Biden: Why are his approval ratings so low?
President Joe Biden is coming off “one of the best weeks of his presidency,” said David Siders in Politico.com, so why are his poll numbers “cratering?” Biden’s approval rating last week sank to an aggregate poll average of 42 percent—at the very same time that the House was passing his Build Back Better Act, a $1.5 trillion package of climate action and assistance to American families that 58 percent of voters say they support. Nor did the public seem to give Biden any credit for the “hard” infrastructure bill he signed last month, another resoundingly popular (63 percent) piece of historic legislation, or the spring’s Covid stimulus package that prevented widespread hardship by putting cash directly into Americans’ pockets. The chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan took a lasting toll on Biden’s poll numbers, said David Graham in TheAtlantic.com, and “Covid’s distressing comeback” isn’t helping the public mood. Still, with the economy in full rebound, and the unemployment rate falling faster than ever in history, it’s hard to understand “why a president with such well-liked ideas is so disliked.”
How is this a mystery? said Rich Lowry in NYPost.com. Biden ran as a moderate, pledging to bring competence back to the White House and a sense of normalcy back to American life. Instead, one “disastrous” year on, Biden has bungled Afghanistan, created a crisis at the southern border, fueled inflation with wild spending, and appeared bumbling, weak, and controlled by events. Rather than govern as a caretaker centrist, he’s let himself be “carried along by the left-wing tide of his party.” Voters know that before it was pared down, the Build Back Better bill was a Bernie Sanders wish list––a “$3.5 trillion grab bag” containing “nearly the entirety of the progressive agenda.” His defenders can tout the supposed health of the economy all they want, said Conn Carroll in WashingtonExaminer.com. All voters know is that food and gas prices are soaring, while the man in the Oval Office is “pushing more spending on social issues.”
If Biden’s problem is that he’s too liberal, you’d think liberals would like him, said Lisa Lerer in The New York Times. Instead, the sharpest declines in his approval numbers are among left-leaning voters who feel Biden has failed to make progress on their priorities: voting rights, immigration reform, climate change, and the filibuster. Biden’s caught in a “big squeeze,” said Jonathan Chait in NYMag .com. His party’s progressive wing blames him for not advancing their agenda, even though he tried and was blocked by centrist Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Meanwhile, moderate, working-class Democrats— including many Blacks and Latinos—want more police on the streets and a tougher border policy. For Biden and the Democrats, “time is running out, and Trump is waiting.”
In politics, everything can change in a matter of weeks, said Harry Enten in CNN.com, and “we really don’t have any idea what the political environment will be on Election Day 2024.” Historically, a president’s approval rating one year into his first term has no connection to what it is three years later. Swings of 10 points are not uncommon. If gas prices and inflation ease, Covid recedes, and the infrastructure and Build Back Better bills boost the economy and improve people’s lives, Biden may rebound. Or unforeseen errors and events could drop his approval even lower. So, to those already handicapping the 2024 Biden-Trump race, I say: “Stop it.” Three years from now is an eternity.