I am going to be busy during the early part of the day helping my mother get my Dad to a doctor’s appointment, but I wanted to open a discussion which I can pick up when I get back. The question is, what explains Joe Biden’s rather steep decline in the polls in the latter half of 2021?
Here’s one effort to answer that question from Jonathan Chait.
Nobody can say with any confidence if this fall can be reversed. Indeed, given the U.S.’s steady job growth, nobody can ascertain exactly why the public has turned so sour so fast. Biden is like a patient wasting away from some undiagnosable disease. What is clear is that if the presidential election were held this fall, Biden would enter the contest as the decided underdog against Trump.
The conventional wisdom has deemed that Biden is getting his just deserts for trying to govern as a liberal…
But the truth is that Biden’s presidency began to disintegrate without his abandoning the center at all. He found himself trapped instead between a well-funded left wing that has poisoned the party’s image with many of its former supporters and centrists unable to conceive of their job in any terms save as valets for the business elite. Biden’s party has not veered too far left or too far right so much as it has simply come apart.
I agree that Biden would lose an election to a Republican right now, possibly including even Trump, and I agree that “a lot of people are saying” that this is because Biden’s gone too far to the left. I think, however, that there’s more to it even if, as Chait suggests, it’s currently undiagnosed.
Chait’s explanation has a nice symmetry to it and plenty of surface plausibility, but I think it’s probably just a bit too tidy. There are obviously some things, like the withdrawal from Afghanistan, supply chain disruptions, and the Delta variant of COVID-19 that have something to do with Biden’s approval numbers. It’s not all about “Dems in Disarray.”
Yet, divisions within the party are most exposed when the majorities in Congress are tight. It really limits Biden to what can be done rather than fine-tuning to get the best political response.
Anyway, how do you weight the factors?
Well, we’re one election away from permanent Republican rule with show elections, and the Biden administration has so far shown zero interest in preventing it or holding seditionist leaders accountable for their crimes.
It’s not going to be safe for my family to live in this country if things continue down this path. This is a very big deal, to put it mildly.
Where is the call to save American democracy?
Exactly. Why this 5 alarm fire seemingly has no salience in virtually any Democratic circles is just stunning to me. If there was ever an issue that should put every Democrat at Defcon 1, this is it. Yet, you rarely hear it being discussed. How can there possibly be any greater danger to the continued existence of American democracy, than one party being able to simply nullify election results, and declare a “winner” chosen by an entirely partisan group, appointed by Republicans? That is what they are doing, and have been doing since Trump lost. They learned from that experience, and pinpointed the areas in multiple states that needed changed in order to steal an election. They then drove out election officials who would not do their bidding, and replaced them with loyalists willing to enforce the will of the GOP over the actual wishes of the voter. The framework is in place to enforce a perpetual Republican majority all across much of the country. Yet no one is talking about it. How in the hell can that be? i just don’t understand. It is the most egregious crime against democracy in the last 150 years, yet no one seems to notice or to care. It is fucking insane to me.
Absolutely true and nobody seems to care. We either fix voting rights and the debt limit or this whole thing sinks and the Democratic Party ceases to exist, And then tell me about Biden’ a approval rating
I keep getting text messages from a number of,democrats. I have now taken to telling them all NO fix the real issues.
It’s tough for me to weigh the factors, but here’s a list (in no particular order) of some of them:
1) Biden’s trying to do big things with a tiny majority. High degree of difficulty, with public opinion giving no points for effort.
2) The pandemic: It’s been 20 months now and people still have daily, discomforting reminders that life is not “back to normal”. Wearing masks. 1,000 deaths/day. Boosters required because the miracle (no sarcasm) vaccines aren’t longlasting. Job routines disrupted. Supply chains stretched. Fair or not, all that hurts the incumbent’s popularity.
3) Systemic media bias: all the average citizen heard about Biden over the last four months is – Delta variant surge; Afghanistan withdrawal/disaster (it wasn’t); dragging economy; Democrats fighting with each other and “Daddy Biden” not able to control “the kids”. Next to nothing about GOP obstructionism, growing economy, ending a “forever” war, unprecedented legislative accomplishments with such a narrow majority.
4) Republican obstructionism: nothing new or surprising, but after over a decade of such tactics Dems still haven’t found ways to make the GOP pay a political price for it.
5) Lack of Trump indictments: This is the legal version of “pics or it didn’t happen”. Unless or until Trump, his family, and his close associates are arrested, perp-walked, indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced, then Dems pay a double political price—Trump continues to be a threat, and Dems look ineffectual.
6) Lack of congressional hearings: Not just the Jan. 6 committee. Where are the week-long hearings on the USPS? On the corruption of numerous federal departments and agencies? On Trump family businesses profiting from his administration?
7) The filibuster (and related Senate rules; e.g., “blue slips” for judicial appointments, holds on ambassadorial appointments): Again, the GOP pays no political price; Dems look ineffectual; and less gets done.
That said, if Dems deliver on BBB (even more so if they deliver on voting rights), and the economy continues booming, and the pandemic gets under control by next spring (yes, it’s a lot of “ifs”), then Democrats will be in decent shape going into the 2022 elections. Even with that, Republicans are likely to win one or both houses of Congress.
In that scenario, Biden/Dems are still in decent shape for 2024 with peace and prosperity, possibly with additional Jan.6/Trump convictions, and with having a clearly defined opponent.
Any attempt to depict the cause of Biden’s falling poll numbers has to take into account media representation. It is not just that Delta happened and we realized we weren’t out of the wilderness yet. It is not just that Biden pulled the US out of Afghanistan. It is not just that his bold agenda seemed to have stalled. All that time when it was stalled allowed narratives to take shape. Propagandistic media like Fox News had their opportunity to spread disinformation and there was no really counter as big on the other side. Reporters from across the media spectrum piled on. Biden started to look powerless in the face of an invisible virus, the Taliban, and a couple egoistic senators (and the entire GOP). The public became witness to human suffering and a seemingly botched pullout in a remote part of the world. This was linked to the perception of failure to bring Covid under control. Now, even as positive news emerges on the economic and political fronts, the focus of the media representation is inflation caused by global supply chains, but blamed on Democrats’ irresponsible spending, further evidence either that the President isn’t in full control or that his agenda is too bold and unrealistic, depending who you are. Also, the goalposts keep changing and Republican extremism is ignored, or at least downplayed.
Eh. I think the explanation is much simpler. Biden’s ratings now are similar to what Trump’s ratings were during the better parts of his presidency. I conclude:
-40% of the population is going to approve of a D president, and disapprove of an R president, no matter what they do
-40% of the population is going to disapprove of a D president, and approve of an R president, no matter what they do
-There are some people in the middle who could go either way. They never went for Trump because…well, he’s Trump. They will go for Biden when things are good, but not when things are bad. Right now, COVID is getting people down, and it sucks. So people don’t approve of Biden. (Cost of living might matter a bit too, though I think it’s mostly COVID.)
Now, that said, if Biden goes below 40, I’m going to trot out my alternative theory. That D voters expect Ds to solve problems and get grumpy when they don’t. In contrast, R voters, just want Rs to own the libs, which is a task they can’t fail at.
Agreed with everything here, but the main issue is: economic sentiment is low and going down. Question is why that is: if it’s actually the “inflation” people see in their lives, or the media told story of this inflation, or the pandemic and not being able to spend and consume how they thought they might, etc. You can see the same decreasing sentiment happening in UK.
There are of course many factors, including Democratic problems with messaging and the fact that one party has its own corporate sponsored propaganda machine. But I think the main driving force is inflation. People don’t remember the 1970s because fewer and fewer were alive then and most were children. I was a child but I remember the stresses my parents felt and how it impacted our family and other middle class families. Frankly, it made people crazy, to have worked a lifetime and feel like they were caught in this system that was making it hard to buy groceries, let alone a home.
Now clearly 6% is not 10+%. Those were very trying times and it’s not as bad now. But politicians need to be careful about being cavalier about inflation. People can stomach 2% but most, in their heart of hearts would prefer 0 or even deflation (though any economist would sound the alarms around negative interest and the possibility of inducing a depression). Rising costs scares people silly. If one already owns a home, they still see their property taxes rise and they know that selling isn’t a remedy because they’d have to rent or buy something else. Those who don’t own often feel like they’re getting priced out forever. If they’re so hand to mouth to make it difficult to feed the kids, then the fear is super intense. That’s what it was for my parents. They borrowed money on their credit cards to keep the utilities turned on. They felt totally trapped.
If Biden made a mistake, it was encouraging the Fed to be independent and appointing someone who was a dove on inflation. A lot of Democrats welcomed a lighter hand. The other big mistake was the second round of stimulus but I get it and it seemed to make sense at the time. If it looks like the economy may go into recession, any politician is going to want to stimulate growth. No one has a crystal ball and can predict the future. But it turned out to be too much stimulus and probably caused a decent share of the inflation we’re experiencing now. Some of it is supply chain issues, which Biden’s doing what he can to address in the small ways open to a president. From what I can see he’s doing everything he can on that front to get ports running, trains moving, factories back online, etc.
Nonsense. This is absolutely not like the 1970’s. The 1970’s and 1980’s featured persistent inflation for years on end with high unemployment! A lot of people think the economy is bad because they see too many “help wanted” signs!
To argue that we “did too much” is to say that the economy is better with persistently higher unemployment in exchange for slightly (and I mean, slightly — 1% tops) lower inflation. It is to abandon full employment agenda. How quickly liberals get cold feet and can’t even defend their own program. No wonder we always lose.
https://www.employamerica.org/blog/ceilings-or-speed-limits/
Covid up, gas prices and inflation. If these things reverse the poll numbers will go back up. I don’t think it’s anything policy wise. But, the Democrats are pretty bad at messaging in general, and a refusal by many members to cast their brand as a patriotic one is a ridiculous own-goal in my view. Fighting the Rs on culture wars is stupid. Don’t talk about CRT. Talk about how Rs are destroying democracy and want dictators installed at every level of government. Talk about incessant corruption of the other guy. Talk about how immigration makes us better and it’s good to have more Americans..etc.
The forum has been doing the most annoying thing lately where the comments aren’t visible. Sometimes I can get them to show by clicking the Newest/Oldest button, but today it’s not working.
We’ve been fixing this repeatedly, and then it keeps breaking. I apologize for the glitch.Our database is a beast with 16 years of comments, and it’s giving us fits.