Political Observer comments.

The first three paragraphs of Mr. Ganesh’s political analysis offers?

There is no such thing as a popular US president. Each one enters office with the suspicion or ill will of almost half the electorate now. Once the routine wear and tear of governing sets in, a low approval rating is so natural as to almost be proof that one is doing the job.

The plight of Joe Biden has to be seen in this context. His dire ratings have to be weighed against the near impossibility of being widely liked in so riven a country. Not since George HW Bush in 1988 has someone won more than 400 out of the available 538 electoral college votes (a once banal feat).

Biden’s situation isn’t unique, then, much less unsalvageable. But if he is to recover, Democrats must understand his central problem. It isn’t, or isn’t just, old age. It isn’t — that eternal conceit of doomed governments the world over — a failure to “communicate” his achievements.

…

Considering that the first three paragraphs fails to take account of Eisenhower, Reagan, or even Obama: self-serving political reductivism is the Ganesh preferred strategy. What follows is a collection of unsubtle clichés, predicated upon his first three paragraphs:

Editor: a sampling of Ganesh clichés:

Biden’s situation isn’t unique, then, much less unsalvageable.

Biden over-interpreted his mandate. 

His brief was to end the dark carnival of Donald Trump and lead the US out of the pandemic. 

There is nothing like inflation to expose the generation gap between those who lead the US and most of those who live in it.

Since his cavalier early months, the president has grown more sensitive to concerns about inflation.

Editor: Ganesh’s political brew is thickened, that might add a kind of credence to his political speculations?

Policies that are popular on their own terms can be unpopular in combination. It is the impression of zeal, of pounding away at an ideological programme, that unnerves voters, unless they have sanctioned it in advance.

Editor: The Reader just has to laugh at this dull-witted assertion. Biden and The New Democrats are Neo-Liberals.

 What followed — profuse spending, subsidies on a scale that might scandalise a Gaullist — was not just startling.

There is nothing like inflation to expose the generation gap between those who lead the US and most of those who live in it. 

He might not fathom what a psychic trauma it is for the middle-aged and the young to see basic goods jump in price, and savings deplete in value. This is their first rodeo.

But members of his government still talk with messianic bombast about a “new economic order” for the world, as though price rises are so much collateral damage in a grand experiment on behalf of the People.

It is the impression of zeal, of pounding away at an ideological programme, that unnerves voters, unless they have sanctioned it in advance.

Editor: the sentence below is on its face  ludicrous, Biden is a Neo-Liberal .

In cast of mind, the Democrats are less Marxist than most parties of the left.

Editor: Mr. Ganesh is so desperate he is not above dragooning Hegel, and spells Neo Liberal correctly! The pressing question is what is ‘Hegelian flowchart’? Chatter, instead of actual argument, the fall back position of Ganesh?

Even mild US progressives now say, as though reading from some Hegelian flowchart, that we have come to the end of a stage called Neoliberalism, and are now proceeding neatly to the dialectical counterblast.

Editor: Let me abbreviate the final paragraph

Democrats seem convinced the recent past was a Steinbeckian hellscape of downtrodden workers and cackling bosses. .

Editor: Political Critique of a kind, featuring again ‘neoliberal’ in its faint praise iteration :

The neoliberal age included low inflation. The neoliberal age included low inflation. It needed reform, not rupture.

Editor: two kinds of ‘ presidencies’:

There are water-treading presidencies and wave-making presidencies.

Reader confront the last sentence for yourself ! 

Political Observer