Background Briefing: February 5, 2024

To Solve Crises, Biden is Increasingly Relying on His Enemies at Home and Abroad

We begin with the extent to which Biden is increasingly relying on his enemies abroad like Netanyahu and Iran to avoid getting dragged into another war and his enemies at home, House and Senate Republicans, to vote for an immigration bill that Trump is trying to kill which is DOA in Mike Johnson’s House. Joining us is Andrew Feinberg, a reporter covering the White House and Congress for The Independent where his latest article, which we discuss, is “As crises mount, Biden’s hopes rest increasingly in his enemies’ hands.”

 

Biden Should Bypass Netanyahu And Go to the Israeli Public With a Peace Plan

Then we examine further the tinderbox in the Middle East as the US steps up strikes on the Houthis in Yemen and speak with Steven Simon, who served on the National Security Council staff as senior director for Middle Eastern and North African affairs from 2011 to 2012. He also worked on the NSC staff from 1994 to 1999 on counterterrorism and Middle East security policy and these assignments followed a fifteen-year career at the U.S. Department of State. Currently a Fellow in International Affairs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he is the co-author, among other books, of The Age of Sacred Terror, and his latest book is Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East. We discuss his article at The Atlantic, “Netanyahu Should Quit. The U.S. Can Help With That.”

 

The Disconnect Between Biden’s Great Economic Numbers and How Voters Feel about the Economy

Then finally we investigate the disconnect between Biden’s increasingly celebrated economic numbers that are getting praise from the Chairman of the Fed and even Trump’s former economic advisor and how voters feel about the economy. Joining us is Pavlina Tcherneva, a Professor of Economics at Bard College and a research scholar at the Levy Economics Institute. She is also the co-editor of Full Employment and Price Stability: The Macroeconomic Vision and her latest book is The Case for a Job Guarantee.