That cataclysmic event showcased what would become a defining feature of the past year: Biden’s inability to manage events. The administration’s false or self-delusional reassurances that the Taliban would not, could not, conquer Afghanistan in a matter of days showed its utter inability to predict or react to things it could not fully control. Similarly, for months, Biden’s economic team ignored, then pooh-poohed, the risk of sustained inflation. Now it is left fatuously blaming Vladimir Putin, corporate greed and supply-chain problems. Americans who see rising prices in virtually every facet of their lives think less of a president who seemingly can neither face nor tell the truth. And let’s not even mention the chaos on our Southern border, except to note that polls have shown that Biden sports even lower ratings for how he’s handling immigration than he has overall.
These examples of incompetence are supplemented by the inability of Democratic leaders to even come close to satisfying their own voters’ demands. Time and again, Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) said something, anything, had to happen on the long list of bills that were supposedly critical to America’s future. Yet, they still cannot get the party’s moderates and progressives on the same page. The result: America’s centrists are scared by what Democrats want to do, while the left is angry about what Democrats failed to do. Even the hapless Jimmy Carter did not push away independents while enraging the party base a mere 16 months into his doomed presidency.
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