Opinion

President Biden’s bad ideas are utterly failing him

Lefties and much of the media are hating on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema for standing up for the filibuster and so thwarting the latest bid to impose progressives’ desires on the country.

Will they ever admit that the real problem is that most Americans don’t remotely want what they’re selling?

Sinema (D-Ariz.) on Thursday said she’s sticking with her longstanding refusal to end-run the rules that require 60 senators to allow most bills to proceed to a final vote, even though she supports the “voting rights” bills in question.

Ramming it through over the objections of the Senate’s 50 Republicans would “worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country,” she explained.

She wasn’t the only obstacle. Sen. Joe Manchin also opposes nixing the filibuster rules, and several other Senate Dems hadn’t signed on. But the haters would rather flame at her (and him).

“Sinemanchin” also got the big hate for opposing the various versions of President Joe Biden’s multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better bill, with progressives steamed about how a “minority” is blocking their social-spending dreams. Of course, it was actually a majority — 52 senators, including the 50 GOP ones.

It’s the same on the Supreme Court’s blockage of Biden’s agenda, most recently its nixing of his effort to use “workplace safety” as the pretext for his mandate that most US businesses force their employees to get jabbed. And never mind that his own chief of staff had publicly admitted it was a gimmick to impose something the prez lacks the actual authority to order.

Rule of law; the Senate’s institutional duty to seek true consensus; even the need to win actual majorities (not majorities in one party) — all of it goes out the window as the left pretends the only problem is a few dastardly dissenters.

This is why Democrats are on course to lose control of Congress this fall, and why Biden’s approval ratings continue to tank: The prez and his party’s House and Senate leaders have wasted the last year on nonstop efforts to legislate progressive dreams, with no attention to the damage it does (rising inflation, millions of jobs still lost from the pre-pandemic total) or to what the nation actually needs and wants.

Nor is it any way to achieve the “unity” Biden took office vowing to seek.

Crucially, the president has been far behind the curve on fighting COVID — whether it’s on testing, treatments or even preparing for the inevitable rise of new variants. All his team thought to do is run on autopilot with the vaccines that his predecessor provided; everything else is catch-up (and promises he keeps failing to deliver on, then promising again).

Democrats’ problem isn’t “obstructionism,” it’s their leaders’ fateful, foolish decision to embrace the left’s misbegotten ideas while not remotely targeting the country’s actual needs. No amount of friendly-media spin, no matter how loud, can fix that.