Ballooning through fear and anger, blaming Biden or Trump

There’s no other way to put it: the country is in a seemingly bottomless bad mood.

Dissatisfied with its leading presidential candidates, arguing when a balloon should have been shot down and profoundly pessimistic about America’s direction, there is no shortage of anger, fear and frustration.

And yet while there are clearly economic anxieties, led by inflation, this is a nation that just clocked in at 3.4 percent unemployment, the lowest since the U.S. landed men on the moon in 1969.

What’s more, at least half the voters in each party don’t want the most likely rematch in 2024.

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A Washington Post/ABC poll says 58 percent of Democrats and Democratic learners would prefer someone other than Joe Biden as their nominee.

And among Republicans and Republican leaders, 49 percent say they want someone other than Donald Trump as their nominee.

It doesn’t stop there. Some 56 percent of people surveyed said they’ll be “angry” or “dissatisfied” if Trump wins back the White House, and 62 percent say they’ll feel the same if Biden is reelected.

That reminds me of a number that jumped out in the latest Fox News poll: 55 percent of Democrats say they’re unsatisfied with the direction of the country.

Here you have Biden, who passed trillions of dollars in spending on everything from climate change to infrastructure, who achieved much of the Bernie left-wing agenda, and a majority in his own party isn’t on board?

This of course may reflect concerns about Biden’s age, or the failure to accomplish such liberal goals as police reform. But it’s not a good harbinger for the president, while at the same time the former president is facing multiple challengers.

The China spy flight melodrama is a classic illustration of how everyone in the media is suddenly an expert on everything, as well as the fierceness with which the other side is demonized.

Conservatives immediately demanded that Biden shoot down the balloon, even as Pentagon officials explained it posed no risk but could injure people if downed over land. That’s why the president immediately told reporters he’d ordered the craft shot down last Wednesday, but deferred to military experts who said it would be safer to wait until it was over water. The right then instantaneously shifted to the argument that Biden waited too long, allowing the balloon to gather intelligence as it flew from west to east.

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Now the Pentagon counters that it had blocked further intelligence-gathering by the balloon as we got to study it. In fact, there have been 20 to 30 Beijing spy balloons in recent years, three of them detected during the Trump administration. Trump himself has declared this “FAKE DISINFORMATION!,” and the Biden team has offered to provide details.

But I’d criticize the administration – and this is reminiscent of the classified documents mess – for its secrecy. We would not have known about the balloon had it not become visible from 60,000 feet over Montana, prompting local news outlets to cover it.

Still, the spectacle of half the country denouncing the other half, and vice versa – just go on Twitter – for endangering national security over a wayward balloon is not exactly edifying.

And if the situation was reversed and this had happened under President Trump, does anyone seriously doubt that many would simply switch sides?

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The country has a lot of problems, from the border to a possible recession. But the biggest problem might be the fierce polarization that has left any semblance of unity a distant memory.

And unless a younger candidate breaks through, major chunks of the country will be angry for the following four years, starting in 2025, regardless of whether Biden or Trump wins.

And that is, to say the least, rather depressing.