Labor Historian Eric Loomis was asked to give a letter grade to Joe Biden’s administration on labor policy. Biden makes the honor roll: Joe Biden has pledged repeatedly to go further than any of his predecessors with his support for U.S. labor rights. “I intend to be the most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history,” Biden said at a White House meeting in September 2021 that brought together ordinary workers, labor leaders and government officials. He has expressed this intention many times, sometimes clarifying his goals. For example, in 2023 he said in Chicago that his administration was “making it easier to empower workers by making it easier to join a union.” Based on my research regarding the history of organized labor in America, I would give Biden an A-minus for his record on workers rights. In my view, the man dubbed “Union Joe” has lived up to the claim, with one notable error. He says it’s the same grade he would give to FDR.
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Fox news is having a full-fledged meltdown over Kamala Harris using the F-word. It dishonors the office dontcha know. Yeah…
Don’t lose your nerve, Joe A friend who like others is permanently frustrated with “the Democrats” said Monday she wants them to show more fight. No argument here. We saw feistiness from Joe Biden during and in the wake of his State of the Union address: a flurry of hard-hitting internet ads went after his wannabe fascist opponent. But as college protests proliferated over the body count in the Gaza Strip, it feels as if the Biden campaign has dialed it back. It’s not helping that some polls show him trailing Donald Trump in several battleground states. Tuesday’s Axios story that claims Biden doesn’t believe he’s behind, writes Dan Pfeiffer, got “Democrats reverting to their natural state of worry verging on panic.” Pfeiffer argues that campaign is not in denial about current polling. Running a campaign. especially a presidential campaign, is largely about “mood management,” he explains. What makes it worse is Democrats vent their anxieties in public while you rarely see a poll unfavorable to Donald Trump on Fox News: Of course, the Biden folks are putting their best face forward.
He’s losing a troubling number of Republicans It’s Wednesday, so Donald “88 Counts” Trump is not in court. He is free to golf and complain his criminal trial means he’s unable to campaign for president. Tuesday featured three additional presidential primaries in Maryland, Nebraska, and West Virginia. Politico’s lede: “Donald Trump showed weakness in the suburbs in Tuesday’s primaries, while Joe Biden’s problem with the protest vote appeared to fade.” Zombie Nikki is still a problem for Trump: A week after Nikki Haley earned 22 percent of the vote in Indiana’s open GOP primary, the widespread expectation was that different rules in the states voting on Tuesday would take a huge chunk out of support for her zombie presidential candidacy. That didn’t exactly happen. Even though Haley likely won’t end up matching her Indiana total in Maryland, Nebraska or West Virginia, there are still some warning signs for Trump in the results.
The much anticipated testimony by former Donald Trump lawyer Michael Cohen finally arrived this week and from the sound of many of the talking heads on television it’s been a huge disappointment. They were apparently expecting the former president’s one-time personal “fixer” to melt down on the stand in a fit of rage or lunge at his former boss but instead the carefully prepared Cohen was subdued and succinct, admitting his lies and misdeeds in service of Donald Trump with a sorrowful mien. The prosecution’s case has been meticulously laid out through testimony from the people with whom Trump conspired to create fake news items about his political rivals in 2016 and their scheme to buy up negative stories about him. This was accompanied with testimony from his loyal, former assistants creating a timeline delineating what the former president knew and when he knew it. And then there was Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress who received the hush money payoff, taking the stand to dramatically verify that the story they were trying to suppress was true.
The AP reports: President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on Wednesday agreed to hold two campaign debates — the first on June 27 hosted by CNN and the second on Sept. 10 hosted by ABC — setting the stage for the first presidential face-off in just weeks. […] Trump, in a post on his Truth Social site, said he was “Ready and Willing to Debate” Biden. Hours later, Biden said he accepted an invitation from CNN, adding, “Over to you, Donald.” Trump said on Truth Social he’d be there, adding, “Let’s get ready to Rumble!!!” And soon after that, they agreed to the second debate on ABC. “Trump says he’ll arrange his own transportation,” Biden wrote on X. “I’ll bring my plane, too. I plan on keeping it for another four years.” Trump is convinced that Biden is such a doddering, drooling old fool that he’ll fall asleep during the debate.
I don’t usually watch Morning Joe because I’m on the west coast and it’s on very early for me. But the segment above has been circulating today and I thought it was worth sharing. It’s about the polling — specifically how the political press goes nuts over every bit of bad news for Biden in every NYT poll when others are showing a tighter race. For all we know, the NY Times poll is entirely right and the others are all wrong. It’s certainly possible. It’s a good poll with experienced and qualified analysts. But the rush to assume that even when there are other legitimate polls that suggest otherwise is a problem because it’s helping to set Trump up to challenge the results of the election if it doesn’t go his way. If the country is programmed to believe that Trump is way ahead in the polls and Biden is in much deeper trouble than he is after months of this kind of press coverage, his people (and probably others) will be predisposed to believe Trump’s lies about a rigged election.
Whatevs??? From The Washington Post, “US inflation eased last month in first slowdown of 2024” – Led by lower food and auto prices, inflation in the United States cooled slightly last month after three elevated readings, likely offering a tentative sigh of relief for officials at the Federal Reserve as well as President Joe Biden’s re-election team. Consumer prices rose 0.3% from March to April, the Labor Department said Wednesday, down slightly from 0.4% the previous month. Measured year-over-year, inflation ticked down from 3.5% to 3.4%. And a gauge of underlying inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy costs, reached its lowest level in three years….. ……Wednesday’s report provides a dose of reassurance that the pace of price increases may be resuming its slowdown. While the latest figures show inflation still well above the Fed’s 2% target, it’s the first time this year that the year-over-year figure has declined. And price increases cooled in some service industries, such as hotels, health care and auto repairs, that had previously kept inflation elevated.
It’s nervous laughter, but laughter it is. Even the faithful just aren’t that into her anymore: In the past, Family Research Council, founded in 1983 by Focus on the Family, and Concerned Women for America, founded in 1978 by the late Beverly LaHaye, both endorsed Greene 100% and applauded her for her work opposing LGBTQ rights and other issues. Now, both groups are criticizing Greene’s latest “bizarre conundrum”: the effort to take down House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has a long association with their movement. “Stop the madness,” said FRC President Tony Perkins in the organization’s The Washington Stand, which says it provides “news and commentary from a biblical worldview.” “I thought the goal of government was to work for the people — not just take political pot shots at the other party,” said Perkins, who has mentored Johnson for decades.
The Supremes are more than doing their part I noted last week that Bolts magazine was featuring a reader Q&A with an election law expert and they have published some of them today. It’s quite interesting even if a little bit depressing. But we’re used to that when it comes to this subject. Here’s one example: What’s the most underrated case where this court weakened voting rights, but that we just don’t talk about enough? — Anonymous There are two cases that hardly anyone has heard of but that have had a major impact on the way the Supreme Court treats the constitutional right to vote: Anderson v. Celebrezze, in 1983, and Burdick v. Takushi, in 1992. Anderson dealt with the desire of an independent candidate to gain ballot access after a state’s deadline for turning in enough signatures. Burdick was about an individual’s attempt to write-in a candidate instead of choosing one of the candidates listed on the ballot.