presidential election called correctly when they had Hillary Clinton edging Donald Trump; they didn’t foresee the so-called “inside straight” that propelled Trump into the presidency on the basis of his narrow Electoral College victory.

They also called the 2020 presidential election correctly, giving Joe Biden a victory in both the ballot count and the Electoral College.

Still, the critics keep lambasting those polls.

Here we are today. President Biden pitched a massive COVID-19 relief bill that had significant public support. He got it enacted over the objection of every single Republican member of Congress … in both chambers!

Biden is back at it. He now has an even larger package on the table, a $2.25 trillion infrastructure reform package. The public response? Even greater than it was with the COVID relief package. The congressional Republican reaction? Precisely the same as the GOP resistance to lending a hand to those suffering from the economic wreckage brought by the pandemic.

Who, again, is on the right side?

It is looking to me as though the Republican congressional leadership and rank-and-file are not listening to the individuals they represent. They are ignoring the wishes of those who put them into office. The public favors rebuilding our roads, highways, bridges, ports (sea and air) and in buttressing our Internet broadband capability.

What’s going on here? Is the GOP political class listening exclusively to a narrow portion of its constituency? I am left to wonder if congressional Republicans will pay a political price when the midterm election rolls around next year.

They damn near should pay it!

Public opinion polling isn’t a perfect barometer of the national mood. However, it is far more accurate than its critics are wiling to admit. The GOP needs to pay attention.

Joe Biden

Run, Joe, run … already?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden’s re-election campaign — if it happens — has become a talking point among the political class.

A reporter asked Biden at his press conference the other day whether he plans to seek a second term — and whether he expects to run against Donald Trump in 2024.

Sheesh, man! Joe Biden is 78 years old. He is the oldest man ever elected to the presidency. He said in response to the reporter’s question that he believes strongly in “fate,” which I think might be his way of acknowledging his own mortality. I do not wish that for the president, but, well … you know it might go.

Biden’s plan for reelection freezes Democratic field | TheHill

The chatter now involves what a Biden re-election bid does to the Democratic and Republican primary fields.

Let’s see. Donald Trump announced on his first day in office he would seek re-election. Democrats poured onto the primary field in massive numbers; the total hit, what, 22 before they started dropping out. The Hill newspaper thinks a Biden re-election effort could stifle the GOP primary field in 2024, unless the Biden presidency craters between now and then.

I am not going to spend a lot of time wondering or worrying about President Biden’s political future. The political present — a pandemic, immigration, climate change, voting rights — is enough of a challenge for any president.