Friday open thread: Let's talk about Joe, baby

To put it quite simply, this week has been spectacular for the forces of democracy over those of fascism. Let's recap, shall we?

• The Senate passed the bipartisan Chips Act, which was then passed by the House and sent to President Joe Biden for his signature.
• In doing so, Democrats snookered Republicans and revived elements of the Build Back Better plan, committing to the taxing of billion dollar corporations with a minimum tax rate of 15%, while allotting over $300 billion to the fight against climate change.
• The Department of Justice under Attorney General Merrick Garland is launching a full frontal assault against Donald Trump and those who helped him stage his attempted coup, from getting search warrants for the content of John Eastman's phone to flipping the conduit between Eastman and aspiring acting attorney general Jeffrey Clark to going before a court to smash Trump's claims to executive privilege to compel testimony from his former aides in the ongoing grand juries.
• We now have weeks of solid polling showing that the race for the midterms has shifted, with Democrats in the catbird's seat to maintain and expand their Senate majority, to House polling showing Democrats with a solid lead.
• In Pennsylvania, both John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro lead their races for Senate and governor.
• And hell, even Rasmussen shows Pres. Biden's poll numbers improving.

And this is all down to Joe. 

While the commentariat was losing its mind, Pres. Biden just kept doing what he was elected to do. He spoke to voters. He rebuilt our foreign alliances. He didn't get mired in the day-to-day outrage. He didn't respond to every setback by changing course. Unlike former president George W. Bush's blinkered "stay-the-course" routine during the Iraq War based on nothing but his own delusions, Pres. Biden has decades of experience in Washington. Storms come; sometimes they last a long time; but a skilled politician knows how to weather them and come out on the other side of them.

And having a four year term is helpful. Prime ministers can get toppled overnight, as we saw with Boris Johnson. But a president of the United States, for good and ill, is there for the full term, unless he is impeached and removed. That gives them the most precious commodity in politics: time. Time to see through their plans. Time to either make a success or a failure of their projects. Trump used his four years to wallow in grievance. Pres. Biden has used these two years to score victory after victory, even if the fetid media engages in blood sport for the ultimate crimes of getting us out of a twenty year war, and not leaking to them and making their lives easier.

Again, as we saw with Pres. Bush, there's a fine line between confidence and pigheadedness. He exemplified the latter. Pres. Biden has the former. He has to contend with the postmodern instant-gratification culture which has turned politics into mere entertainment. If you want entertainment, get Disney+ and watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Politics are too serious to be reduced to the horserace which the media loves, and which has become its only determinant for politics. Pres. Biden is betting that he can get that message through to voters. I believe it's a wager he will win.