For comparison’s sake, this is how far down President Biden has tumbled since January when his administration took office with a respectable approval rating in the mid-50s. Americans are generous to new presidents, we want them to succeed and to move the country past challenges in a unified manner. That’s easier said than done, however, since presidents start off with roughly half the country in opposition to their presidency.
For Joe Biden, a name that has been around Washington for many decades, Americans knew somewhat of what to expect, and they expected what was sold as putting the “adults back in charge” after four years of President Trump.
Much to the contrary, however, the “adults” are failing, and some Americans are now looking back with nostalgia at Trump’s first term with wide eyes and a longing for a better normal:
Former President Donald Trump has increased support for him being a better leader than President Joe Biden since Election Day, according to a new Harvard CAPS-Harris poll.
Fifty-one percent of the 1,578 registered voters surveyed in the CAPS-Harris poll said Trump was a better president than Biden, The Hill reported. Forty-nine percent backed Biden as being the better leader.
“The mounting issues on all fronts have led to the surprise conclusion that Trump is now seen as good a president as Biden, suggesting the honeymoon is being replaced now with buyer’s remorse,” Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey, said.
Surprise conclusion, indeed. President Trump left office with one of the lowest approval ratings on record, yet this poll would suggest that just over half of the registered voters polled say that Trump was a better president than Joe Biden. Registered voter models tend to favor Democrats, another noteworthy point.
Presidents usually rebound in public approval, but that often takes place years after their presidency. President George W. Bush left office with approval in the thirties, yet years later his numbers bounced to almost double into the low sixties. That change took almost 10 years for public perception to evolve.
Why the quick drop for Joe Biden and the public reassessment of Trump’s presidency? It’s likely due to the fact that Americans have now watched one failure after another from the Biden administration, and the effects are still rippling around the globe.
As one paper put it, Biden needs to change course abruptly and decisively or risk losing his entire presidency to one disastrous policy failure after another:
Jolting, too, is a new Harvard-Harris survey giving Donald Trump a 48% favourability rating to Biden’s 46%. Among independent voters and in battleground states, the outlook for Democrats appears grim. In Iowa, 62% disapprove of Biden’s performance while 70% say the country is “on the wrong track”. Michigan and Virginia tell similar stories.
Numerous factors are contributing to what is starting to look like a presidential meltdown. At home, Biden’s didactic handling of the pandemic attracted growing criticism during a summer Covid surge. Continuing mistreatment of migrants on the Mexico border, which he promised to end, is a lose-lose issue for him. A Biden-backed police reform bill, prompted by the death of George Floyd, was killed off in Congress last week.
The numbers a bleak all over the electoral map, on issue after issue. If Biden’s numbers continue to fall into red zone territory, Democrats are looking at a wipeout next year in the midterms.
