Chants of "Let's Go Brandon!" have taken the country by storm, as a more polite way of saying "F*ck Joe Biden," which people have also taken to cheering to express their displeasure with the president. It's all too much though for Ashley Parker, Carissa Wolf, and other contributing reporters from The Washington Post. In a nearly 2,000 word lamentation, they cried about how "Biden’s critics hurl increasingly vulgar taunts."
The piece starts off though with something a lot less vulgar by discussing handmade signs appearing at the front of Michael Dick's home in Boise, Idaho. They also appear as the featured image. One reads "If Joe Only Had a Brain." The other lists out grievances Dick has about the administration in the nine catastrophic months Biden has been in office.
"And that’s mild compared to the sentiments some people — largely in conservative areas — are expressing in their front yards and on the signs they lug with them to greet Biden as he travels the country," the piece reads.
From street corners, events, inopportune locations close to schools, a significant amount of the piece discusses where people are saying "F*ck Joe Biden" or "Let's Go Brandon!" There's some more big name examples, such as with Donald Trump Jr., members of a crowd yelling "Let's Go Brandon!" at a Glenn Youngkin rally, and Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) saying as much on the House floor.
For all the amount of times they clutch their pearls over the instances in which people say "Let's Go Brandon!" or its more explicit counterpart, the reporters fail to address why it is that people are so unhappy with the president.
Any explanation comes from the people who are displeased with Biden, or it's chalked up to Republican disapproval.
Here's how the piece puts it:
During the 2020 presidential campaign, one of Biden’s political superpowers was his sheer inoffensiveness, the way he often managed to embody — even to those who didn’t like him — the innocuous grandfather, the bumbling uncle, the leader who could make America calm, steady, even boring again after four years of Donald Trump.
But it’s clear that after nine months in office, Biden — or at least what he represents — is increasingly becoming an object of hatred to many Trump supporters. The vitriol partly reflects Trump’s own repeated baseless claims that Biden is a usurper, depriving him of his rightful claim to the presidency, and partly stems from Biden actions that Republicans deplore, from his spending plans to his immigration policies.
Yet the anger also demonstrates how a political party or cause often needs an enemy, a target of vilification that can unite its adherents — and, in this case, one refracted through the harshness, norm-breaking and vulgarity of the Trump era.
...
“The psychological dynamic that led to the rise of Trump is happening again — this sense that you’re losing your country and it’s being led by an individual without the cognitive capacity to run a fast-food joint,” said Cliff Sims, who served in a senior role in the Trump administration. “The anger is less about Joe Biden individually and more about the state of the country that he is presiding over. He’s an avatar — he’s like the symbol of the decline of America.”
Administration officials sought to downplay the phenomenon, and at least one claimed to be unfamiliar with the “Let’s go Brandon” chant or its cruder cousin, though they are now chanted everywhere from football stadiums to concert arenas to local bars.
“I had never heard of that chant until you explained it to me,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates. Referring to an anonymous message board known for promoting online extremism, he added, “I guess I’m not spending enough time on 8chan or whatever.”
Nowhere in the nearly 2,000 word piece, though, is it mentioned how unpopular Biden has become. Some polls have his approval rating in the 30s. The RealClearPolitics (RCP) average for October 1-21 has Biden at a 42.3 percent approval rating. FiveThirtyEight similarly has him at 43.4 percent.
Biden is underwater on almost all if not all issues in the polls; the one exception is usually his handling of the pandemic.
And, if one would actually take a deep dive look at these polls which have been pouring in, one would see that there's usually a pretty healthy sampling of Democrats. Another reason why this disapproval can't all just be blamed on Republicans is because on some key issues not even Democrats are all that thrilled with him.
It's curious that immigration would be such a policy failure mentioned in the excerpt above, as it's been one of the policy areas where Biden consistently performs the most poorly with. On that issue, the RCP average has him at a 32.1 percent approval rating.
As I reported on Saturday, results from a Gallup poll released on Friday indicated that Biden's 11 point "decline is larger than any prior president registered between his first and third quarters," from 56 percent approval in the first quarter to 44.7 in the third quarter.