Welp, that didn’t go as swimmingly as he’d hoped. On a Tuesday visit to what’s traditionally been friendly territory for Democrats, Scranton Joe Biden came to Michigan to pitch his beleaguered Build Back Better plan. Instead, he got a good sense of what regular folks are feeling toward him and his feckless administration.

Executive summary: Not good, Joe. Not good.

Our one-term president was visiting an Operating Engineers training facility in Howell, a largely blue-collar and conservative town some 60 miles northwest of Detroit. In addition to pitching the so-called merits of his plan, he also tried to drum up support for the two spending bills upon which the future of his administration rests: a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and a budget-busting $3.5 trillion obscenity that “invests” in child care, housing, higher education, pre-kindergarten education, and combating climate change cradle-to-grave entitlements and leftist boondoggles.

Biden spoke outside at Local 324 of the International Union of Operating Engineers’ Construction Career Center, where a massive crowd of about 40 local Democrat dignitaries and hand-picked friendlies hung on his every word — especially when he recognized his authoritarian “friend,” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and the state’s lieutenant governor, Garlin Gilchrist, whom Biden bizarrely said “covers [Whitmer] in every way, both in terms of physically and mentally and every other way.” Really. We can’t make this stuff up.

After introducing Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Joe Biden thanks the lieutenant governor, who “covers her in every way, both in terms of physically, and mentally, and every other way.” 🧐 pic.twitter.com/B4HEr4uGQz

— Jake Schneider (@jacobkschneider) October 5, 2021

Oh, well. At least he didn’t call her “Jennifer” this time.

By contrast, hundreds of decidedly anti-Biden demonstrators were gathered along the road about a mile from where Biden spoke. After all, his policies have been hurtful to Michiganders – from crime to inflation to energy to COVID-19. Some protesters held up those delightfully derogatory signs and flags, while others helpfully reminded him that he didn’t get all 81 million of those votes on the up-and-up – not when he spent the campaign season in his basement, and not when he couldn’t draw flies to one of his unicorn-rare live events.

To be fair to Biden, though, he should at least get some credit. After all, his former boss, Barack Obama, would never have set foot in a town like Howell. When in Michigan, Obama much preferred visiting the hard-left enclave of Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan, where his pal Bill Ayers learned how to become a domestic terrorist and how to wipe his feet on the American flag.

“These bills are not about Left versus Right or moderate versus progressive or anything that pits Americans against one another,” Biden laughably lied. “These bills are about competitiveness versus complacency. They’re about opportunity versus decay. They’re about leading the world or continuing to let the world pass us by, which is literally [sic] happening.”

Biden said the country was at an “inflection point,” and here we think he’s onto something. As he barnstorms the nation on his #FJB Tour, the American people will be deciding whether to let him serve out the next 40 months of his lone term with or without all the, uh, colorful protests which continue to spread like the brushfires of freedom.

It’ll be interesting to see what the crowd is like at his next tour stop. And the next. And the next. And whether they keep on shouting, “Let’s go, Bran-don!”