White House Report Card: Could have been worse, ask Ye

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Conservative analyst Jed Babbin, grading a D-minus, however, said the president had another week pinballing between missteps and embarrassing moves.

John Zogby
Grade C+

Context is always important in the business of granting grades and assessments. Ye (formerly known as Kanye West), Walker, Trump, and Truss come to mind. Now they had a very bad week. Bad to the bone.

In this context, Biden did not do so badly. He is the president, and inflation continues to rise at an annualized 8% rate. The stock market behaved like the Coney Island roller coaster, which is not a good thing. The Federal Reserve is probably going to raise interest rates another 0.75% at its next meeting. And Biden’s options for punishing Saudi Arabia for un-alliance behavior are very limited.

Once again, the dementia police are having a field day with some of his mangled words, which they interpret to mean that the president was suggesting that his son Beau died in Iraq. I played that tape over and over again and found that not to be the case. (I also played it backward, and it did confirm for me that Paul McCartney is indeed dead.)

Meanwhile, the president’s polling numbers for the week average a clean 44%, with one poll showing him at 48% approval. Even better, our new John Zogby Strategies poll has him beating Donald Trump by 5 percentage points. Not a very good week because of economic news, but so much better than the people mentioned above.

Jed Babbin
Grade D-

There was a sporadic reappearance of the Biden administration’s entertainment value this week, but most of the news (inflation, recession, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s so-far successful nuclear blackmail) wasn’t funny at all.

Inflation, at over 8% on groceries, continues to be the toughest on the poor. Inflation is at the highest rate in 40 years.

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Biden’s Labor Department wants to make “gig workers,” people who are independent contractors for companies, into regular employees, requiring companies to pay benefits, raise wages, and probably fire most of the gig workers. California tried that for people such as Uber drivers, and it backfired.

Biden’s Selective Service Administration announced that transgender “women” are required to register for the draft but that transgender “men” are not. But doesn’t that make the Biden administration transphobic?

The Saudis say that Biden tried to get OPEC to delay its production cuts until after the election and OPEC turned him down. Meanwhile, desperately trying to keep gas prices from going over $5/gallon again, Biden is draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the lowest level since the SPR was created in the 1980s. Nevertheless, gasoline prices are rising again, and that won’t be good news for the Democrats in the election that’s less than four weeks away. The Saudis, ever a transactional ally, are cozying up to Putin.

Meanwhile, even Saturday Night Live is mercilessly mocking Biden’s “two words, ‘made in America’” remark last week.

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On the most serious note, Biden is utterly failing to deter Putin from using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The president’s “Armageddon” remarks were a demonstration of fear. He and the NATO nations are totally unwilling or unable to outline what the consequences for Russia would be if nukes were used in Ukraine. Biden is too scared of Putin to do anything to deter the Russian from anything. Putin’s nuclear blackmail is succeeding, paving the way for China, Iran, and North Korea to do more of the same.

John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His weekly podcast with son and managing partner Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on Twitter @ZogbyStrategies

Jed Babbin is a contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on Twitter @jedbabbin