A Quinnipiac poll shows that there has been an erosion in Hillary Clinton’s polling numbers over the last few months, which may indicate that the Benghazi obsession of the Republican Party is having an intended effect. On the other hand, Clinton still enjoys net-favorable numbers, while Joe Biden suffers with 37-44 net-unfavorable numbers. I really have no explanation for why Biden’s numbers are so bad. He isn’t associated with any scandal and he hasn’t been portrayed unfavorably in any news stories recently.
What’s your guess?
Biden’s leadership in curbing gun violence?
A few reasons.
It’s a mix of those things honestly.
so the only thing people hear about him are the jokes about him making gaffes.
Not surprised about Hillary’s #s. They were never going to stay that high now that she left State and is back to being just a Democrat.
It was the same dynamic with Gore. The press simply decides who will be their “gaffe-man” and mail in their copy while on vacation.
Two reasons:
My entirely-unfounded suspicion is that Biden is acting as a sort of less-personally-popular-with-lefties proxy for Obama. Digby wrote something about the declining liberal engagement in TV and on political blogs (are you seeing that here?), which I think is largely due to frustration (with the presidency-as-weakest-office-in-the-land) and lack of red meat. The VP’s supposed to be an attack dog, and Biden’s not doing such a great job sinking his teeth in.
Has Joe Biden ever been popular? He busted his ass as Senator, an exemplar of the working man’s advocate, but did that get him any respect?
He’s not flashy to look at and he freely opens his mouth when spoken to, so he’s rewarded by being dubbed a schmuck. Who cares what he’s actually accomplished? That’s too complex of a story for the media.
Sort of like how Al Gore “invented the internet”, he can’t win for losing. Tiger Beat on the Potomac just doesn’t sell copy with him on the cover.
He busted his ass as Senator, an exemplar of the working man’s advocate, but did that get him any respect?
Is that the reason he was known as the Senator from MBNA? Or why he was so gung-ho to spend money putting pot smokersin jail?
Name another Senator that took the friggin’ train to work, like the rest of us grunts. I’m not going to start picking a policy meatloaf here.
Joe Biden is one of the least wealthy members of the senate — and he’s been a senator 32 years. So obviously the man’s pretty dumb. Or else he’s extremely ethical. You decide.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-502163_162-4445194-502163.html
The late night comics all latched on to him as their point man, and that has damaged his reputation with a whole generation of younger folks that make up the dem base.
What do they call Joe, the underdog kid?
Look at the favorability ratings for the VP candidates from the past six contests:
2012 Joe Biden / Paul Ryan 44 / 43
2008 Joe Biden / Sarah Palin 49 / 53
Vice President Biden’s Favorable Rating Continues to Decline
Hasn’t changed much since October 2009 :: 42 / 44
Crunching the numbers at Pew Research on the Obama’s, Biden and Clinton …
Michelle Obama’s Popularity Undiminished
Over the last few months, while there’s been this PR push and everybody’s screaming about how Hillary has a lock on the next nomination, the silence about Biden has been deafening.
It’s just as well, because as somebody up thread pointed out, at this point polls on 2014 are just bullshit.
Some people say he’s too old to run, but I think he’s just Biden his time.
Groan
That’s right, he’s groan a lot over the years.
Gaffes. There is a misconception that Joe Biden is not an effective leader, or that he’s stupid, etc… because of his perceived gaffes.
Jay Leno. Jon Stewart. The Onion. Biden’s a punchline. End of story.
VP’s never get respect. Look at Truman, Nixon, Johnson before they ascended to the Presidency.
There’s been an unrelenting drumbeat from left and right that Biden’s sorta dumb. He’s too populist, forthright, and open-minded to be taken seriously. Amid the bitter aftertaste of Clinton and Bush, the appearance of “folksiness” has lost its charm. He’s just another person who should be president but won’t be.
As to Clinton, of course her ratings fell. They’ll plunge a lot further if she becomes a candidate That much is inevitable. General approval ratings don’t = electoral support. And she’s got a lot of vulnerabilities, many of them related to a Baggage Named Bill.
And named WAR.
Biden’s unpopular for the same reason Pelosi is. The Mighty Right Wing Wurlitzer has kept up a steady drumbeat of Biden stupid, Biden gaffe, Biden bad. It’s essentially content free, but if they say it often enough, it seeps into the supposedly liberal MSM and eventually “everybody knows” Biden is bad.
I love Ride-or-Die Joe
Even though he’s actually pretty smart, Biden comes off as a big doofus.
I strongly suspect this is an artifact of polling methodology.
We’ve seen this before. Who is paying attention to politics now? Who is likely to answer a poll? The answer is that the rabid wingnuts are frothing-at-the-mouth about anything and everything political while the low info voters and most Democrats aren’t paying much attention. Not just speculation – you’ve seen that ratings are down for liberal political blogs and TV shows (the few that exist). Thus, as happened after the first Romney-Obama debate, the polls are appearing to shift but a lot, if not all, of the shift is due to a change in who is participating in the polls.
And this will continue probably until the 2014 election heats up. I mean what’s the point of paying close attention for most of us on the left? On the plus side holding the Senate and the White House means that at least the worst of the GOP policies are blocked … those which Obama doesn’t give away in a pre-negotiation, that is. On the minus side nothing of the progressive agenda will pass as legislation … perhaps we’ll get lucky and the Obama administration will get something done unilaterally, but we’ve learned not to hold our breath on that.
Former Senator from Delware. Delware is a headquarters for many Credit Card companies. Businesses can make donations to politics.
Any questions?
It’s the nature of the Vice Presidency. He doesn’t get any of the credit for the good things the administration does, but he’s a prominent target for the opposition’s attacks.