Political polls come and go, the results often unsurprising in a polarized, tribal America. Yet early this week, one poll’s finding brought political nerds from the White House to Washington’s watering holes up short.
More than 6 in 10 Americans, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll published on the eve of President Biden’s State of the Union address, said that the president — widely credited by historians and nonpartisan analysts for having achieved more legislatively in his first two years than any president since Lyndon B. Johnson — had accomplished “little or nothing.”
Talk about a communications crisis for the White House.
Biden as a do-nothing president was of course the overwhelming sentiment of Republican respondents, 93% of them, which skewed the overall result. Yet more than 1 in 5 Democrats also dismissed the president’s record to date and, ominously, so did nearly two-thirds of those in the often decisive ranks of political independents. That left just 36% of all Americans saying Biden had done “a great deal” or “good amount.”
You could almost hear the groans from the comms folks in the West Wing. While some Americans don’t like what Biden has done along with a Democratic-controlled Congress, there shouldn’t be any argument that he’s done a lot. Right?