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Biden's vigorous SOTU speech aims to prove doubters wrong
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
What's going on with the Biden State of the Union?
So big week in US presidential politics. Super Tuesday basically effectively ended both primaries for the Republicans and the Democrats. We now have two all but official candidates. Joe Biden gave his fourth State of the Union address this week. Big question around Joe Biden, is he up to the task? 75% of Americans say that he is too old to run for a second term, but he is a attempting to prove them wrong like he did last night in Washington with a vigorous speech where he spoke for an hour, which officially kicked off his campaign.
Biden spoke about themes of income inequality, he spoke in favor of aid to Ukraine, and he rolled out a couple of tax increases that Republicans don't like. There's a lot of risk in every public appearance that Biden gives these days because of the fact that Democrats are very concerned that he's going to make a verbal flub or that he's going to look physically frail. That did not happen last night, and I think that's a good sign for Biden for now.
But every time he goes on stage for the rest of the year, there's going to be concern about how old he looks. So the campaign can now begin in earnest. Biden didn't mention Donald Trump by name in the speech, but he did indirectly attack him, talking about how Republicans are the party of the rich and how the threats to democracy represented by this election. At least that's how Joe Biden wants to frame it.
Why Mitch McConnell is stepping down
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
What are the implications of the retirement of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell from his leadership post?
This week Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell announced his intention to step down as leader of the Republicans after serving longer in that post than anybody else in American history. There are really two implications that I can see.
The first is that McConnell was basically acknowledging the inevitable. It was very unlikely that he would be able to stay on as leader after this Congress anyway. If Donald Trump wins the presidential election, then he almost certainly is going to push McConnell out of the job. And if he didn't win the election, there's a whole generation of Republicans in the Senate who are looking for an opportunity to step up. McConnell, at 82 years old, did not represent that new generation. So the time had come to pass on the torch, and McConnell chose this February to announce it.
The second takeaway is that McConnell is really giving the speech the Democrats are hoping Joe Biden would give. McConnell's only eight months older than President Joe Biden, who's running for a second term right now. And lots of questions have come up recently about Biden's fitness for office because of his advanced age. This is going to be an increasing problem for Biden as more and more Democrats start talking about it. But in the absence of any challenger, it looks like Biden's going to be the nominee and his age will just be a liability they all have to learn to live with.
Trump continues to lead the GOP charge
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week. Thought I'd talk about the US election. I try not to do that every week because it would get really boring.
It is, of course, the longest and most expensive and most dysfunctional of any major democracy. And would we have it any other way in the United States? Trump, of course, is getting closer and closer to the nomination on the Republican side. It is all over except for the fact that Nikki Haley does not want to drop out. She is still in it. Her arguments are that everybody should get a chance to vote and that she would be much more likely to win in the general election against Joe Biden.
All of those things are true. But as we all know, that's not the way the US electoral system works. She can't win a single state. She can't come close. South Carolina, her home state, where not just Republicans that are registered, but others can actually vote. So an open primary and she still lost by 20 points, could have lost by more. It was a respectable showing, considering just how popular Trump is. But she's got no shot. And she lost her funding just now from the Koch network, which is a big deal. When they stood up and said that they wanted to give a lot of money to Haley, they understand that they're not going to throw good money after bad.
And so that's done. And she's not likely to be able to stay in very long if she's going to lose significant funding, because she needs to be relevant in terms of the airwaves and get her message out there. She has said that she is not thinking about what's going to happen after Super Tuesday, which is almost certainly not true. But what else is she supposed to say for as long as she's in the race? I think when she loses the slate on Super Tuesday, she's going to be in a lot of trouble.
On the Biden side, no one is really running against Biden. Williamson dropped out, but most people didn't know she was in. Dean Phillips hasn't dropped out. Most people don't really know he's in. But very interestingly and coming up real soon in Michigan, where you have five and a half percent of the electorate, Arab American, and they are deeply, deeply unhappy with the fact that Biden has been so strongly supportive of Israel in the ongoing war in Gaza. And there is a significant campaign in Michigan not to support Biden, but to write in that they don't have anybody that they're in favor of. And if that proves significant, that is absolutely going to hurt the president. It's one of many things that are not going particularly well for him as we think about his effort to secure a second go at the presidency come November.
But the more relevant point in the near term is what happens in the GOP. How does Trump secure the nomination and is everyone behind him or does he lose a significant piece of Republicans? On that front, I think he gets everybody. I've seen so many people that privately have said that they were never Trump six months ago, even three months ago, people that were supporting Chris Christie, high level folks in the Republican Party that are now saying, “well, he's going to be the nominee, he's probably going to be president because they want a Republican to be president. And so we're going to get behind him.” I've seen that with John Thune just come out, the number two on the Republican side in the Senate. Tim Scott, of course, a serious adult, serious conservative who has decided he's going to be as full throated, as supportive Trump is humanly possible. A lot of the billionaires are in that camp. Koch, of course, is going to be there. But also we've seen that with Jamie Dimon coming out of Davos and so many of all of these people that have been privately saying we can't stand the guy, we want anyone but him. But since that isn't going to prove worthwhile or possible, we're going to get behind Trump.
And this is the biggest issue for democracy, he has huge amounts of support in the Republican Party, he has the money that will be behind him. But he also refuses to accept the outcome of a free and fair democratic election. That is fundamental. There's nothing that's more essential to the functioning of a democracy than being able to hold an election that people believe in and transferring power to an opponent if you lose. That fundamental assumption of democracy is something that Trump as strongly disagrees with as anything in his body and showed that off in 2020 and will show that off again in 2024 if it goes against him or if it threatens to go against him.
And the fact that is not close to the issue that exercises all of these people that privately say they can't stand this guy but will get with him, shows that they are not particularly worried about the nature of eroding US democracy. And that reality should be a top concern of American allies around the world. It should be a top hope of American adversaries looking to take advantage of American weakness around the world. It creates and injects a huge amount of chaos into the global system. The most powerful country in the world today is also the one that is least confident about the intrinsic value of its political system, doesn't really know what it stands for, and is going to continue to erode its institutions legitimacy and the strength of its institutions without particular guardrails, at least as far as this electoral cycle goes.
And that is true, frankly, no matter whether Trump or Biden wins. And again, I feel that Trump is clearly unfit for the job and it's not a matter of anything other than what I just said. And I felt that way when he was a Democrat. This has nothing to do with his political party. It certainly has nothing to do with his ideology because Trump isn't fundamentally ideological except in support of his narcissism. But the fact that even under four years of Biden, that the political institutions in the US has have continued to erode, that you continue to have stronger and stronger distance between what is seen as basic facts and belief among Democrats and Republicans. The fact that the United States is becoming more politically tribal and dysfunctional says that Trump is a symptom, a deep symptom, and a strong symptom of something that is profoundly broken in the US system. Something I've talked about for a while.
I'll talk about more going forward, but it does make us very concerned about where 2024 is going. It's why the US versus itself was our number one risk back at the beginning of this year and by a long margin, given the impact of what that means for the rest of the world, while we continue to focus on it all the way through.
That's it for me and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Legal limbo: Canada, US behind on judicial appointments
There are currently 75 vacancies. Justice Minister Arif Virani took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to defend his government’s appointment record, arguing the Liberals have made judicial appointments “at the fastest pace in history” – a feat, he noted, the Conservatives have never managed to achieve.
The US has its own judicial vacancy issues, with 51 positions waiting to be filled for US district courts – with 18 nominees pending. Those vacancies account for all but four empty seats on federal courts throughout the country. The US Court of Appeals is light three, and the Court of Federal Claims is short one.
Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Joe Biden is rushing to fill seats – and to shape the judiciary to the extent that Donald Trump did. The process has been slowed by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s illness, which hampered the work of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Republican efforts to slow appointments.
Meanwhile, state-level court appointments, or a lack thereof, are slowing down proceedings throughout the country, contributing to a crisis in the justice system.Jobs are up, but Biden and Trudeau still risk losing theirs
January was an encouraging month for job growth in the US and Canada. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 353,000 new jobs stateside with unemployment holding steady at 3.7%. Meanwhile, Statistics Canada says jobs were up by 37,000 during the same period and unemployment was down to 5.7% – a modest drop of 0.1%. Both countries exceeded expectations.
You might think better-than-expected economic news would herald brighter fortunes for President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but you would almost certainly be wrong. Both men’s polling numbers are nowhere near where they’d like them to be.
Biden’s favorables are flat with roughly 40% of Americans approving of his job performance compared to 55% who disapprove. Meanwhile, 86% of the country thinks he’s too old to run again. North of the border, Trudeau continues to trail Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre by double digits, and his party is stuck in the mud.
There’s a chance numbers will improve for the incumbents, but the December jobs report in the US also exceeded expectations and didn’t boost Biden’s ratings. The Canadian numbers were softer in December, so Liberals have some hope the latest good news will give Trudeau a boost this time.
But so far, and perhaps counterintuitively, their political fortunes do not seem directly tied to economic performance.
Munich Security Conference 2024: What to expect
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. It is the Munich Security Conference. It's that time of year, yet again, the 60th Munich Security Conference this year. And you would think that that would be like a big anniversary. It's like platinum or diamonds or something very valuable and exciting. And yet the value of the conference is becoming undermined. And it's becoming undermined not because it doesn't matter, but rather because leaders are less committed to it.
And that is a very deep concern. There's no annual theme to this year's conference, but every year they do put out an annual report. Came out a couple of days ago, and the theme this year was “lose-lose” dynamics. In other words, less focus on multilateralism, less focus on collective security, less focus on global cooperation and instead a prioritization of individual gain of countries and even of leaders. And that's not a great backdrop against a incredibly contentious US election, a war between Russia-Ukraine that isn't going very well, certainly not from the perspective of those that are attending the security conference and also a Middle East war that is expanding and threatens to get the Europeans and the Americans more and more involved. A couple of things that are worth paying attention to that may not be getting as much attention outside Germany.
One is that Christoph Heusgen, the chair of the conference and a good friend of mine for many years now, has come out saying that Trump has a point in terms of his strong criticism of NATO nations not meeting their 2% defense goal. And that, of course, especially means Germany, which is the largest economy in Europe. And they've made lots of commitments, but they've got an economic crisis right now, and there are lots of competing demands inside that country that don't focus on security and defense after all. Germany, not a frontline country dealing with Ukraine or Russia a little bit farther back. And you can really see defense spending fall off the farther you get from Russia, unless, of course, you're talking about the United States.
Another thing that's worth paying attention to and it's going to make it a little harder. Germany last year perceived Russia as their number one security threat.This year, Russia's fallen to number seven. Top issues for the Germans, mass migration and radical Islamic terrorism. That is the Munich Security index that they, you know, sort of take surveys of attendees and of participants. And it's very interesting to see that. That's similar to the view that I got at Davos a few weeks ago. And just talking to people around the world outside of these conferences, Ukraine is nowhere close to the level of prioritization these days, even for countries that are pretty close to it, that it was getting 6 months ago, 12 months ago, 24 months ago, and that, of course, is also a very big problem for the Ukrainians, a very big problem for the frontline states like the Estonians and the Poles and the Nordics, who consider this their top priority but having a harder time telling others that that's what really matters. So those are some of the issues we're looking forward to discussing and you'll be hearing from us again real soon.
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NATO has a Trump problem
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. And a Quick Take to kick off your week. Could be so much to talk about. I say kick off. So you think it's Super Bowl, but no, no, I'm not going there. Don't. I mean, I care, but not after the game's over. Then I'm kind of done. It's exciting that way. I love sports. I get very excited and then over immediately.
Let's move on to NATO and lots of hair on fire because former President Trump, about to become the Republican nominee, could easily be president again, says that recounting a conversation he had with a leading European leader. (I suspect he's talking about Angela Merkel and Germany.) And that if they refused to pay, that he wouldn't be interested in defending them Indeed, he would tell the Russians they could do whatever the hell they wanted to countries that refused to pay for their own self-defense. And predictably, this got Europeans very agitated. The NATO' secretary-general, the European Council president, both saying this is only good for Putin. It weakens the alliance with Trump saying that and especially saying that publicly and the Europeans are indeed, almost all the Europeans are panicked about what might happen if Trump were to become president in 2025.
And I think these are all real points and deserve to be responded to. I do think it's important to look at the other side of the equation. At the same time, which is, should there be consequences for American allies that are unwilling to prioritize their own self-defense? And by the way, when I say consequences, I don't mean that the Russians should be able to invade them.
But should there be any consequences or should they just continue to be perfect NATO allies in good standing because the de facto policy of the United States appears to be, “well, otherwise, yeah, tell them they need to pay more, but we're not going to do anything if they don't. ” And that also doesn't seem reasonable. That seems like a policy that is guaranteed to alienate the Americans and lead to a much weaker NATO. In fact, if you are a country that is not spending on your own self-defense for years and years, that also is a strong signal to Vladimir Putin. That also is a very weak signal to the future of the NATO alliance. But unfortunately, that message is never sent by the president of the European Council or by the leaders of the countries that don't care about spending on their own defense.
I mean, the Canadians, for example, spend less than 1.3% of GDP on defense. That's roughly exactly what they were spending in the nineties. Why? Because they don't think they need to they don't think it really matters. The Germans, the Italians, the Spaniards. I mean, most of the large economies other than the United States significantly underspend on defense. They don't have adequate troop readiness, they don't have adequate military capabilities, never mind to provide support for Ukraine or other countries that might need it that aren't NATO members, but even to adequately defend themselves.
And that's a serious problem. It's been going on for decades, in part because of a belief that there was a peace dividend, that there weren't going to be wars anymore in Europe, so they didn't really care about NATO and “let the Americans spend if they want to, but we don't have to.” And that's unacceptable as well, especially when the Russians invade Ukraine. Now, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a lot of countries took it more seriously. That's why Finland has joined NATO, that's why Sweden is about to join NATO. Certainly the front line countries are much more worried and they spend a lot more. But those countries that are free riding in the back, they don't care as much. And clearly the right answer is somewhere in between.
It is that for years and years the Americans need to say that if you don't spend or else, and that all else needs to be consequential, needs to have you know, we won't have as many military exercises with you or we're not going to share the same level of intelligence or we're not going to provide as advanced military equipment. And if you do that and make it matter, then those countries are much more likely to do something like actually take you more seriously than if they know you have no fist in your glove. Now, there is a broader question, which is whether a President Trump actually wants the Europeans to spend 2% and then he'll be happy and committed, or whether he believes that NATO is just a drag on the United States. It’s a multilateral group.
It's a commitment with countries that the Americans would rather not be committed to, that Trump thinks it's a fool's game and would rather leave. There are those that have worked with Trump that feel that way. Former National Security Adviser John Bolton certainly thinks that has articulated that that is Trump's actual private view. Hard to know, hard to know. Will say that Trump feels much more comfortable with allies like the Saudis, for example. And you'll remember that he traveled there before we traveled to European countries or to Canada, in part because the Saudis not just short term transactionally, but longer term are committed to US defense. But also recognize that they need to spend and that there is a very ongoing mutual back scratching between the two countries. And the fact that the Saudis don't share American values is a very little interest to Trump, in part because the United States frequently doesn't live up to those values. And certainly Trump doesn't care very much about them. And that the Europeans, in being committed to multilateralism and rule of law, which Trump isn't as interested in, but also more willing to use that to help, you know, sort of strengthen an alliance system that has values as a component of it, is something that Trump thinks the Americans get taken advantage of with.
Now, again, where you land on that spectrum, I think differs radically on, you know, how old you are, your historic world view of the Cold War, for example, where your country is geographically. You know what your immediate threat environment is like, also how you feel about the United States. I mean, as an American, do you think the US has been good for you or do you feel like you've been screwed by the United States? I mean, if you've got kids that went to war in Afghanistan or even the second war in Iraq and didn't come back, came back with PTSD, and the Veterans Administration didn't take adequate care of you, and you don't think the war was fought justly or for principles that you believe in, you probably feel very differently about what the US should and shouldn't be doing in terms of other military alliances than you do say, my dad, who fought in Korea or others that were World War II veterans, certainly, or those in the United States that didn't fight for anything, but nonetheless feel like the American system did pretty well for them.
And it's that latter problem. It's the fact that so many Americans today don't feel like their political system is legitimate, don't feel like the American dream applies to them, don't feel the class mobility, don't trust their leaders or their institutions across the board. That I think is creating so much space for populists in the United States to say, why are we doing for other countries? Trump's other statement that we saw over the last few days, we shouldn't give any foreign aid. It should all be loans. And if you don't behave in ways that we like going forward, that we should take those loans away and we should make you pay it back. And he didn't say that only applies to the Europeans. From his perspective, that would apply to Israel, that would apply to the Japanese. That would apply to Mexico, Canada, he doesn't care. It's America first. And more Americans will feel that way if they think that their country hasn't taken care of, doesn't take care of them or their kids. I don't feel that way. I'd like to live in a United States, it’s the richest country in the world, and we have much more ability to do more for others. And long term, I think that plays to our advantage.
But I absolutely understand why many Americans no longer feel that way. And I think it's a shame. And I think we need to take responsibility to do something about that if we want a different outcome.
So that's it for me for today. I hope everyone's doing well and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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Mayorkas impeachment: Reps. Lofgren & Spartz on House vote on DHS secretary
The US House of Representatives is voting on a Republican-led resolution to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over his handling of the immigration crisis on the southern border. On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer sat down with Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN), who both sit on the House Immigration subcommittee, moments before the vote took place for their thoughts on the first impeachment of a cabinet secretary in modern history.
“[The impeachment] has nothing to do with meeting the constitutional standards,” Lofgren, former chair of the Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, tells Bremmer, “It’s a complete waste of time.”
House Democrats say the vote is unconstitutional and politically motivated, but the GOP, which has a razor-thin three-vote majority in the House, accuse Mayorkas of a “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and beaching public trust.
“I always believe that ultimate responsibility lays [with] the top executive,” GOP Rep. and Ukrainian American Spartz argues, “We need to send the message that can’t allow executives not to do their duty to the public.”