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Joe Biden - Teflon President?

lpetrich

lpetrich

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Ronald Reagan was nicknamed the Teflon President because attacks would not stick to him.

By contrast, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were nicknamed Velcro Presidents because of all the attacks that stuck to them.

But is Joe Biden a new Teflon President?

Joe Biden and the Conservative-Book Bust - The Atlantic - "Neither authors nor publishing houses have figured out how to turn the new president into a compelling villain."
His presidency may be young, but industry insiders have told me in recent weeks that the market for anti-Biden books is ice cold. Authors have little interest in writing them, editors have little interest in publishing them, and—though the hypothesis has yet to be tested—it’s widely assumed that readers would have little interest in buying them. In many ways, the dynamic represents a microcosm of the current political moment: Facing a new president whose relative dullness is his superpower, the American right has gone hunting for richer targets to elevate.

...
To others, though, the apathy makes sense. Eric Nelson, the executive editor at Broadside Books, the conservative imprint of HarperCollins, told me that the right-wing media’s portrayal of Biden as a weak, addled old man is not conducive to book-length takedowns. “Nobody who watches Fox thinks that Joe Biden is in charge of the country,” Nelson said. The popular narrative on the right is that Biden is a kind of figurehead whose White House is actually being run by radical leftists behind the scenes. “If somebody came to me and was like, ‘I have a book on Biden’s secret plan to destroy America,’ I would ask, ‘How many times does the word nap appear in the index?’” Nelson said.

Ben Shapiro, the popular right-wing podcast host and author, echoed this sentiment. The president “has a deeply nonthreatening persona,” Shapiro told me. “You kind of feel bad attacking him, honestly, because it feels like elder abuse.”
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Seems very honest of him.
 
JB doesn't provoke the sort of hostility that other recent Democratic Presidents have.
When Bill Clinton was on the cover, the books were laden with prurient (and in many cases dubious) details about his alleged affairs and personal corruption. When it was Barack Obama, the books portrayed him—many in barely veiled racial terms—as a dangerous radical trying to transform America. And though she was never actually elected, the ominous prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency generated years’ worth of right-wing best sellers.
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Right-winger Jonah Goldberg:
Most of the good ammo against Biden—which I’ve deployed in the past—isn’t as effective after four years of Trump. He says crazy things! He doesn’t know what he’s talking about! He has a ridiculous ego and lies about his brilliance and expertise! All of this is true. But all of that has been normalized by Trump.
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Ben Shapiro has a broader concern. From the article, "While conservatives may not care about Biden, he told me, they are petrified of the larger progressive forces they see at work in American politics."

The Trump years have featured lurid drama, and that's meant a lot of money from publishing political books. But that has mostly dried up, and political nonfiction is getting back to normal. Likewise for TV news networks. The latest Trump outrage is now gone, because Trump has not been able to do much more than give interviews and blog.

As to Biden being boring, he seems much like his ex-boss, "No Drama Obama".
 
I'm going to coin a new phrase - shit-stained goggles.

We all know what "rose tinted glasses" means, right? Shit Stained Goggles is the inverse. When what preceded was so fucking bad, one views what's current as better than what it really is (ie viewing Biden through shit stained goggles). Jen Psaki would be another example. After the clown car of Press Secretaries that preceded her, Psaki is viewed by some as some 9th dimension debate lord because she can hold her own against "news" outlets like OAN and NewsMax. Another example would be how everyone initially reacted to Anthony Cuomo's handling of Covid because it was orders of magnitude better than Trump.

I suspect there will be a bit of viewing the current US Administration through shit stained goggles leading up to 2022. Not as much as if the roles were reversed, but some. Ironically, right wing media is helping this by trying to smear anything and everything in their outrage machine (see Kamal's tweet). Biden looks good in comparison simply by virtue of how fake the outrage is.
 
Kamala will be the target of choice if Joe continues to project benign benevolence. Kamala will be portrayed as a radicalized BLM troll. BTW, the Trumpies despised Obama with a vitriolic, palpable hatred that was beyond all reason. They still do. They're capable of expansive feats of loathing that have nothing to do with the object's behavior, language, or stated values. I admit I detest Trump. But, my god. Jesus Christ. There's a day-by-day record of how the man befouled this country and corrupted the government from top to bottom.
 
Anti-Clinton publisher Adam Bellow:
But he told me that any attempted exposés may be hobbled by the relative lack of journalistic firepower on the right, which is heavy on pundits and light on reporters. “One problem with conservative media is … they don’t have sources in this administration,” he said. “Nobody will talk to them.”
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The right wing is now looking for new villains. Anthony Fauci. Joe Biden's son Hunter. AOC, though "It’s hard to find a bad picture of her to put on the cover." Kamala Harris.
Last month, when the conservative author David Horowitz released his new book, The Enemy Within, the cover featured an array of would-be Democratic bad guys, including Harris, Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, and so on. It was expected to be a hit; Horowitz’s last book—a vigorous defense of Trump—had sold more than 168,000 copies in hardcover alone. But apparently his readers weren’t as taken with his new cast of characters. As of this writing, The Enemy Within has sold 12,898 copies.
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Consider right-winger David Horowitz, who recently wrote "The Enemy Within: How a Totalitarian Movement Is Destroying America." That book's cover shows some of DH's villains:

Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris
Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chuck Schumer, Ilhan Omar

Joe Biden is nowhere in sight.
It was expected to be a hit; Horowitz’s last book—a vigorous defense of Trump—had sold more than 168,000 copies in hardcover alone. But apparently his readers weren’t as taken with his new cast of characters. As of this writing, The Enemy Within has sold 12,898 copies.
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As a side note, Our Friend David Horowitz, the Trump Propagandist | The New Republic has a nice article about how DH moved from being a hard-core left-winger to being a hard-core right-winger.
 
I ponder if Trump fatigued the entire nation on scandal.

Also, the economy is warming up as we reopen, so as the economy goes up, the people care less about DC.

And finally, doesn't Biden need a scandal first, to prove Teflon coating?
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
I ponder if Trump fatigued the entire nation on scandal.

Also, the economy is warming up as we reopen, so as the economy goes up, the people care less about DC.

And finally, doesn't Biden need a scandal first, to prove Teflon coating?
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Not just fatigued out, but he redefined what it takes to be a scandal. While the QOP would love to say everything a Democrat does is a scandal that message doesn't work too well.
 
I'm betting that if we ever do see an anti Biden book, it'll just be self-published unhinged ramblings of some Qonspiracy theorist.
 
Patooka said:
I suspect there will be a bit of viewing the current US Administration through shit stained goggles leading up to 2022.
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I feel like that’s why Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize. The goggles that had been stained with shit by Bush.
 
Rhea said:
Patooka said:
I suspect there will be a bit of viewing the current US Administration through shit stained goggles leading up to 2022.
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I feel like that’s why Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize. The goggles that had been stained with shit by Bush.
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The incredible thing about Obama was he gets this award he knows he doesn't deserve, and uses it as a moment to:

1) not revel in self-glory (imagine that was Trump?!)
2) speak to America's ills
3) speak to everyone else's ills
4) let's all do better

It must have been embarrassing to win something like that without doing anything. And he made the most of it. And then America failed to follow through in 2016 and even worse in 2020.
 
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