Here it is compared to the previous three presidents:¹
He's right on track.
¹As usual, I've left off George W. Bush because of the huge bump he got from 9/11. It makes normal comparisons useless during the first term of his presidency.
15 thoughts on “Raw data: Joe Biden’s job approval at the end of August”
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Herbert Walker Bush (the first one) went from 60% approval at inauguration, to 90% during his war in Iraq (the first one).
Highest approval rating ever recorded. (Clinton deflated it when Bush ended his war too easily, and Clinton stumbled into the perfect pander, “it’s the economy, stupid.” As usual we can be greedy and bloodthirsty and dumb all at the same time).
Bring back the draft?.. Maybe the belligerent R’s and “liberal” hawks will finally quiet down.
So you don't think we should have joined the coalition to liberate Kuwait? We should have just sat it out and let everyone else do it?
You'll recall that when the Republican Guard showed up George decided it was time to withdraw and declare mission accomplished.
'Just asking questions.' TM
The pundits tell us he can't beat trump.
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/to-beat-trump-democrats-need-whitmer-warnock
"Despite Biden’s accomplishments, voters find his age disqualifying. His party must unleash its younger talents in 2024."
And please don't ever pick warnock for anything. What an awful choice.
There’s always a possibility that I’m missing something, and perhaps this Bulwark writer has insights that I don’t have. Maybe Joe Biden will lose 2024 in a rout. Nevertheless, a few things. First of all, the Bulwark was founded by, among others, Charlie Sykes, and Bill Kristol. These are not the kind of people who usually root for a Democratic victory. Also, I find this sort of observation on Biden to be, frankly, dumb:
“voters find his age disqualifying”
In my own humble estimation, age isn’t the most relevant consideration. As the saying goes, it’s just a number. The important consideration, obviously, is mental acuity. It may be dogma on the Right that Biden is a doddering nincompoop (and yet he also somehow manages to be an evil genius who steals an election and throws his political opponents in jail), but I see no credible evidence of that assertion.
And there may certainly be a lot of ageism in the country, but I like to think people are still rational enough to consider their situations with at least some care.
And Biden is an incumbent president. There’s no advantage that I know of, when running for president, greater than incumbency. Throwing that advantage away, short of a medical diagnosis that Biden is out to lunch, would be so foolhardy that it’s difficult to be believe that Bukwark article is suggesting it seriously.
So, maybe they’re not? That writer may very well be hoping that a Republican wins the Presidency, so naturally they would want to see the incumbent Democrat President resign. Not that we shouldn’t read the Bulwark, but we should probably read it with a fair measure of caution.
You're right. Incumbency is the best advantage any president has, and anyone arguing Dems should replace Biden is working to elect Trump to a second term. It would be the ultimate folly.
“voters find his age disqualifying”
The last president they said that about was Reagan. He won in a landslide.
OT: Cal and Stanford moving to the ACC.
Academically, it's a decent fit with ACC's 6 AAU members.
What a clusterf**k. Stanford and Cal will be locked into the ACC until 2036, with reduced revenue shares initially. Still, Stanford doesn’t need to worry about the money and Cal has the regent’s tax on UCLA to help out. Pity the poor Olympic sports athletes, flying commercial flights to the east coast every other week. Next up: can Washington State and Oregon State split the money from liquidating the corpse of the PAC-12 and then engineer a reverse merger with the Mountain West ?
Some of the Olympic sports are in the MPSF. For the rest, I'm sure it'll be more like a tournament involving multiple schools, so that they don't have to travel as often.
It's kind of amazing that even with the huge bump Bush II got from 9/11 - political press comparing him to Winston Churchill, Democrats going on TV to call him a great leader, etc - he almost lost in 2004.
I don't think it's all that amazing. Basically by 2000, the country had entered its current, 49-51 "scorpions in a bottle" political era, when only extraordinary circumstances prevent presidential elections from being close. There just aren't any blowouts in this era. Even 2008 wasn't a classic blowout: that election was a lot closer than 1980 (the previous election that took place during a recession year), but the economic conditions were objectively worse in 2008.
Anyway, the country had experienced a relatively tepid recovery after the recession of 2001, and of course by 2004 the Iraq War had turned ugly and unpopular. A big win for Bush II that cycle would have been a lot more amazing than the squeaker we got.
I think looking back people will be comparing Biden and Reagan as two presidents with similar profiles. Both were old, defeated one-term presidents, inherited bad economies, and marked turning points in long-term government policies. Despite similarities, mirror images in other ways.
Reagan: anti-union/pro-management, anti-government spending, ended/rolled back New Deal progressivism, drew political support from nostalgic white suburbia, oversaw economic rebound powered by boomer demographics after double-dip recession.
Biden: pro-labor, pro-government investment, rolling back neoliberal excesses, drawing political support from pluralistic, forward-looking urbanites & suburbanites, overseeing economic rebound powered by millennial demographics after pandemic crisis.
Similar arcs in Gallup polling:
https://news.gallup.com/interactives/507569/presidential-job-approval-center.aspx
Reagan moved from 43% in Aug '83 to 58% in Oct '84 and won a landslide in Nov. Biden might not rise that high but he doesn't need to win a landslide. He just needs to win.
(You'll need to choose the presidents to see the comparison.)
I'd love to think you're right but I see no way Biden gets anywhere near the blowout win Reagan got in 1984. Hell, we may well even have a recession next year, or a substantial slowdown. Mind you I think the smart money's on Biden (incumbents win more often than not), but I reckon the best Joe could do would be to secure his 2020 states and add two or three more (that would actually be a huge accomplishment).
Interesting graph, Kevin, but no link to the Gallup site where it presumably originated. I can't find it.