Joe Biden’s first year as president has been a failure

After a year in office as president, there are a lot of reasons why Quinnipac polling shows President Joe Biden’s approval rating to be at 33%, despite media adulation. As former President Barack Obama was reported to have said, referring to Biden, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f--- things up.”

Inflation is the cruelest and most regressive tax on the poor and middle class. The figures are clear. In December the Consumer Price Index rose 7% from the year before, the fastest rate since June of 1982. The rate accelerated to 9.1% over the past three months and real median wages are down $11.58 since Biden took office.

The issue is not transitory, as Biden said after first denying it was even an issue. Last year the Democrats increased federal spending by 54% and they expected that to not cause inflation. Inflation always causes supply chain issues as production starts to fall behind demand, but production is higher now than before the pandemic and ports are moving 27% more goods than pre-pandemic.

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Democrats dishonestly claimed that Build Back Better was “paid for” and would help fight inflation. George Orwell’s quote that “one has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool” applies perfectly.

Government and its employees don’t “share our pain.” They and are not harmed by inflation, but the poor, middle classes and those on fixed incomes are hurt. To them Biden shows indifference as they struggle to buy food and fuel or pay rent.

COVID is now lashing our country. We all recall when Biden promised to “shut down the virus” and said, referring to Donald Trump, that anyone “who is responsible for 220,000 deaths … should not be president.” Despite having inherited safe and effective vaccines, more Americans have died since Biden took office than before. Businesses and schools are being closed and the damage to our society and country is accelerating.

The administration has horridly managed the success it was given, delayed ordering testing kits and mandated cloth masks when it turned out they are less effective. Administration officials have derided anyone questioning its strategy as anti-vaxxers or worse. They have never given the American people any reason to believe that there is a coherent strategy or that Biden will resign having presided over more deaths than President Trump, whom Biden said should have resigned.

Denial is not a strategy. Due to his unraveling of the functional border policies he inherited, more than 1.7 million illegal aliens were apprehended at our southern border in fiscal year 2021 and no one knows how many were been caught. Those apprehended are normally given a notice to appear and are permitted, with their children, to stay here until the process is completed.

At the same time the flood of fentanyl across our now-open southern borders continues. More Americans died from fentanyl in the year ending April 2021 (100,306) than Americans under than 49 from COVID (57,239). Just think about that. I suspect American really do not know how their lives have been enhanced by this flood of illegals and drugs, and one wishes Biden would let ordinary Americans know.

Americans have a right to expect a government that keeps them and their kids safe. Under policies that demonize the police, allow criminals out on no cash bail and extremist liberal prosecutors, homicides are up 36% over last year. Biden’s reaction is indifference.

Our children are our treasures and Biden’s failure to confront the most reactionary forces in America, the teachers’ unions, and demand that they allow schools to open and educate the kids, in person, is a clear sign of what matters to Biden. Hint: It is not the children.

When Biden said “if there’s American citizens left in Afghanistan…we’re going to stay to get them all out,” we believed him. We were deceived, but not as badly as the hundreds of Americans left behind and the thousands of Afghanis who helped us and their families who were left behind to be slaughtered by the Taliban, who Biden is now sending over $300 million in aid.

His incompetence and his policies are not working for Americans, and Americans now know it.

Edward B. Harmon is a retired mergers and acquisitions attorney and law school professor who is a monthly contributor to the Sun. He lives in Gainesville.

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This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Edward B. Harmon: Biden’s first year as president has been a failure