From Crime to COVID, Biden is Clueless

President Joe Biden is being chastised for failing to adapt to declining COVID-19 cases as Democrat governors relax pandemic restrictions.

Biden is at odds with other high-ranking Democrats, which puts him in a difficult position ahead of the 2022 midterm elections

There Seems to be a Disconnect

As per former Republican strategist John Pitney, Biden’s devotion to the CDC has bound him to the government agency’s recommendations.

The current COVID-19 issue highlights “many disconnects because various levels have different goals,” says former CDC spokesperson Glen Nowak. Ideally, Biden should focus on the “whole picture,” whether it’s health, economics, etc., he says.

This week, the White House was stung. Jen Psaki, Biden’s press secretary, endorsed the CDC’s indoor mask regulations in COVID-19-endemic areas.

“Our responsibility is to follow through on what the president promised during the campaign,” Psaki told reporters. “That moves at the speed of data, not politics.”

Because the president established unreasonable expectations last year about how COVID-19 vaccines would return everything back to normal, Biden is out of step with Democrat governors and a rising number of congressional members.

The president warned of a winter of catastrophic sickness and death for the unvaccinated. Months later, the White House has provisionally embraced pandemic mitigation techniques as part of the “new normal.”

Nowak believes Biden might have spent time testing before the omicron strain caused widespread shortages ahead of the holidays.

However, the president is “damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” says the head of the University of Georgia Center for Health and Risk Communication.

“Public health initiatives aren’t really beneficial if most individuals don’t do them,” he remarked. “Though if you don’t take those measures and the infection spreads, you’ll be chastised for being sluggish.”

“The problem for elected politicians and officials is figuring out not just what’s best for public health, but also how popular proposals would be with constituents,” Nowak added. 

Inflation and Crime

The epidemic isn’t the only time Biden has been caught off guard. Inflation and criminality are examples.

Pitney says Biden can’t wield a magic wand to stop inflation from reaching a 40-year high of 7.5 percent. He mentioned Richard Nixon’s and Ronald Reagan’s failed initiatives to lower consumer prices.

Biden’s issue is his tardiness in identifying inflation as a problem and his advisors’ dismissal of it as “transitory.” Republicans, on the other hand, are focusing on violent crime increases in 14 Democrat-run cities.

Republicans claim Democrats want to “defund the cops.” Despite blaming the epidemic for some of the crime rises, Biden visited New York last week to promote his anti-crime strategy.

Pitney said it was hard for Biden to fight crime, alluding to Nixon, who said he would appoint a new attorney general in 1968. At the time, criminal activity increased, and Attorney General John Mitchell was imprisoned.