The Biden Administration Can Claim a Clean Sweep of Objectives for the American People

Listening to an online segment of a podcast by political expert Rachel Bitecofer the other day, I understand clearly that one of the big differences in politics now, from even thirty years ago, is the proliferation of literally thousands of different sources of information.  It is virtually impossible to get media saturation, which means that there is a ton of misinformation, and a lot of just plain ignorance of what is going on.  Unless something is hugely sensational, a majority of the population, all equipped with several electronic devices and access to hundreds of sources of information, and mis-information, won't know about it.  

It's that lack of competent, factual information, delivered with journalistic standards for accuracy and truth, that has led to the very false impression that the country is headed in the wrong direction.  That's just rhetoric.  The facts prove otherwise.

I'm just a blogger, a professional in the education field, an amateur journalist because I got a minor in English with some courses in journalism, edited my college newspaper for two years, and worked in small market radio for a while.  But I think this is worth putting out there, with some links, in this narrow window of time before the election, because I haven't really seen any news coverage that wraps this up.  

The Biden administration has been successful in resolving everything that has been raised as an issue in this campaign.  We've covered the legislative success he achieved when he had a cooperative Congress during his first two years.  And I'm going to underline the relative success that was achieved by a mid-term election cycle in which the party in power held on to the senate, and while they did lose control of the house, the margin has been too narrow for any GOP advantage to develop.  The Republicans did more to sabotage themselves than to own any libs.  

Let's start with some of the biggest successes that are campaign issues.  The evidence of achievement flies in the face of the impression of those Americans who think the country is going "in the wrong direction."  Clearly, it's not, and that's a false impression.

Inflation

The inflation rate was managed by careful moves with legislation and with management of interest rates by the fed, along with some tactics by the administration, such as selling off parts of the national oil reserves at high prices and replacing the sell-off with oil at a lower cost.  There's a lot of that kind of thing that goes on, people aren't aware of it, but it helps an awful lot.  

The infrastructure bill which Biden succeeded in getting passed, has been huge in keeping job growth going and the economy flourishing.  I can actually look out the window of my apartment on the far northwest side of Chicago, and see three separate projects funded by this bill, including the replacement of the storm drain system in the neighborhood just to the south, which was old, and had collapsed, causing flooding of my building's garage in heavy rains, the elevating and replacing of electrical transmission lines along the major street in front of our building with safer, sturdier poles and which will lead to the installation of much needed traffic signals, and a project to add off ramps to the exit at the edge of our municipality, off I-294, which promotes business development at that intersection.  

And of course, the inflation rate is actually down below normal levels.  Joe told us that there was no quick fix, that it would take a couple of years, but they would get it done, and they have succeeded, without triggering a recession and without affecting job growth or increasing unemployment!!! 

I'm happy to say, I have seen ads from the Democrats which celebrate this.  

Immigration

President Biden was willing to sign a border bill drafted by Republican Senator James Lankford, in a spirit of bi-partisan cooperation and recognition of a need on both sides of the aisle.  The proposed bill did several things which were necessary to secure the border, including beefing up the border patrol and doing some hardening up of infrastructure in areas where the biggest problems were occurring. It was a rare bi-partisan measure, not just a knee-jerk reaction, to resolving issues surrounding an immigration problem caused mainly by large numbers of political refugees from Venezuela seeking asylum in the United States.  

Trump, who, it should be noted, encouraged Venezuelans to come to the United States during his term in office, as a slap at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, told Republican Senators not to pass the bill because he wanted to run on immigration as a political issue, appealing to racist bigots among his base who are white supremacists and America first fascists.  

I'd have preferred to see the Democrats make this a hill on which to die, and that they'd gone ahead and busted the filibuster to ram this bill through.  But, the next best thing, which actually gives 100% of the credit for resolving the crisis, at least temporarily, was President Biden's executive order.  The Republicans are seen as playing politics with border issues, while the Democrats can now take 100% of the credit for taking the crisis seriously and doing something about it.  

And the crime rate has not gone up as a result of the number of immigrants coming into the country during the political upheaval in Venezuela, or the ongoing issues in Central America, or with the Haitians who have come here in large numbers for quite a while now.  The Trump campaign and the GOP have left plenty of evidence of their lies in this regard for voters who care to find it and look at it. 

Four Years of Stability Following Four Years of Inept, Incompetent, Instability

By every measure of political success, the United States has experienced what will go down in history as four of its best years in every regard.  The President secured the NATO alliance, provided assistance to Ukraine's military enabling them to hold off a Russian invasion and actually make advances into Russian territory to cut off some of their ability to keep their hold on its eastern provinces.  If Harris wins the election, Putin will find a way to back out of Ukraine, because his only hope for holding on is for Trump to be elected and cut off their help.  

We got out of the incredibly expensive and futile war in Afghanistan, in spite of the meddling, of Trump actually inviting Taliban leaders to Camp David in an incredibly incompetent move, undermining the elected government helped by George Bush's "nation building" failure, kicking the can down the road and leaving the problems for Biden to solve, which he did.  He organized an evacuation of over 100,000 Americans and Afghans out of the country in a matter of days, when Trump seemed incapable of making a next move after undermining everything by declaring we were going to leave.  

We have the hope of this continued success in our current Vice-President who has all of this as a foundation on which to build, with tax and economic proposals that virtually all leading American economists, including those at the conservative Wall Street Journal, have said will lead to far more prosperity for the American people than Trump's tax cuts for billionaires and tax added to retail and consumer goods through his proposed tariffs.  

Electing Kamala Harris as President of the United States on Tuesday will give her the opportunity to provide the same kind of success.  Let's give her a house and Senate that will help keep us moving forward.