Pirate's Cove

How dare Republicans fight back against Sleepy Joe! That never happens in politics! Democrats never fought Trump

Inflation summer vs. recovery summer: Biden fights to win the narrative

President Joe Biden faces a daunting task over the summer months: convincing Americans struggling to return to a normal life that rising prices on everything from gasoline and food to airline tickets won’t last.

Republicans — seeing a potential repeat of President Barack Obama’s “Recovery Summer” of 2010 when the economy suddenly backslid after emerging from the Great Recession — have used the price spikes to attack the administration’s big-spending plans and response to the pandemic.

That will put pressure on the White House to go all out in the coming months to convince the American people that despite recent setbacks, including lower-than-expected job gains, the economy is on the right path.

Employment growth may be disappointing to some economists, but Biden officials note that wages are rising. Inflation is hitting consumers, but the Federal Reserve considers it transitory. Homeowners may have to wait months for furniture and appliance deliveries, but that’s because the economy is roaring back faster than predicted. And the administration wants to pour trillions more into the economy, with child-care options, free pre-school and other benefits for workers, especially at the lower end of the income scale.

In fairness, there’s a lot of stuff going on that would be exactly the same had Trump been re-elected. Cars would still be in short supply, as would so many other products. The difference is that Trump would be working to make the economy better, rather than trying to put more and more regulations in place, attempting to enable confidence in a recovery. Joe is just Joe, not really sure what’s going on. But, is anyone surprised that Politico is making this more about Republicans Pouncing?

‘Spray and Pray’: Republicans ramp up attacks on Biden on … everything

Early in Joe Biden’s presidency, Republicans openly conceded how poor a target he was for them. Their hits on the president simply weren’t sticking.

That hasn’t, however, kept Republicans from swinging away. Biden is far and away the GOP’s No. 1 villain on Facebook, according to an analysis conducted by the Democratic-leaning communications agency Bully Pulpit for POLITICO.

Over the last three months, Republicans and affiliated groups and committees have spent nearly $2.5 million trying to paint Biden and his priorities in a negative light. That’s more than three times what they’ve spent on Facebook ads targeting other leading Democrats — from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and former President Barack Obama — and issues like socialism, fake news, and “defund the police” combined. POLITICO opted to review the last three months of data, after Facebook lifted the ban on political ads on its U.S. platform.

But there has not been a consistent theme to the anti-Biden spots. The attack lines getting pushed most on the right go after Biden’s massive infrastructure push, his call for raising taxes, dark money groups that support his agenda, his position on guns and the rise of gun violence in U.S. cities, according to Bully Pulpit’s analysis. The conservative outfit Americans for Prosperity is leading the online barrage against Biden, with spots on infrastructure, taxes and the American Jobs Plan. The National Rifle Association has run online ads targeting Biden on guns, claiming that the “Biden Political Machine [will] dismantle the 2nd Amendment.”

Democrats, including Politico, spent the entire four years of Trump’s presidency attacking him on everything, including personal stuff. I don’t remember Politico’s complaints on that, on the ginned up “crime” investigations against Trump, his family, and his businesses. Why would Republicans not spend way more money attacking Biden than Pelosi, AOC, Sanders, and Obama? Good thing the Credentialed Media is there to protect Biden.

If the economy was doing so great, would Sleepy Joe and his people need to work overtime to convince people that the economy was great?