Why is Joe Biden so unpopular? As the pundits stroke their chins and come up with ever more abstruse theories, allow me to butt in. We should all know by now that normal political polls of "the public" are all but useless in these polarized times. You have to look at Democrats and Republicans separately to make any sense out of anything. Here's what Biden's approval rating really looks like these days:
Roughly speaking, support among Democratic and Republican partisans went down by a modest six points during Biden's first few months and then flattened out. Since about midsummer, their support hasn't fluctuated more than a point or two.
In other words, all the stuff that happened after the middle of summer—Afghanistan, inflation, CRT, the infrastructure bill passing, the social spending bill not passing—has had essentially no impact on partisans.
But then there are independents. Their support went down 13 points through midsummer and then kept on dropping, losing another 11 points through November. What's going on with them? All the usual suspects might explain what happened after midsummer, but independents also soured on Biden very strongly in the months before midsummer, when none of this stuff had yet happened.
So that's the mystery. Why has Biden lost a whopping 24 points of support among independents? For this, we have to abandon our usual way of thinking and pretend to be the kind of people who don't pay much attention to politics. They don't know what Tucker Carlson said last night. They don't know that Republicans are refusing subpoenas to testify before Congress. They don't know what's so great about the infrastructure bill, and are probably totally unaware of what's in the social spending bill. Generally speaking, they aren't especially outraged by anything going on in Washington DC.
So what's been eating at them for the past ten months? You probably think that this is the point at which I unveil my brilliant analysis, but I don't know any more than you do. My only real guess is that it's less connected to politics than we political junkies like to think.
The most obvious candidate is the seemingly endless COVID-19 pandemic. Ditto for the related turmoil over remote school, which is a huge issue for parents with young children.
On the other hand, it's probably not the economy: the unemployment rate is low and nominal blue-collar wages have been rising steadily over the past year. Inflation is an issue, but only over the past couple of months.
Cars have been a problem. The price of new cars and trucks has gone up amid continuing shortages, while the price of used cars and trucks has skyrocketed.
What else is bugging people? Give this a real try without resorting to political effluvia. Just ordinary, everyday problems that have gotten more and more tiresome over the past year with Biden seemingly unable or unwilling to do anything about them. Ideas?
Even low information voters have to know that schools staying open or closed is a state/local affair, not something the president can do much about. Are people seriously blaming Biden for something their governor or local school board is responsible for? Maybe, I guess. Voters blame/reward presidents for gas prices all the time, and they have absolutely no control over that.
Much as Bill Climpton was president in 9/11/01, joebiden was president in November 2019 when the first known cases if the Rona were d iui diagnosed in Wuhan. Likewise, all events related to the Plandemic since then are at least in large part the responsibility of joebiden.
*on 9/11/01
**of the Rona were diagnosed
I don't know if Kevin was specifically referring to Jonathan Chait's article in New York Magazine (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/11/joe-biden-agenda.html) but hopefully he was because it's brilliant, damn good piece of writing and analysis of the main problem Biden and subsequently the Democratic party faces this decade. And it's brilliant because isn't typical stuff you get from centrists types bemoaning the progressives. While Chait very critical of the way progressives have acted since the start of the administration (Rashida Tlaib's recent interview on Axios is a perfect example of their own idiocy) he also goes after the centrists for being what they truly are: "valets to the rich". I include this important section of the article:
"The Democratic Party’s centrist wing has assimilated this worldview. It is not an altogether irrational choice. When you are running in politically hostile territory, and when Fox News has branded your party as the enemy of American values, you need some signal to your constituents that you differ from your colleagues. The paradox is that while the sources of the Democratic Party’s battered reputation in much of red America are largely cultural, the only recourse red-state Democrats have come up with is economic. It is telling that one group, Center Forward, which had emerged to run ads praising key Democrats who had broken with Biden, turned out to be a front for the pharmaceutical lobby.
Embattled Democrats have not staged any high-profile gestures to distance themselves from their party on policing, abortion, or guns. Manchin is not walking around toting copies of the lesser-known offensive editions of Dr. Seuss. Instead, moderate Democrats, noted Politico, “tout the Chamber’s backing to bolster their bipartisan cred in swing districts.” While Fox News is blaring constant coverage of cancellations in elite liberal milieus, centrist Democrats focus on blocking the cancellation of billionaire tax loopholes. The Chamber of Commerce has filled a vacuum where the shaping of a culturally moderate wing of the Democratic Party ought to exist."
Amen. When you present to the voters one side of your party that caters to the woke and the other that caters to the rich, well, how popular is that? How popular is that going to be? Not very. And yet (as another writer pointed out) that's the constituency the party seems to be attracting: a woke white person in an upper-middle class suburb who works for Big Pharma and wants their SALT tax break. The party is filled with voters like this in suburbs of Detroit, Chicago, Ft. Lauderdale, San Francisco, Madison, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Boston, the Tri-State Area, you name it.
That's why it makes the party's messaging problem almost impossible to solve and that's economic populism is a lot harder for the party to try and portray itself as to, not really working class but not-as-educated voters (no graduate students anyways), because they don't know what to believe. Sadly, I think Biden is exactly the kind of Democrat who needs to be in office and, as Matt Yglesias pointed out in a recent article of his, had he been the nominee in 2016 instead of Hilary Clinton he would have won. But the political dynamics of that time made it impossible for him to win the nomination and he knew it, which is why he didn't run. It's too bad history sometimes works that way. The problem for Biden is he's perfect Dem to have in office but he is being squeezed by these basically unpopular factions. To overcome this he has to step up and show he's in charge, of the party, country, everything, really. I know that won't be easy for him but he has to because if the party needs a unifying message going forward it has to be his Presidency is working and that Democrats should support it.