Second worst after Trump-- and worse than Bush!-- is not a good place to be... but that has always been Biden's destiny-- horrible for him... and for us. FiveThirtyEight looked at that equation in terms of popularity polling this morning: "[T]he public is dissatisfied. And it has been for a while now, too, as Biden’s approval rating has hovered in the low 40s for nearly three months, with roughly 42 percent of Americans currently approving of his job performance and 51 percent disapproving... Looking back at recent presidents, this development is particularly troubling for Biden, as he has the second-lowest approval rating of any president one-year in. Only Donald Trump, whose approval rating was in the high 30s, had a lower rating."
This week a young friend of mine asked me if I had ever heard of Dick Morris and Doug Schoen. He smiled when I crossed myself to ward off Evil. "That bad?" Worse, I said. He was thinking of getting into business again. He said, did you know they want Hillary to run for president. I knew. I asked him if he knew what a "Fox Democrat" is. He didn't, but he guessed, accurately.
A worse idea than a 2024 Biden-Cheney ticket? Expect plenty of this kind of awfulness in the next few years. And since I would like to see the end of the two-party system, it works just fine for me. I envision a fascist party on the right (most of the GOP), a progressive party on the left (most of the Progressive Caucus) and a neo-liberal/neo-conservative centrist mush, made up on corporate whores from both current parties, in between. But we have a ways to go, probably a very painful ways to go.
Tara Palmeri opened that day at Politico with a warning that the Clintons are back in the hunt: Can The Clinton's Claw Back To Relevance? The Mush. "With the Democratic Party on course for a devastating midterm election and party elder statesmen stepping in to help, people close to Bill and Hillary Clinton said the former first couple sees it as an opportunity to insert themselves back into political life. The intra-party divisions have given them a chance to flex their centrist, dealmaking brand of politics as a way to move the party forward." Ys, like Bill's deal making they brought us permission for a foreign Nazi, Rupert Murdoch, to own a communications network, the single worst thing to have happened to our country since the Civil War.
Bill Clinton has relished the opportunity to whip on behalf of the White House. In addition to pressing Manchin on the filibuster, Clinton suggested that he should salvage Build Back Better by zeroing in on the few elements the West Virginia senator really wants.
"I told Joe, 'Break it up, pick one or two [pieces] you can swallow and then run on the rest,’” Clinton recalled of their phone call, a person with knowledge of the conversation told Playbook. The idea is drawing interest among party leadership.
Clinton also spoke with Sinema recently, according to one of the people familiar with the call, and said afterward, “I don’t know her, but I like her.”
At the same time, multiple people tell me and Daniel Lippman that the Clinton Global Initiative is strongly considering bringing back its annual star-studded confab scheduled around the U.N. General Assembly. Amid questions about conflicts of interest, CGI announced in 2016 that it would be holding its last annual conference.
The following year, Bill Clinton symbolically handed off the event to Mike Bloomberg, who launched the “Bloomberg Global Business Forum.” Those close to the Clintons say that CGI lost its relevance without its biggest event. Now people familiar with the Clintons’ thinking said they are close to making a final decision on whether to bring back the annual meeting in September.
Another factor that motivated Bill Clinton to get more engaged: the low ratings and muted public reaction to Impeachment: American Crime Story, the FX show produced by Monica Lewisnsky, according to a long-time bundler for the couple.
"It's a perpetual itch that will never go away," a person close to the couple said of the draw to public life. “They know how to slowly reenter. The Clintons want to reset the board in their favor and then move the pieces.”
As for Hillary Clinton, two people from Clinton world described pollster Doug Schoen's op-ed in the WSJ this week floating a 2024 run as a “gift” to her. Even though the people said there’s no chance she runs for president again, the attention allows her to gauge public reaction as she sets her sights on reemerging in lower-profile ways, like campaigning during the midterms or taking on policy fights.
"She's bored," the longtime Clinton bundler said of the former secretary of State, senator and first lady, who’s now hosting a MasterClass on “the power of resilience.”
The Clintons, the bundler added, "don't want to be pariahs anymore. It’s less about being kingmakers and more about being relevant and people seeing them as a net positive, not a net negative.”
What, no mention of Joe Lieberman? Blanche Lincoln? Ben Nelson? Mary Landrieu? Bob Kerrey? Except that I want to see the Democratic Party shatter-- and a Clinton resurgence would probably help that along-- I'd say the Democrats should do to Bill what the Windsors did to Prince Andrew... and for the exact same reason.
