Biden on the Trail – WSJ

With President Biden’s job approval hovering at about 40 percent at a moment when Democrats are struggling to hold on to the House and Senate, Dr. Biden has become a lifeline for candidates trying to draw attention and money but not the baggage that an appearance with her husband would bring. According to a senior White House official, she is the most requested surrogate in the administration.

“She does not offend people in a way that a president can because she’s much less polarizing and political,” said Michael LaRosa, a communications strategist and her former press secretary. “It’s why she was sent all over rural Iowa and New Hampshire during the campaign and why she can go places now that the president can’t.”

Given how many voters tell pollsters they don’t want the President to run for re-election, perhaps Democrats should consider nominating another member of the household. One can even imagine the bumper sticker:

A Less Offensive Biden in ‘24.

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Meanwhile, Investors May Be Playing More Defense
Jason De Sena Trennert and Ryan Grabinski of Strategas write in a note to clients today:

The nearly 14 years of financial repression that allowed politicians to escape the economic consequences of their actions without fear of retribution from the frontier justice of free markets appears to be ending. The ever-expanding balance sheets of the world’s largest central banks effectively monetized the profligate spending of wayward fiscal policies in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Until recently, the unintended consequences of these policies were hidden from an elite and wealthy political class who designed them. The global economy grew, albeit unspectacularly, while inflation was relegated to financial assets rather than goods and services. The wealthy prospered beyond their wildest dreams while the middle class muddled through. Unfortunately for all concerned, the “unconventional monetary policy” that came to be called quantitative easing is no longer tenable in the face of persistently-high rates of inflation. The bill has come due.

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Try to Guess the Partisan Affiliation
Readers of the Los Angeles Times may have trouble grasping the damage that one-party rule has done to their city if no one ever mentions which party has been dominating the city’s politics for decades. The Times’ Grace Toohey reports:

The recent leak of a recording that exposed some of Los Angeles’ top officials making abhorrent racist comments, disparaging multiple racial and ethnic groups, has rocked the City of Angels.

But City Hall is no stranger to scandal — with many elected leaders and officials still facing the fallout from prior missteps, including three current or former council members who have been charged with federal crimes.

For anyone new to the mayhem in L.A. politics, here’s a quick refresher of some of the most memorable — or perhaps infamous — scandals in recent history. Buckle up.

It sure is quite a ride—and a long one—yet its many paragraphs never reveal an eminently relevant fact about the people in power.

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It’s Still Hard to Bring Down Herschel Walker
Georgia’s Republican Senate candidate

Herschel Walker,

a former football star, made incumbent Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock play defense on inflation at a Friday debate.

USA Today’s Phillip Bailey reports:

“This race ain’t about me, it’s about what Raphael Warnock and

Joe Biden

have done to you and your family,” Walker said…

Walker regularly reminded viewers Warnock has supported the president’s agenda “96 percent of the time.”

The website FiveThirtyEight, which measures political data, shows Warnock votes in line with the president’s position at a rate of 96.4%.

Warnock acknowledged that Georgia is being hit hard by the country’s economic woes, but pointed to how companies are raking in profits too.

“There’s no question that people are feeling pain at the grocery store, at the pump and pharmacy counters,” he said. “And while we are paying record prices, a lot of our corporate actors are seeing record profits.”

The president has also attempted to blame business for inflation, but maybe inserting business into politics isn’t as popular as it used to be. Dan Primack at Axios writes:

Venture capitalists Blake Masters and J.D. Vance are Republicans running for the U.S. Senate, but many voters in Arizona and Ohio may be unaware of their business backgrounds…

Neither Masters nor Vance have hid from their venture capital pasts, as each of their campaign websites include résumé snippets. But the candidates also haven’t talked much about those pasts in public appearances.

Nor have they regularly been forced to do so by their opponents, unlike what

Mitt Romney

faced in 2016 from both Newt Gingrich and

Barack Obama.

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When Green Illusions Turn Criminal
The Journal’s Corinne Ramey and Ben Foldy report:

A federal jury in New York convicted

Nikola Corp.

founder

Trevor Milton

of securities fraud for what prosecutors said were his repeated lies about the development of the company’s zero-emissions trucks and technology…

Jurors saw Mr. Milton’s tweets and heard clips from his podcast appearances. They watched a commercial in which a Nikola semi-truck called the Nikola One appeared to drive along a desert road, with dramatic music playing in the background. In reality, said prosecutors, the truck, with its door taped shut and batteries removed, was towed to the top of a hill and rolled down it.

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James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.”

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(Lisa Rossi helps compile Best of the Web.)