Biden needs an accomplishment as soon as possible

 I woke up this morning to look at this graph from fivethirtyeight.com

 

Needless to say,  I'm a bit scared right now. Biden has the second worst approval of the last 5 presidents (so every President in this Party System) and the other two saw massive losses in the House and Senate in their first midterms. Neither of them won their reelection with over 50% of the vote (Clinton won the electoral college, but it didn't have to go that way).

The exception is Obama who lost the House in his midterm, mostly because the GOP turned against the Affordable Care Act, lied about it, it wasn't fully in force, and according to my local Democratic Party the system built by Howard Dean had been almost fully destroyed after Tim Kaine became chair.

The ONLY president who kept the house in his first midterm was George W. Bush, and this chart makes it really clear  that is because of 9/11 and how almost every American supported our president in the wake of that disaster. Bush of course turned out to be the worst president in American history, using his power to undo our constitutional rights, but we needed leadership after that terrorist attack, and we trusted the wrong man.

So, this makes it clear that Biden needs three things right now, 

1. He needs a major accomplishment which will be felt by every American
2. He needs the party infrastructure which will be able to get out the vote next year
3. His policies need to help a significant portion of Americans within the next six months, or most Americans will remember in November, and many of his base will not turn out, which is part of what happened in 2010.

Now, Biden is a lucky son of a bitch. He ran against the least popular incumbent in a very long time. There are numerous issues which he can attack via executive order right now which will hold up in court.  The party infrastructure has been significantly rebuilt relative to how weak it was in 2010, so he doesn't have to worry about that.

While he is very clearly not going to get anything significant through congress, and it is obvious that Democrats are not going to censure Sinema and Manchin because they are obstinate assholes, and courtesy of #jillnothill and a terribly run campaign in 2016 we have a court system which is highly stacked against the Democratic Platform, that leaves only one option left...

Biden needs to pass executive orders which are popular and are going  to improve the lives of almost every American family as soon as possible. Every American should be able to look back in the midterms and see their lives are better, and be able to point to an executive order signed by President Joe Biden which made their lives better.

If a popular executive order is  defeated in the court system, Democrats can bring that to voters and make the case, "Hey, did you like this policy the President signed? Great! It really helped my family too. The reason that policy was destroyed is because Trump and Bush appointees in the Supreme Court shot it down. Can you help us win back the Senate so that we can rebalance the courts and make America work for everyone?" This is short enough and clear enough for a radio ad.

This argument works. Trust me.

Because if the Republican Party starts campaigning on what is happening in Afghanistan post-withdrawal, and the Democratic Party has no success from the last two years to point to, then the Democrats are screwed. The graph makes it very clear that President Biden saw a significant drop in approval in August, and Afghanistan was that point where his approval dropped. It doesn't matter that the withdrawal was planned under Trump. Joe Biden chose to honor the treaty which was negotiated with terrorists, and he chose to withdraw. Joe Biden is the President, the buck stops with him, both in reality, and in the eyes of the average American voter.

The choice is obvious, President Biden can sign some executive orders to make life better in the immediate future, or we can lose the midterms, according to history.

The easiest executive order which he can pass which fulfills this criteria is to cancel $50,000 of student loan debt.

The law already gives him this authority.

Get it done.