OK or Great?

If there is anything that sums up the change we have seen in the four years between Donald Trump's first State of the Union speech in 2018 and Joe Biden's in 2022 it is this headline that appeared a number of places in the mainstream media.

Source: https://www.governing.com/now/joe-biden-state-of-the-union-2022

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/01/state-of-the-union-2022-00013072

Source: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/joe-biden-said-what-americans-needed-to-hear-were-going-to-be-ok

We are going to be OK?

OK is long way from Great.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/30/politics/state-of-the-union-2018/index.html

It is a sign of just how big a hole Joe Biden has dug for himself and the country in just over a year in office.

The objective is now to be OK rather than be great?

I will take his aspiration of being "OK" when compared to other parts of the speech,

Portions of Biden's speech were laughable.

The one that got the most attention was when Biden said this in the State of the Union speech.

"The Iranian people?"

“(Russian President Vladimir) Putin may circle Kyiv with tanks, but he’ll never gain the hearts and souls of the Iranian people,”

It seems to be another example of Biden being increasingly Teleprompter-challenged.

However, there were more substantive issues in the speech that were laughable when judged against the facts.

For example, consider Biden's full-throated call for more FUNDING of the police.

"We should all agree: The answer is not to defund the police," Biden said during his first official State of the Union address on Tuesday night. "The answer is to FUND the police with the resources and training they need to protect our communities."

Of course, Biden and the Democrats spent the better part of the year leading up to the 2020 election saying exactly the opposite. Police departments around the country needed to be defunded. The most liberal Democrats argued they should be abolished altogether. The polling must not be looking very good on that issue right now.

We also had Biden claiming in the speech that Covid cases were coming down across the United States primarily due to the administration's vaccination program. This is how Politico reported it.

The president also touted the nation’s progress against the Covid-19 pandemic, pointing to his administration’s vaccination program as the primary cause behind the nation’s plummeting number of cases.

Biden's vaccination program was the primary reason that Covid cases plummeted in the United States?

Why then did we have a surge to begin with considering that 75% of adults were fully vaccinated at the beginning of December? 

The numbers of those fully vaccinated since mid-December has increased only slightly since early December. Those that did get fully vaccinated were primarily in the 5-12 year age brackets with almost no risk from Covid to begin with.

Source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccination-trends_vacctrends-fully-daily

However, that apparently does not stop Joe Biden from viewing the Covid surge this way.

Source: The New York Times

Did vaccine effectiveness all of sudden kick in around the middle of January after cases rose 6x higher than last year's surge when almost no one was fully vaccinated?

It defies both logic and common sense.

Is there someone in the Biden administration, the CDC or NIH that might be willing to admit that there is such a thing as natural immunity and it actually might actually be more effective than the vaccines?

It is easy to understand why Biden's goal is just get people to feel "OK' about the prospects for the United States when you look at his polling numbers right now.

Biden has gone from a +19.5 net approval rating to a -13.2 in just over a year in the Real Clear Politics average.

Source: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president-biden-job-approval-7320.html

When you look at specific issues, Biden's numbers look even worse.

For example, here is how voters view Biden's handling of key issues in a recent CBS News/YouGov poll.

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-ukraine-biden-state-of-the-union-opinion-poll-2022-02-29/

For context, Biden's overall approval was 44% in this poll. He doesn't get close to that approval number on any individual issue.

My question is who are the 30% of voters who APPROVE of Biden's handling of inflation?

Are they just happy that it is not 15%, 20% or 25%?

68% of the voters in the poll thought that things were going very badly (36%) or somewhat badly (32%).

There are actually 5% who think things are going VERY WELL.

It makes me think Jill Biden, Hunter Biden or Nancy Pelosi were in the poll sample.

In reality, this was a Democrat-leaning poll with a +6 Democrat weighting which means that Biden's numbers are undoubtedly worse.

For example, 54% of Democrats say they APPROVE of how Biden is handling inflation (vs. 25% of Independents) and 55% of Democrats say things are going very well or somewhat well (vs. 27% for Independents).

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-ukraine-biden-state-of-the-union-opinion-poll-2022-02-29/

It seems that most Democrats are OK with anything Biden does.

There certainly does not appear to be any interest for Democrats in having anything to do with making America great again.

The prevailing view with them seems to be it was never great to begin with.

Joe Biden seems OK with just doing enough to make sure they are OK with him and the Democrats in 2022 and 2024.

That does not seem like an OK strategy to me.