Why Biden's poll numbers are declining The honeymoon is officially over. Americans’ optimism about the country’s direction has plummeted almost 20 points since the spring . Sadly, that’s a rational reaction to President Joe Biden’s first six months.
It’s not just that the public gives the prez low marks on his
handling (non-handling is more like it) of the surge at the southern
border and the surge in shootings on our streets. There are also worries
about rapid inflation and new lockdowns in the face of the Delta
variant — problems Team Biden is plainly making worse.
In the ABC News/Ipsos poll, just 45 percent of Americans are
optimistic about the country’s direction this coming year, down from 64
percent in early May. And the drop was about the same 20 points for
Republicans and Democrats — and worse, 26 points, for independents.
It’s no wonder. Consumer prices rose 5.4 percent in June from a year
earlier, the biggest monthly jump since right before the 2008 financial
crisis. Even the post-pandemic recovery seems at risk, as new unemployment claims jumped last week to 419,000, the highest level since mid-May and more than twice the average in pre-pandemic 2019.
Yet Biden claims there’s “no evidence” his expanded jobless
benefits slowed the return to work and refuses to admit his vast
spending plans threaten even more inflation.
Crucially, Biden’s handling of the pandemic got its lowest rating yet, with 63 percent approval. That’s better than he’s earned.
The prez took credit for the vaccines President Donald Trump got off
the ground, but he missed his own target of getting 70 percent of adults
their first shot by July 4 and still hasn’t met it. Meanwhile, his
chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, is talking about another mask
mandate while Americans worry about more lockdowns Getting Americans jabbed should have been Biden’s
overwhelming priority. Yet his team clearly underestimated the challenge
— despite such known facts as: Many of us won’t even get the flu
vaccine, and even health-care workers are notoriously vax-resistant.
Worse, he put his focus instead on an utterly partisan crusade to
transform the nation with a vastly bigger federal government. First, he
insisted on his overlarge “relief” bill, passing it on a party-line vote
that only deepened the divide in Congress.
Then he began a feckless drive for another $6 trillion in new
spending, aiming to rival FDR when his party barely controls either
house of Congress. He also burned energy and political capital with “Jim
Crow” nonsense about Republican efforts to slightly tighten election
security and embraced the left’s incredibly divisive “systemic racism”
obsession.
All while the vaccine effort flagged. And now his administration is feeding false fears of doom over Delta.
If Biden had governed as he promised on Inauguration Day, seeking
unity, he could have passed a series of modest bipartisan bills targeted
at the nation’s real needs, while focusing on the serious challenge of
jabbing the whole country to guarantee a return to normalcy and the
booming pre-COVID economy. But he chose to chase “historic victories”
and so deepened political divisions while sowing economic trouble.
Ironically, a president elected mainly to be different from the last guy has been all about feeding his own ego — and earning this huge loss in public confidence.
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