Robert Leonard writes about the Midwest. His recent piece at The New York Times is titled, “Biden Has Already Done More for Rural America Than Trump Ever Did.” A taste: In under two years in office, President Biden has done...
Joe Biden
This woman is not alone
She probably represents a small part of the population, but people like this are out there. Watch:...
Nikki Haley’s “foolish, self-serving, and pernicious” comments about the Putin invasion of Ukraine
In case you missed it, former South Carolina governor and Trump U.N. Secretary Nikki Haley is tweeting and talking. In this video she seems like she is running for president against Biden: In an interview with Chuck Todd on Meet...
Historian Heather Cox Richardson interviews Joe Biden
They talked about Kentanji Brown Jackson, Build Back Better, and American Democracy. Watch: Richardson writes about the experience at her wildly popular Substack page: Every day, people write to me and say they feel helpless to change the direction of...
Have you heard about the new State of the Union sitcom?
It’s brought to you by Trevor Noah and the Daily Show:...
Who is Kim Reynolds
She is the governor of Iowa. Last night she gave the Republican response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. As Elaine Godfrey writes at The Atlantic, the GOP picked her to deliver the response to “show voters that...
Biden searches for common ground in State of the Union address
Last night Biden delivered a solid State of the Union Address. Not great. Nothing to write home about. But solid. It was the speech the country needed this week. I give credit to Joe Biden for his effort to find...
Will Ukraine define Biden’s presidency?
For LBJ, it was Vietnam. For George W. Bush, it was September 11, 2001. Will the Russian invasion of Ukraine define the Biden presidency? I think it is way too early to tell. Future historians will see more clearly. Nevertheless,...
Biden will nominate Katanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court
Amid all the Ukraine coverage, the Supreme Court has not received much coverage on cable news in recent days. But today Joe Biden nominated the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. Her name is Katanji Brown Jackson. Here is...
The New York Times condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Here is a taste of the editorial: …Vladimir Putin is giving a master class in dangerous and destructive leadership and making it all the more important that President Biden and other nations stand resolutely together in the face of threats,...
The intellectual roots of Biden’s response to Putin
Here is the team at Politico‘s “West Wing Playbook”: …Biden’s 2017 book, “Promise Me, Dad,” largely focused on his deceased son BEAU. But it still mentioned the Russian president more than 65 times. “While I had been encouraged by Putin’s willingness...
Blowout counties
Over at Sabatos’ Crystal Ball, Rhodes Cook talks about “blowout presidential counties” with Jon Karl of ABC News and Rep. Rho Khanna (D-CA). Here are the takeaways: “More than 20% of the nation’s counties gave 80% or more of its...
Lindsey Graham on a potential Biden Supreme Court pick: “Put me in the camp of making sure the court and other institutions look like America”
Good for Lindsey. Here is Quint Forgey at Politico: Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday broke with several of his Republican colleagues by seemingly expressing support for President Joe Biden’s pledge to nominate the first-ever Black woman to the Supreme Court....
The latest threat to Joe Biden’s life came from a Kansas man on a mission from God to “lop off the head of the serpent in the heart of the nation”
Here is Justin Rohrlich at The Daily Beast: A Kansas man claiming he had been told by God to travel to Washington, D.C., to “lop off the head of the serpent in the heart of the nation” has been charged...
Joe Biden got ice cream yesterday. Fox News went nuts.
What if you replaced “Joe Biden” in the following clip montage with “Donald Trump” and replaced “ice cream” with “golf” or “executive time”? Hmm…...
The Senate needs to confirm Biden’s choice to replace Stephen Breyer. Don’t expect much drama.
Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement yesterday. A political battle over the confirmation of his yet-to-be-announced successor is unlikely. Meridith McGraw and Hailey Fuchs of Politico explain: Top officials at conservative judicial groups said they viewed the current...
Kirsten Powers: Biden is neither “failing” nor “flailing”
I’m with Powers here. A taste of her recent piece at CNN: What drives much of the “presidency in peril” coverage is Biden’s approval ratings. CNN’s poll of polls, released Thursday, found that 41% of Americans approve of the way Joe...
Grading Biden’s first year: I’ll give him a B
The reports on Joe Biden’s press conference yesterday are pretty predictable. A Fox News headline called it a “total disaster.” The New York Post called is an “utter disaster.” The New York Times reported on the event with little overt...
Is Biden’s presidency doomed? Some historical perspective.
Princeton’s Julian Zelizer offers some historical context at CNN: Those who are worried should find some solace in the fact that contemporary presidents have been able to come back from difficult moments like these. Challenging first terms don’t inevitably put...
Biden-Cheney in 2024?
Tom Friedman floats the idea in his New York Times column. His model is Israel. Here is a taste: Could this play come to Broadway? I asked Steven Levitsky, a political scientist and co-author of “How Democracies Die,” after he presented some...