Tag Archives: Election of 2024

The Biden Decline Chronology.

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            In January 2024, President Joe Biden began the new year with a job approval rating in the area of 40 percent.  That is where it had been hanging for some time. 

            In February 2024 Special Counsel Robert Hur argued that his chance of winning a post-presidential case against Biden for “willfully retaining” secret documents would be unlikely to succeed: Biden would present as a “well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”  Democrats heaped abuse on Hur as a Republican partisan who strayed from his brief. 

            In March 2024, Donald Trump led Biden in opinion polls by 1-2 percent. 

            In June 2024, Biden gave a disastrous performance in his first scheduled debate with Trump.  The “cognitive decline” on display seemed much worse than what Robert Hur had described.  Democratic support for Biden immediately collapsed. 

            In July 2024, Biden withdrew from the race under massive pressure from leading Democratic politicians orchestrated by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  Biden immediately endorsed his failed Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement.  This short-circuited the possibility of a mini-primary selection process favored by the people who had forced out Biden.[1] 

            In August 2024, Harris chose Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her Vice President candidate.  A bump in opinion polls more than reversed Trump’s 1-2 point lead over Biden to a 2-3 point lead for Harris.  Joy spread everywhere among Democrats. 

            In September 2024, Harris clearly won her debate with Trump.  The Joy Juggernaut gathered speed.  From this point onward, President Biden was really Former President Biden. 

            In October 2024, opinion polls showed that the Harris rebound had ebbed.  Trump and Harris were tied.  This shift occurred in spite of “mis-steps” by the Trump campaign.[2]  As the election drew nigh, the mood in the Harris campaign was described as “nauseously optimistic.” 

            In early November 2024, Trump defeated Harris 49.9 percent to 48.4 percent of the vote. 

            In December 2024, the Former President Biden riff gathered speed.  He embarked on a series of exhausting foreign trips far from the ugly realities at home.  President-Elect Trump was courted by foreign leaders even before he takes office.  Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden for anything he did or may have done since 2014.[3]  Later, he pardoned almost everyone on the Federal “Death Row.”  This included Kaboni Savage.[4]  Will he pre-emptively pardon Luigi Mangioni for any Federal crimes? 

            In a particularly awful irony, the sitting Vice President, Kamala Harris, will have to preside over the Senate when it certifies the results of the November 2024 presidential election.  Senator Patty Murray (D-Washington) takes over if Harris understandably skips out.    

[1] Before he named Harris as his Vice President, a photographer caught a picture of Biden carrying a note that said of Harris “Do not hold grudges.”  Biden’s notes on display: ‘Do not hold grudges’ against Sen. Kamala Harris  Apparently, he has to be reminded. 

[2] Trump’s speeches became much longer and more wandery-aroundy, and it was noted that people attending them began to leave after a while.  However, Trump did about twice as many campaign events as did Biden and Harris.  It looks like he was becoming exhausted, while his opponents were, frankly, indolent either through age or basic nature. 

[3] I’d a done the same thing.  For my sons, not for Hunter.  But putting Hunter, a recovering drug addict, in prison as punishment for some non-violent crimes wouldn’t do the kid—or society at large–any good.  He’s still got a chance to make a decent life. 

[4] See: Kaboni Savage – Wikipedia 

Prologue to a Diary of the Second Addams Administration.

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            In 2024, Trump pulled 75,142,617 votes versus 71,881,183 for Harris. 

            In 2020, Trump pulled 74,223,975 votes versus 81,283,501 for Biden. 

            In 2024, Harris pulled 9,402,318 fewer votes than Biden did in 2020. 

            In 2024, Trump pulled 918,642 more votes than he did in 2020. 

            If it is assumed that Trump’s additional votes came from people who had voted for Biden, then 918,642 of Harris’s lost votes represent these vote-switchers. 

            So, more than 900,000 voters switched from Biden/Harris to Trump.  Had those votes stayed with Harris, then Trump would have pulled “only” 74,223,975 votes.  Harris would have pulled 72,799,825 votes.  Trump still would have won the popular votes by 1,424,150 votes.  (That still leaves the Electoral College.)   

Then, some 8,483,676 people who voted for Biden in 2020, just stayed home in 2024 rather than voting for either candidate.[1] 

Throughout the Biden administration, Democratic politicians and many in the media labeled Donald Trump an “Authoritarian” and a “Fascist.”  During the Biden phase of the 2024 Presidential election and in the final bit of the Harris-phase of the election, “Donald Trump is a threat to Democracy” played a central role in Democratic messaging. 

What is “Fascism”?  Fascism is a term for right-radical political movements in the first half of the Twentieth Century.  Commonly, they were anti-liberal (in the sense of the 19th Century political ideology); Chauvinistic nationalist; focused on a strong “Leader”; hostile toward minority groups inside and to non-whites outside the Nation; and supporters of traditional values. 

Maybe 84.5 million voters WANT “Authoritarianism” and “Fascism.”  I don’t know why this would be.  Perhaps the terms “Authoritarianism” and “Fascism” aren’t frightening to 84.5 million Americans?  Perhaps the meaning for many people is different from what the terms’ users intend?  Perhaps Trump’s opponents failed to flesh-out the meaning sufficiently?[2]  Deporting illegal immigrants or letting each state decide the abortion question or avoiding foreign entanglements may not sound Hitlerian. 

Maybe 84.5 million voters don’t believe that Trump is an “Authoritarian” or “Fascist.”  In 1944, George Orwell wrote that “fascist” was a term of abusee used on the left for anyone they didn’t like.  Similarly, he said, “socialist” or “communist” were terms of abuse used on the right for anyone they didn’t like.[3]  Older voters will recall that “Fascist,” as in “cops are Fascist pigs,” once provided a common epithet on the Left.  Wasn’t true then; maybe it isn’t true now? 

Perhaps many people think that the current “democratic” political system is broken?  The parties have been failing to deal with disruptive change for decades now.  Scholars have divided American political history into six “party systems.”  Parties exhaust their agenda.  Then systems change after a “realigning election” wrecks one or more of the parties.[4] 

[1] Unless one accepts the logic of pre-election Democratics that “not voting or voting for a third candidate is a vote for Trump.”  That would put Trump’s vote at 83,626,293 to Harris’s 71,881,183.  Nearly a 12 million vote edge. 

[2] Certainly, 6 January 2021 gave them plenty to work with.  A huge audience watched the broadcast of the riot. 

[3] “What is Fascism?” https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc 

[4] For an introduction, see Political eras of the United States – Wikipedia  Bibliography is weak. 

Learning About Kamala Harris.

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            What is Kamala Harris’s approach to the economy?  She holds a BA in Economics from Howard and her father taught Economics at Stanford.  The basic issues must not be strange to her.  Still, figuring out her own positions requires reading the tea leaves. 

For four years, Harris has followed the Biden administration’s economic policy in “lockstep.”[1]  Any Vice President would do the same.  Former President Biden presided over a period of economic growth, rising employment, and rising real wages.  Harris has supported his calls for higher taxes on corporations and on individuals earning at least $400,000, while cutting them for lower income groups.  In particular, they have called for maintaining many of the 2017 Trump tax cuts as they effect lower incomes while raising taxes on upper incomes. 

Harris is lumbered with the inflation and high interest-rates of recent years.  Consumer prices have risen 19.5 percent since December 2020.  House prices and rents are currently very high.  Harris has blamed the price rises, in part, on corporate profiteering.[2]  

Harris likes tax “credits.”  Senator Harris proposed a sort of universal basic income for lower-income earners.  It would have paid $3,000 a month to individuals and $6,000 for married couples.[3]  It would have operated through a tax credit.  In 2021, the Democrats pushed through a temporary increase in the child tax credit and an earned income tax credit for childless workers.  Those measures soon expired, but Democrats (including Harris) have supported their revival.  Harris also proposed a Rent Relief Act.  It would have provided a tax credit to renters who earn $100,000 or less and who spend a minimum of 30 percent of their income on rent.  Harris opposed the 2017 tax cuts pushed through by the Trump administration; in 2020, while running for president, Harris called for the full repeal of those tax cuts.  In 2019, she said that she would not have voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement.  She did vote against the renegotiated version during the Trump administration. 

            Harris may have little interest in or grasp of national economic policy.  She reportedly made little contribution to either the economic legislation of the early administration nor to the urgent debates over a response to the painful inflation that the legislation helped to ignite.  To the extent that she did engage, it was with the “human interest” perspective on the issues.  “[H]ow certain policies affect workers and families at a personal level…”  Harris vigorously supported child tax credits, as well as other pro-family and child policies.  The latter could not garner enough support among Senate Democrats to be included in legislation.  Harris also pushed hard to expand access to capital provided by banks to small businesses and communities of color. 

            She has argued against medical debt impinging on credit ratings, setting this in parallel to the Biden administrations attempts to cancel student loan debts. 

Harris is much more of a micro-economy person than a macro-economy person.  If Harris becomes president, She’ll need a good Treasury Secretary.  They all do. 

[1] Jon Kamp, Richard Rubin, and Justin Lahart, “Harris’s Past Hints At Economic Policy,” WSJ, 25 July 2024, and Jim Tankersley, Jeanna Smialek, and Ana Swanson, “Harris’s Views on Economics Are Seen as Being Mostly in Line With Current Policy,” NYT, 25 July 2024.. 

[2] Economist NOT on the far-left blame high demand intersecting limited supply. 

[3] So like Social Security for people of working age?  It seems likely that the payments would increase with the passage of time. 

Fact Check 2.

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            The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (2022) includes tax rebates and other subsidies to encourage “clean energy” industries in the United States.  These include wind and solar power, and the battery industry.  The spending stretches over ten years and amounts to $370 billion.  The IRA also includes “Made-In-America” provisions that are intended to reverse the long-running “off-shoring” of dull, dreary, and occasionally dangerous manufacturing jobs to low-wage foreign countries.[1]  In particular, the IRA targets China, pushing American companies to move production either to home or to other foreign trading partners.[2]  One possible brake on the IRA’s effectiveness lies in China’s possession of the sources of some minerals that are critical for the transition to renewable energy.[3] 

            Social Security and Medicare face long-term problems with their financing.  Social Security payments come from a federal tax on payrolls.  For many years, workers paid in more than was paid out to beneficiaries.  This created a surplus that has been held in the Social  Security “trust fund.”  More recently, as “Baby Boomers” have shifted from labor force to the uneasy leisure force, more money has been paid out to beneficiaries than has been paid in by workers.  As a result, the “trust fund” is being depleted.  Medicare is financed in a similar way and confronts a similar problem.  The Medicare trust fund is predicted to be exhausted in 2031 and the Social Security trust fund in 2033.  After the trust funds are exhausted, the government will be able to pay beneficiaries only what comes in from current payroll taxes.  This will lead to a reduction in payments.  Payments would be reduced by about one-quarter.[4]  Unless,…

            Various Republicans—individuals and groups—have proposed “solutions.”[5]  One is simply to raise the retirement age to 70.[6]  Two to four more years of paying into the systems at their peak earning phase of life plus two to four years less of drawing benefits could help balance the books.  Others, including Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, have proposed creating a two-tiered system.  People over 40 would continue to receive their current deal, while those under 40 would face a higher retirement age and—probably—a different financing scheme. 

            How do the Trump and Biden administrations match up on economic issues when the first three years of each are compared?[7]  Biden (3.7 percent) Trump (3.6 percent) had about the same unemployment rate.  Biden had more manufacturing jobs created than did Trump (791K v. 419K).  Biden had a higher GDP growth than did Trump (3.4 percent v. 2.7 percent).  Trump had a better experience with inflation than did Biden (2.1 percent v. 5.7 percent).  Trump had a better experience with wage growth than did Biden (+ 3.0 percent v. -2.7 percent). 

[1] See: Offshoring – Wikipedia  If successful, the IRA will have lots of American workers once again missing fingers or toes and hacking up colored phlegm. 

[2] Which it what China continues to be. 

[3] Lisa Friedman, “Republican Debate Fact Check,” NYT, 29 September 2023. 

[4] Angelo Fichera, “Candidates Sparring Over Social Security and Medicare,” NYT, 8 January 2024. 

[5] Fichera, “Candidates Sparring.” 

[6] Some of the guys in my morning work-out group have blue-collar jobs.  At least three of them have suffered bad, on-the-job concussions.  Another had a finger-tip pinched off by a piece of machinery.  One of the ladies who rings up my groceries always has on a large hand and wrist brace.  It seems indecent that people who can work into their Seventies or even Eighties because they have staffs to do much of both their work and their family responsibilities should suggest that people unlike themselves just buckle down.  What do I mean, “seems”? 

[7] Jim Tankersley and Lazaro Gamio, “Which President Can Claim These Economic Wins?” NYT, 8 March 2024. 

Fact Check 1.

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President Joe Biden claims that his administration “created” more jobs in two years than did any previous administration in in four years.[1]  Except that no “administration” is solely responsible for creating jobs.  In terms of passing legislation, both houses of Congress also participate.  In a larger sense, the actual economic actors—private enterprise in the American system—have much to contribute.  Then, there are two ways of measuring.  In straight numerical terms, the American economy added 12.1 million jobs between January 2021 and January 2023.  In terms of percentage of the labor force, the Biden Administration ranks lower than four other administrations.[2]  

President Biden claims that his administration cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion in two years.[3]  Except that most of the fall in spending came from the expiration of time-limited Covid-related spending legislation passed during the Trump administration.  During the Trump administration, widely bi-partisan votes in Congress for Covid response spending added $3.4 trillion to the deficit.  The Trump administration’s tax cuts further expanded the deficit by an estimated $1 trillion in 2018 through 2021.  In terms of legislation proposed by the Biden administration and passed by Congress, two things may be noted.  The Inflation Reduction Act cut the deficit by $240 billion over ten years.  Other legislation proposed by the administration and passed by Congress, is projected to increase the deficit by $4 trillion over the same ten years.[4]  Thus, the combination of Democratic spending increases and Republican tax-cutting is set to increase the deficit by at least $5 trillion dollars.  That comes on top of the $3.4 trillion in bipartisan-supported Covid-related deficits. 

President Biden sometimes blurs reality in his comparisons of himself to President Donald Trump.[5]  First, he celebrates his own signing of legislation that dispatched $1,400 checks to every American adult and child in March 2021.  However, in March 2020, Trump signed legislation sending $1,200 to each adult and $500 for each child.  In December 2020, Trump signed legislation sending $600 to each adult and $600 for each child.  Second, he compares job-losses under Trump to job-losses under President Herbert Hoover.  Again, this ignores the larger pattern.  When Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, 145.6 million people were working.  In January 2020, when Covid first reared its ugly head, there were 152 million people working.  That’s “a rise of 6.4 million jobs or 4.4 percent.”  Then Covid hit, lock-downs and massive lay-offs followed, and almost 22 million people lost their jobs.  That took employment down to about 130 million people.  By January 2021, employment had recovered to 142.9 million jobs.  Almost 13 million of the people who had lost jobs had recovered them before Trump left office. 

All these are just talking points in a campaign.  But many voters seem to remember the boom in job creation under the Trump administration.  Perhaps they recognize that Biden is boasting about the recovering economy he inherited. 

[1] Linda Qui, “Since 2024 Kickoff, Missing Context on Deficit,” NYT, 26 April 2023. 

[2] Jimmy Carter takes pride of place with 12.8 percent. 

[3] Linda Qui, “Since 2024 Kickoff, Missing Context on Deficit,” NYT, 26 April 2023. 

[4] For purposes of comparison, was at $3.1 trillion in 2020, at $1.4 trillion in 2022.  The Biden administration spending will push it into the area of $5.7 trillion by 2032. 

[5] Angelo Fichera, “Evaluating Biden’s Recent Talking Points on Taxes, Industry and Jobs,” NYT, 22 February 2024.