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The NY Times on Monday published an opinion piece by UPenn senior lecturer and Open Society Project senior fellow (!) Damon Linker titled "Why Is Biden Struggling? Because America Is Broken."

And while it's more or less a recap of what ZeroHedge readers have known for years, the essay provides a sobering dose of reality for the "You should really watch Rachel Maddow" types.

Biden's defenders, and the administration itself, has chalked the president's unpopularity up to "a failure of communication," however Linker instead suggests "It's usually wiser to listen to what voters are saying" (beyond the obvious concerns about the president's age).

'Too Numerous to List'

Citing a January 2021 essay in Tablet titled "Everything Is Broken," and a follow-up essay by the same author, Alana Newhsouse, who wrote that "whole parts of American society were breaking down before our eyes," Linker encapsulates why Americans are so pissed (h/t Dean Baker):

Linker then writes that the above is why "angry anti-establishment populism has become so prominent in our politics over the past decade," which both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have capitalized on.

And Biden, a career politician, has been part of the problem (and therefore implicated in these abject societal failures), and is "badly out of step with the national mood, speaking a language very far removed from the talk of a broken country that suffuses Mr. Trump’s meandering and often unhinged remarks on the subject." (gotta get that shot in!)

Linker suggests that in order to recover, Biden 'stop being so upbeat' – about the economy in particular, and stop making the election about how awful Trump is. Biden "should admit Washington has gotten a lot of things wrong over the past two decades and sound unhappy about and humbled by it."

Further, Biden "could make the argument that all governments make mistakes because they are run by fallible human beings — but also point out that elected representatives in a democracy should be up front about error and resolve to learn from mistakes so that they avoid them in the future."

"Just acknowledging how much in America is broken could generate a lot of good will from otherwise skeptical and dismissive voters," Linker suggests.

Let's see how that goes.