Biden is failing at the important task of his presidency

Even Democrats who are skeptical of President Biden’s chances of winning this November usually say he is doing a fantastic job, pointing to the strong economy and the long list of legislation that has passed in his tenure. The implication is that voters aren’t appreciating Biden as they should, perhaps because of his age.

But if Democrats were honest with themselves, they would admit the current state of American politics is nowhere close to what they hoped for three years ago: Biden at 38 percent approval; Donald Trump easily winning the Republican nomination and rising in popularity; Trump leading Biden in nearly every swing state; Arab Americans in Michigan furious with the president and threatening to vote against him in November; and Biden hawking a restrictive immigration plan written with little input from Latino lawmakers.

Biden has failed at the most important task for a Democratic president in the 2020s: eliminating or at least drastically reducing the chances of Trump or someone who shares his radical beliefs being his successor.

Biden’s tenure would be great for a president elected in 1992 or 2008 or even 2016. But not 2020. This presidency is not about passing legislation, working across party lines or fixing the economy. The Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans who went to protests throughout 2017 and voted in unusually high numbers in 2018 and 2020 felt American democracy was under threat, not that there wasn’t enough federal spending on microchip manufacturing. They certainly weren’t looking for anyone to brag about their close relationship with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who was an enabler of Trump’s terrible conduct as president.

In terms of weakening Trumpism, Biden has failed in two crucial ways. First, Biden is very unpopular (about 56 percent of Americans disapprove of him), making him vulnerable to losing even to Trump (roughly 52 percent disapproval.)

And that’s despite Biden trying very hard to be popular. The administration has particularly courted White voters without degrees, who have trended Republican over the past three decades, and moderate Republicans, who it seemed might connect with a centrist Democratic president. Much of Biden’s legislative and political strategy seemed designed for those two groups: government spending to create jobs that don’t require degrees and/or are in rural areas; centrist rhetoric and policies on immigration and policing; bipartisan deals on infrastructure and other issues; little emphasis on concerns that disproportionately affect minorities, such as voting and transgender rights.

Early in Biden’s tenure, White House officials would say privately that the best way to save democracy was for the federal government to be seen by the public as working effectively. So a strong economy would be a bulwark against Trumpism.

But this strategy didn’t work. Biden is very unpopular with the moderates and conservatives he has courted and also has lackluster numbers with his party’s base. The president and his team claim credit for the strong performance of Democratic candidates in 2022 and last year. But those candidates kept their distance from the White House and won by casting Republicans as extreme. That was the same formula Democrats used in 2018, when Biden wasn’t yet in office.