Analysis: A truly awful week for Joe Biden
(CNN)This is a week President Joe Biden would like to forget. But Republicans won't let that happen anytime soon. Consider the body blows he took this week: 1. The US ended its military presence in Afghanistan on Tuesday. While Biden spoke several times this week in an attempt to spin the withdrawal, the suicide bomber who took 13 American military lives last week and those of at least 170 others, coupled with the overall chaos of the pullout, reflected very poorly on him and his administration. 2. The economy -- plagued by the coronavirus Delta variant -- stalled badly last month. Just 235,000 jobs were created in August, the lowest number in more than six months. (Economists had expected more than 700,000 jobs to be created in August.) 3. Sen. Joe Manchin, a critical moderate Democrat from West Virginia, said Thursday that he believed his party needed to take a "strategic pause" in its efforts to pass a $3.5 trillion stimulus package that Biden has cast as nec...