A recent poll truly shocked me.
Quinnipiac University found that President Joe Biden’s approval rating had sunk to just 33%. You might argue that this was just one poll, but Biden’s approval is down in multiple surveys.
As CNN’s Harry Enten pointed out Friday, there were four major national polls released recently, and in three of them – including Quinnipiac – Biden had his lowest showing of his presidency. In the fourth, he was “one point off the lowest.”
These are just devastating results on the heels of a historic Supreme Court confirmation and only seven months out from the midterms.
When Politico’s Ryan Lizza last week asked Biden pollster John Anzalone how dire the situation had become for Democrats, Anzalone responded in blunt terms, saying that no Democratic consultant would say “that this is anything but a really sour environment for Democrats.”
I think the problem is more on ground level, a gut level: How do people feel? They feel stuck and angry, they’re tired and overwhelmed, and that energy is being directed at Biden.
Biden is a decent man. As a matter of course and tactic, he strikes me as not entirely built for hyperbole and hype, for beating his chest while he boasts. It’s not part of his character. He is sober and straightforward. Many Americans wanted him as an antidote to Donald Trump for precisely this reason.
But America has changed its mind and its mood. It wants a show and a showman to distract from its misery. Biden is not that.
There is an old saying that is some variation of, “People will forget what you said, but they won’t forget how you made them feel.” Biden isn’t constantly tweeting and hamming it up for the cameras and his reticence has left a void of emotional connection to him.
Biden’s presidency is far from a failure, but it has been stymied on some big promises that Biden made during the campaign on issues like voting rights and police reform. Lately it feels like, on domestic policy, Biden has moved from the macro to the micro, taking steps that will indeed benefit many Americans, but are too narrowly focused to transform our society or fix the core problems that plague it.
All the while, two major perennial issues are resurgent: crime and the economy. The fear of crime and the pinch of inflation aren’t abstractions, or complicated foreign policy, or perks for special interests. They creep into every door and lurk under every kitchen table.
And on the other side, Republicans are playing heavily into culture war issues like challenging the teaching of Black history and the history of white supremacy in schools. And they are using parental rights as the Trojan horse to enact their agenda.
Democrats, for their part, have almost ceded the parental rights argument, instead of fighting back and framing these efforts as oppressive and backward. They do not recognize that oppression by conservatives in this country is like an amoeba: simple, primitive, pervasive and highly adaptable.
Republicans are using white parental fear, particularly the fears of white moms, worried about harm coming to their children, to attract suburban white women and get them to the polls.
There was another worrisome sign in the Quinnipiac poll: Biden’s approval rating among people identified as Hispanics was even lower than it was among those identified as white. Pundits have been discussing Biden’s declining numbers among Hispanics for months.
The reasons for this drop appear to range from a response to the pandemic to the fact that Hispanics hew conservative on some social issues.
But all this taken together – in addition to voter suppression and racial, political gerrymandering – may prove hugely problematic for Democrats and for the administration, unless they can turn things around before Election Day. If not, we could well be looking forward to a Biden bloodbath.
The New York Times