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‘This is a disaster’: Five Tweets on Democrats calling for President Biden to bow out of the race following his alarming debate performance

News

U.S. President Joe Biden attends a roundtable session during a G7 world leaders summit, at Borgo Egnazia, Italy, June 13, 2024. Christopher Furlong/Pool Photo via AP.

The Hub Staff
28 Jun 24

Last night, CNN hosted the first debate of the 2024 U.S. Presidential election at its studios in Atlanta, Georgia. While the event featured theatrics, missteps, and mistruths from former president Trump, all eyes were on current President Joe Biden, who journalists, politicians, and citizens alike agreed came off as a startlingly feeble-looking and sounding leader of the free world. The President’s team said he was suffering from a cold.

Following an hour and a half of stumbling and fumbling, a CNN flash poll found that 67 percent of debate watchers believe Trump outperformed Biden. The President’s poor performance has sparked conversations across the country, with some calling on him to bow out and decline his likely Democratic Party nomination. These calls could have been expected from Republicans, but shockingly, many of them are now emanating from Democrat voters, politicians, and pundits.

Here are five tweets from those on the Left calling for President Biden to drop out of the presidential race.

Ian Bremmer shared a screenshot of the The New York Times website today displaying concerning headlines from writer Thomas L. Friedman, who is a friend of Biden’s, Frank Bruni, a long-time New York Times journalist, Patrick Healy, the paper’s deputy opinion editor, and Nicholas Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and regular CNN contributor. Each writer either called for Biden to step down or expressed concern about his ability to lead America now and into the future.

John King, CNN’s chief national correspondent, said that minutes after the debate, “[A] deep, a wide and a very aggressive panic” spread through the Democratic Party. He also explained that there are now conversations happening among high-ranking Democrats that could result in them going to the White House and asking Biden to step down from the presidency to make room for a new nominee.

King said that Biden’s performance was received as “dismal” by prominent Democrats, some of whom are considering going public with their concerns.

Van Jones, a CNN analyst, political commentator, and former Obama advisor, said that even though he loves Joe Biden, worked for him, and thinks he is a good man and president, “he didn’t do well at all.” Jones said that Biden had a test to meet to “restore confidence of the country and of the base, and he failed to do that.”

He added that there is an option for a “different way forward” from Biden, if the president allows that to happen.

Andrew Yang, a former Democratic presidential candidate, contended that Biden is “a different guy in 2024” when compared to the Biden he debated in 2020.

Yang wrote on X, “Democrats who are afraid to broach the subject of Joe stepping aside are failing the country.” He also wrote that Joe Biden’s superpower is that he’s “a good guy who will do the right thing for the country” which In this case, is “stepping aside and letting the DNC choose another nominee.”

Edward Luce, an associate editor at the Financial Times, advocated for a new Democrat nominee to replace Biden after his performance against Trump. Luce said that “any number of potential Democratic nominees would be taking Trump down,” whereas Biden is letting him lie “through his teeth.” Luce also wrote on his X account that “If democracy is at stake (it is), Democrats need to act like they mean it. They have to be ruthless.”

At a rally held today, President Biden told an large crowd, “When you get knocked down you get back up.”

Following the Democratic National Convention in August, the election will less than three months away.

The federal government’s temporary foreign worker approvals have increased 176 percent since 2015

News

Mexican and Guatemalan workers pick strawberries at the Faucher strawberry farm, Tuesday, August 24, 2021 in Pont Rouge Que. Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press.

Three charts showing the increase of foreign worker approvals by occupation and area

Kiernan Green
28 Jun 24

Nearly all applications for jobs to be filled under the federal government’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program were accepted last year, as the number of approved requests have risen by more than 170 percent since 2015.

According to data collected by The Hub, in 2023, nearly all roles filed through the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program were approved—98.79 percent, 228,429, or just over the population number of Regina. That’s a 10 percentage point rise since 2015.

Percent of portion of accepted foreign worker roles from decided Labour Market Impact Assessment filings. Chart: Kiernan Green, The Hub.

In 2022 alone, tens of thousands of more applications were made in the sectors of sales and service, trades and transport, and agriculture following an expansion of the program.

The Employment and Social Development Canada data reviewed shows the number of roles approved through Labour Market Impact Assessments (LMIAs) by the government. When a Canadian employer wants to fill a job position with a foreign worker, in the majority of cases they are required to file an LMIA.

The application includes details like their sector and the number of roles they seek to fill with a foreign worker. The LMIA, reviewed, approved, or denied by Employment and Social Development Canada, determines if a foreign worker is truly needed and if no Canadian or permanent resident is available to do the job.

The resulting Temporary Foreign Worker Program work permit allows foreign nationals to work in Canada temporarily. Between 2006 and 2010, nearly half (47 percent) of foreign workers who had used the program for 10 years transitioned to permanent residency.

Approved LMIAs do not necessarily mean a foreign worker enters Canada, as employers may not necessarily ultimately fill the requested job. Nevertheless, the large increase in LMIA applications and their approvals demonstrates Canada’s increasing reliance on foreign labour. Canadian employers have evidently leapt at opportunities to hire more workers outside of Canada.

In 2023 the total number of jobs approved for foreign workers reached 228,429. That was a 107 percent increase from 2021’s 110,342 approvals, and more than double (176 percent) 2015's 82,683 approvals.

Natural resources and agriculture occupations like farm labourers and greenhouse workers, which have historically provided the most opportunities to Canada’s foreign workers, had 32,388 additional jobs approved in 2023 over those approved in 2021.

But the greatest additional jobs approved in 2023 compared to 2021 were in sales (34,433 additional jobs, totalling 46,525) and trades, transport, and equipment operators (22,949 additional jobs totalling 34,480).

The cause of the major growth in foreign worker application acceptance was the Trudeau government’s expansion of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program in April 2022. As Canada added 337,000 jobs to bring unemployment to pre-pandemic levels, Carla Qualtrough, then-employment, workforce development, and disability inclusion minister, announced a new plan, called the Workforce Solutions Road Map, to see foreign workers “meet the labour market needs of today” and address Canadian labour shortages.

That same year, the cap on the proportion of low-wage foreign workers was raised from 10 to 20 percent for all employers, and to 30 percent in seven sectors with “demonstrated labour shortages in low-wage positions.” These included construction; hospitals; accommodation and food services; nursing and residential care facilities; and manufacturing in food, wood, and furniture products.

Additionally, the government permanently removed a cap on foreign worker’s low-wage seasonal employment. This included jobs like agricultural harvesting.

It's a reversal from the Liberal Party’s 2014 promise to reduce the number of foreign workers accepted to the country.

“As a result of the Conservatives’ mismanagement, the Temporary Foreign Worker Program has failed to achieve its original objective of filling jobs when qualified Canadian workers cannot be found, and Liberals are calling for the program to be scaled back and re-focused on its original purpose,” said then-Liberal critic for citizenship, immigration, and multiculturalism, John McCallum.

In 2022, the federal government also ended a policy that automatically rejected foreign workers’ TFW applications for low-wage occupations in accommodation, food services, and retail trade in regions with an unemployment rate of six percent or higher.

Between 2019 and 2020, employment declined in accommodation and food services by over 380,000, retail trade by over 164,000, and construction by over 78,000.

Regionally, most foreign worker jobs approved in the past year centred around metropolitan centres. Surrey, B.C., saw the most, 13,502, followed by Calgary (10,193) and Toronto (9,631). Farmland throughout southern Ontario and Quebec and natural resource destinations in northern Alberta and Nova Scotia have also welcomed more TFWs.

On May 1 this year, Employment and Social Development Canada altered certain measures of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program Road Map earlier than anticipated due to the “surge in demand” and declining job vacancies. For instance, the government reduced the TFW cap from 30 to 20 percent in seven sectors under special consideration, excluding construction and healthcare.

LMIAs are now valid to hire foreign workers for six months, down from 12.