President Joe Biden gave a speech this week on the state of the American economy. On his watch, the economy has greatly improved as we all dug ourselves out of the pandemic recession together. So Biden deserves a victory lap. He also used the speech to draw a stark comparison between Democrats responsibly steering the economy and Republicans who apparently are salivating at the prospect of blowing it all up.

Biden pointed to many indicators that the economy is strong, including better-than-expected growth, all-time low unemployment levels, a manufacturing rebound, the fact that wages are now growing faster than inflation, and that inflation itself has been coming down for six straight months. Biden's big infrastructure investments are now being implemented across the country, in thousands of projects that will improve Americans' lives (including a whole bunch of them in red states and red districts). Biden's basic message: things are getting better and better.

So of course the Republicans now want to burn it all down. The big fight in Washington for approximately the next six months is going to be over the debt ceiling. House Republicans seem to think they got elected to hold the American economy hostage to force Draconian budget cuts on a Democratic president (they never scratch this particular itch when a Republican is in the Oval Office, of course). But the American people don't seem to agree -- a recent poll showed that 73 percent of the public did not agree with the House Republicans' priorities in Congress. Not exactly a mandate, is that?

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At President Joe Biden's urging, the Democratic National Committee has picked a big and (in my opinion) a completely unnecessary fight with the state of New Hampshire. Last year, when the party met to decide which states would go first in the presidential primary calendar, Biden blindsided just about everyone with his own preferred schedule. Earlier, the party had announced there would be a free-for-all for states to apply for early primary slots, which was largely seen as a convenient way to demote Iowa from the early states, for multiple reasons (the largest being how incompetent they had been in 2020). This conventional wisdom held that one or perhaps even two other additional states would be elevated to the ranks of the early-voting states, again for multiple reasons. But few predicted that New Hampshire would be affected. This proved to be wrong, as Biden released his preferred schedule: South Carolina would be the "first in the nation" state, followed by Nevada and New Hampshire three days later (both voting on the same day). Yesterday, the party met again and instead of locking in Biden's new schedule, gave two states until June to comply with the new setup -- New Hampshire and Georgia (which was newly elevated into the ranks of early-voting states).

This is a largely symbolic and also a completely avoidable fight. What real difference is it going to make to the primaries if New Hampshire goes first or second? Why did Biden decided to pick this fight when it is going to continue to be a gigantic and distracting headache over the course of the next two years?

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The big fight shaping up in the new Congress is going to be over the debt ceiling, the news media tells us. Republicans are on one of their traditional "there's a Democrat in the White House, so we must now slash spending to the bone" quests, and so they're going to try to use the debt ceiling as leverage to force concessions from President Joe Biden and the Democratic Senate. But the big question, after you get past all the fulminating rhetoric, remains: What concessions? What are they even fighting for? And the answer, to me, lies in the past. Remember the big push to "repeal and replace" Obamacare? That's what seems almost certain to happen this time around, too.

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This is all what should have happened last August. Also, at this point it's hard not to think: "Who's next? Jimmy Carter? Dan Quayle?" In fact, it's hard for me not to picture in my head right now the image of Attorney General Merrick Garland standing on a stage behind Oprah Winfrey, who is yelling into her microphone: "You get a special counsel... and you get a special counsel!... and YOU get a special counsel!!!"

This was my initial (and admittedly, rather giddy) reaction when the news broke that Mike Pence also had some classified documents in his possession, long after he should have turned them over to the National Archives. This complicates an already-complicated storyline, since Pence is now the third ex-president or ex-vice-president to have seemingly walked off with classified documents stuffed in a box with all the other papers they took with them when leaving office. And then nobody ever looked in the boxes until now -- at least in the cases of former Vice President Mike Pence and current President (but former Vice President and Senator, from when the documents were reportedly dated) Joe Biden. In the case of former President Donald Trump, the boxes at least should have been looked into, since he had already received and answered a subpoena for all documents marked classified.

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Representative Ruben Gallego made some news today with his announcement that he is running for the 2024 Democratic nomination for a Senate seat in Arizona. If she were still a Democrat, this would be framed as Senator Kyrsten Sinema "drawing a challenger" or "being primaried" from within her own party, but since she became an Independent that is no longer true. With a Republican in the mix as well, there may wind up being a three-way contest for the seat. But then again, maybe not.

The question I've had for quite a while -- back when she was still a Democrat, even -- was whether Sinema would even bother to run for re-election. As of now, she hasn't made an announcement either way. And up until now, I have been assuming that she wouldn't run at all. When you take into account both the fact that she is incredibly unpopular in her home state together with the fact that Sinema has firmly stood for only one thing during her tenure so far -- protecting the interests of large corporations and wealthy taxpayers. Many of her constituents feel more than a little betrayed, after Sinema initially won her seat promising to take on big corporate interests. Since arriving in Washington, she has done a complete U-turn on her campaign promises, and now fights hard for things like allowing the pharmaceutical industry to charge whatever they feel like for prescription drugs.

This is not a popular position to take in Arizona, which (like Florida) has historically had a high number of retirees living there. But then again, it is not a popular position for any politician to take pretty much anywhere in the country. This (among many other reasons) is why Sinema's approval ratings back home are far underwater.

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Two years ago today, Joseph Robinette Biden Junior was sworn in as the nation's 46th president. So how is he doing at his job? His approval rating in public opinion polls has generally improved since the midterm elections, hitting numbers he hasn't seen in a year. But those numbers are still south of 45 percent (on average), which is fairly common for a first-term president but certainly nothing to brag about.

Biden has had some notable successes as president, and some notable rocky patches as well. He entered office as the COVID-19 vaccines were becoming widely and freely available, and things seemed rosy on this front for his first year, only to get a lot grimmer as the Omicron strain hit much harder than any of the previous variants of the virus. All of a sudden we weren't done with COVID-19 and life didn't return to normal as expected. But since then, the virus has become almost an afterthought and didn't matter much to voters in the midterms (even though it had been predicted that it would be a major issue).

Biden's legislative accomplishments are more impressive than any president since Lyndon B. Johnson. True, Biden did have a Democratic Senate and House to work with, but both of those had historically-slender majorities -- L.B.J., for instance, had as many as 68 Democratic senators to work with. Biden only had 50 -- including two who loved the media spotlight so much they didn't care if they torpedoed Biden's agenda in major ways. Biden also managed to pass some major bills with bipartisan support, which is almost miraculous, these days.

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There will be no column today, sorry.

Instead of writing today, I played hooky and went to watch President Joe Biden touring our local disaster areas. Reportedly, the last time a president was in our county was right after the 1989 earthquake, so I guess a big disaster is what it takes....

Anyway, seeing Biden going in a restaurant I frequent (on sunnier days) was certainly an interesting experience. As was his helicopter overflight, complete with Ospreys riding escort.

New columns will resume tomorrow, but today was a day for a field trip instead (and don't worry, the ChrisWeigant.com offices rode the storms out high and dry!)....

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Jerry Falwell must be spinning in his grave. For those that don't remember the era, in the 1980s, Falwell was at the forefront of the movement to instill his brand of Christianity into American politics, which at the time mostly meant influencing conservatives and Republicans. This was far enough back when "conservative" and "Republican" weren't as 100 percent interchangeable as they are today, I should point out. Falwell created his own group and called it the "Moral Majority" -- a name meant to highlight what he (obviously) believed was an amoral minority who had become too powerful in American politics. Moralism and being holier-than-thou were the watchwords of the day. Republicans would use all sorts of moral issues (today we'd call them "culture war" issues) as a big wedge to shame Democratic liberals and get more Republicans elected to office. This was long before the moralistic frenzy surrounding Bill Clinton -- that all came later. This is also what laid the groundwork for Republicans painting themselves as taking the moral high road while Democrats collapsed into degenerate "secular humanism." Those days, quite obviously, are gone. Because today's Republican Party is about as amoral as can be imagined -- far beyond the caricature of the godless liberals Falwell painted back in the day. Today's Republicans simply do not care one whit about morals -- any morals at all, it seems.

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President Biden is a good politician in many ways, but there is one area where he can be rather weak at times -- reacting quickly to developing events. Something major happens, the news media makes a big deal out of it, and then the White House takes an interminable amount of time to react -- even when they were warned ahead of time. The most obvious example of this was the Dobbs Supreme Court decision which overturned Roe v. Wade. Not only was the decision expected, but it had been telegraphed a month earlier by a leaked opinion draft (a rarity for the Supreme Court). But even given this head-start, the Biden administration was slow to react and took days before even deciding upon any real course of action. Currently, Biden is slow-walking his reaction to the scandal of classified documents being found at his former workplace and home. And so far, the drip-drip-drip of news has been met with a very weak and inadequate response from the White House.

Biden needs to get out in front of this issue. He needs to address the nation and explain where things stand. If he doesn't, then he will remain captive to the "next shoe to drop" waiting that we're all currently going through. The big question everyone's got right now is: "Is that all of them? What else are we going to learn?"

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Today is the official day to remember and celebrate Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior and everything he stood for, since yesterday was the 94th anniversary of his birth. Normally on this date I would feature some excerpts from his speeches or writings, to remind everyone that he was more than just one excerpt from one famous speech ("I have a dream..."). Because his legacy is far wider and far deeper than just those few stirring quotes you hear repeated every single January. It is a legacy that includes many things which made White America extremely uncomfortable when he was alive; and to erase all those things and only leave the things which make White America feel good about themselves in the present day is downright criminal and counterproductive to everything King stood for and struggled so hard to achieve.

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