We keep forgetting that we’re less than a year into this miserable failure of a presidency. Joe Biden is AWOL—on everything. Inflation is rising and he doesn’t seem to care. He should. Women balance this nation’s home budgets and they’re noticing the rise in prices. Immigration is a total fiasco. Job creation is slowing and our exit from Afghanistan was a complete and total mess. The adults are back. That was their selling line, but they’ve tripped up repeatedly. They can’t get their COVID vaccination benchmark met, so they’re going to mandate it and enforce it by making OSHA an infectious diseases police force. On police reform, talk in Congress collapsed, so Biden is looking to whip out the pen again via executive orders. He refuses to answer questions from the press. He hides. He ducks. He covers. This is an administration the feels that simply delivering some remarks resolves whatever is ailing the nation. Let’s not forget also that this man, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Press Secretary Jen Psaki were all on vacation when Afghanistan collapsed. And they felt content on remaining silent for days until press scrutiny forced them back to Washington.
This has all played a role in the spiraling approval ratings of the president, which Cook Political Report Amy Walter analyzed. There’s some brutal news for Biden and the Democrats but adds that there is still room for Biden to turn things around. The question is can the old man do it. As of now, there’s private polling showing Biden dipping by double-digits in his performance across an array of competitive House districts (via Cook Political Report) [emphasis mine]:
"I'm kind of a little weary," said one woman in a recent focus of voters who had supported Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. "I think it [Biden's term] started off strong, but some scary things are happening now."
All of this has taken a toll on Biden's standing with the public. Not only are his national job approval ratings underwater (the fivethirtyeight.com average currently has him at 46 percent favorable to 49 percent unfavorable), but he's slipped under 50 percent in a recent Washington Post poll in Virginia — a state he easily carried in 2020. Private polling is picking up double-digit drops in Biden performance in competitive House seats.
[…]
…the former senator and vice president looks more like a helpless bystander than an experienced Capitol Hill deal maker, watching from the sidelines as his party struggles with internal divisions over critical legislation. For many voters, things in Washington look like more of the same; politicians squabbling instead of solving problems.
[…]
If the president can recover lost ground, getting legislation passed in Congress is the first and easiest step. This is what happened back in 2017 when Republicans finally gave Trump a victory with the GOP-passed tax bill. Not long after the December 2017 passage, Trump's approval ratings started to rise. The bill itself wasn't popular. But, for the first time in a while, Trump and his party appeared to be in charge. Moreover, it allowed Trump to turn the page from all the things he had done (and was still doing) wrong and focus on the things going right, like the growing economy.
This is why I think Democrats are ultimately going to pass both infrastructure and reconciliation. To fail to do so would only add to the perception that the president lacks a firm grip and a steady hand of leadership. And, for Democrats who worry that Biden's declining fortunes are dragging them down, failing to give him a victory will only make things worse for both him and them. A midterm election is a referendum on the president. When he flops, so does his party.
To be sure, the legislation isn't going to be a 'silver bullet' for Democrats in the midterms. In fact, it can also provide Republicans with plenty of fodder to use against them next fall. While Democrats have been fighting among themselves over the price tag, they've failed to define this legislation for the public. No one knows what "Build Back Better" means for their own lives. Meanwhile, Republicans have been effectively attacking the legislation, as part of a 'socialist’ overreach responsible for rising consumer prices. The longer Republicans define the legislation, the harder it will be for Democrats to get control of the narrative.
[…]
I had to chance to listen in on a group of white male voters, many of whom had supported Biden in 2020 after voting for Trump in 2016. When asked how Biden was doing, one of the men from suburban Chicago compared Biden to the experience of ordering a Coke at a restaurant but being served a Pepsi instead. You still got a soda, but it wasn't exactly what you wanted. Still, said this man, it was better than what happened in 2016 when he voted for Trump thinking he'd get that Coke. Instead, he said, Trump turned out to be worse than Pepsi; he was a Diet Coke, something this guy hates with a passion. The longer Biden fails to deliver on his promise of bringing back competency and normalcy, the greater the risk that he becomes more than just a less-than-ideal alternative, but a completely unpalatable one.
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Walter does give Biden credit for a better COVID rollout, which is debatable. This man promised that he would shut it down. That didn’t happen. Yet, I do agree that passing some version of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill or the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, aka the human infrastructure bill, is a must. Right now, the latter bill is dead in its current form, but something is going to pass—but Biden hasn’t been the dealmaker as advertised—something Walter cited. As the border is a mess, Biden went to the beach. And now, this administration is slamming the Border Patrol…for doing their jobs. Migrants weren’t being whipped. Those are horse reins, but now horses have been canceled. The loud wing of left-wing activists scored a win here, but the rest of the country doesn’t want open border, not even Hispanic voters.
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