This week’s White House Report Card finds President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris out of sight, a strange turn after a successful Democratic National Convention.
Instead of hitting the trail to build momentum, Harris returned to Washington after the Chicago event wrapped up. Harris had a snarky answer to a reporter who asked about her plans for this weekend. “What’s next?” asked a reporter. “We’re going to walk up those stairs,” she giggled. What’s more, she doesn’t even plan to hit the campaign trail until Wednesday.
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Challenger and former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, held a rally Friday where he was endorsed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent candidate who suspended his campaign, and he has a rally set for Tuesday in Michigan.
Still, Democratic pollster John Zogby graded the week an “A” because of the positive convention and Biden’s able handoff to his deputy. Conservative Jed Babbin graded the week an “F,” and said the convention was a clown show lacking attention to serious issues.
John Zogby
Grade: A
Democrats gathered in Chicago for their presidential nominating convention and gave President Joe Biden a rousing farewell, worthy of a hero.
At the same time, they breathed a huge sigh of relief because the conversation about age and mental acuity not only ended on the Democratic side but turned its guns on former President Donald Trump’s strange behavior of late.
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While Vice President Kamala Harris has pledged to move things forward, she did not in any way try to escape her connection with the Biden administration. To do otherwise would have been inauthentic — Google “JD Vance” for the definition of that. So, the Biden legacy continues, and that is a tribute in itself. Not many of us get that in our lives.
Jed Babbin
Grade: F
It was another great week for Biden-Harris watchers. President Joe Biden told the Democratic National Convention that pro-Hamas demonstrators “had a point.” His administration got caught exaggerating job numbers by almost a million and it was revealed that his migrant spouse program would add another half-million illegals to those already inside the United States.
Biden’s comment on the protesters hid exactly what their “point” was and it wasn’t one that Biden or Harris would admit. Their point is that Israel shouldn’t exist and that the Jews living there should be killed or driven out.
The Biden team got caught exaggerating new job numbers by 818,000. Bidenomics has caused so much inflation and market instability that jobs were certain to be fewer than they earlier claimed.
And Biden’s immigrant spouse program turned out to be just another open border scam. Don’t forget that Harris has not only failed as “border czarina,” she’s also an open border radical.
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There was pretty much nothing about national security or foreign policy in the 2024 Democratic platform. It did, however, say that the U.S. is spending too much on defense and not enough on diplomacy. Great idea. They want to starve defense and spend more on the State Department. And how many successes can State claim in the Biden era? None by my count.
And at the convention, there was a free clinic sponsored by Planned Parenthood that performed free abortions and vasectomies. The Democrats continue to claim that the Republicans under Trump would ban abortions nationally which they cannot do under the recent Supreme Court decision turning abortion authority back to the states.
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His podcast with son and managing partner and pollster Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on X @ZogbyStrategies.
Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on X @jedbabbin.
