I didn’t want to start the day with an Unethical Quote of the Month right after last night’s post, but attention should be paid to what California governor Gavin Newsom told a stunned Jonathan Karl on ABC News’ “This Week” yesterday. The full quote was: “We have the best three-year record of any modern American Presidency, period, full stop. And you look at the issue, issue by issue, they poll overwhelmingly, the American people support what Biden has done.”

What’s going on here? The most recent polling shows Biden with the worst three-year approval rating going back to Gerald Ford half a century ago (my, how time flies). How could the American people “overwhelmingly” support (“approve of” is a synonym for “support”) what Biden has done while roughly two-thirds tell pollsters that they think he’s a lousy President?

They can’t. They don’t. There are plenty of clear-cut, undeniable reasons why they don’t. Now, if Newsom wanted to spin for Joe without sounding like he thinks he is Marie of Romania or the Lizard Queen, he could do that without insulting the intelligence of ABC viewers. In the article that chart above came from, for example, NPR, the Democratic Party’s tax-payer supported propaganda agency, argued vigorously that things aren’t so bad for Biden and his party, because some Presidents with “under water” approval ratings in their third year have bounced back to win, and others who seemed on the way to election in Year Three ended up losing in November.

That’s a valid argument. A lot of stuff can happen in a year: the fat lady hasn’t even warmed up. Jimmy Carter, the President Biden is most often compared to (a weak one), hadn’t faced the Iran hostage crisis yet, or been stalked by a mad rabbit. Obama was rescued by a mainstream media ambush that poor Mitt Romney wasn’t prepared for (for some reason) and Harry Reid told the nation that Mitt didn’t pay his taxes, heh, heh. Okay, good point.

But arguing that Biden has had a spectacularly successful three years when a majority of the public doesn’t think so is pure gaslighting. Is Rationalization #64, Yoo’s Rationalization or “It isn’t what it is” really going to be a mainstay of the 2024 campaign? It would appear so—that, and “Donald Trump is a monster who will make the Third Reich seem like Oz when he takes over!”

When Karl challenged Newsom, the aspiring future POTUS really had no justification for his claim other than to huminahumina gibberish about how Biden had “delivered” on his promises (like the pledge to heal divisiveness, Governor?) and was being foiled by the evil Republicans and Donald Trump. Blaming the other party for a President’s problems is a traditional response to public criticism going into an election year. Claiming that the public is just too dimwitted to realize how great things are is something else entirely. That response shows complete contempt for the democratic principles Newsom’s party keeps claiming it’s trying to save from Donald Trump.

True, Newsom and his party know that up to a point, the mainstream media can be counted upon to keep spinning bad news into good: the mantra on CNN and MSNBC is still that the economy is hunky-dory, and the public is just too dumb to realize it. (This morning I noticed that for the first time ever, a slice of Pepperidge Farm dark pumpernickel bread fits into my toaster without my having to slice off a half-inch from each slice. Nah, must be my imagination…) The real question is how many Americans will recoil from voting for a party that constantly tells them that they are imagining that food is more expensive, that the border isn’t secure, that customer service is going to hell, that flying is less safe, that crime in the cities is intolerable and that the debt is not a problem. It may well be that Mike Miller (over at Red State) is correct when he says that Democrats hope “that a majority of low-information, rank-and-file Democrat voters believe everything they say, without question,” and will “continue to pull the “D” lever, year in and year out.”

And maybe that’s enough.