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Why Doesn't the Media Understand Why Biden Is So Unpopular?

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  July 25, 2023 7:30 PM

While Joe Biden's team claims he's indeed still running for reelection, the president is in trouble, mostly because he's highly unpopular. For all of the messaging that the White House does, to the point of gaslighting, the American people aren't down with the president or his policies. They're also concerned with Biden's mental capabilities, or lack thereof. Almost as crucial as examining why Biden is so unpopular is whether or not it will matter when it comes to the 2024 presidential election, still more than a year away. 

These popularity concerns were the subject of many weekend programs, including CNN's "Smerconish," where the chyron wondered, "Why Isn't Biden More Popular?" The segment also discussed Andrew Romano's article with that same headline for Yahoo! News. 

"At this point in his term — about 910 days in — Joe Biden is the second-most-unpopular president in modern U.S. history," Romano's article begins, as host Michael Smerconish highlighted. On July 18, Romano's article mentioned that FiveThirtyEight showed Biden with a net approval rating of -16.3 percent. As of July 25, it's at -13.1 percent. 

Referring to that -16.3 percent, Romano pointed out that that number is "really bad historically speaking" and that the only other president faring worse than Biden was Jimmy Carter. He ended up being only a one-term president. 

Biden had just a 39 percent approval rating 910 days into his term, while Carter had a 29 percent approval rating at the same point in 1979. 

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A significant amount of his piece is a defense of Biden, wondering why Americans don't give the president more credit. "The U.S. was in much, much worse shape in 1979 — the year before Carter lost reelection to Ronald Reagan — than it is in 2023," Romano claimed. 

Romano does, however, acknowledge that there are reasons why Americans are less than thrilled with Biden. What's mentioned is at least a start:

The question is why. Is it something systemic — the way Americans are increasingly stuck in their own partisan media bubbles and unwilling to give presidents of the opposing party any credit? Is it the economy — the way certain indicators (such as real wages and the cost of services) have yet to fully recover even as the overall picture brightens?

Or is it Biden himself — his advanced age, his frequent gaffes, his ongoing family drama? And can the president turn things around in time for the 2024 election?

RealClearPolitics (RCP) not only measures Biden's job approval ratings but his approval ratings on specific issues. Regarding the economy, the White House loves to tout the supposed success of "Bidenomics." But Biden has just a 38 percent approval rate average on the economy, while 57.9 percent disapprove. It's even worse on inflation, where he has just a 33.6 percent average approval rating, while 61.6 percent disapprove. Just 23.8 percent believe that the country is going in the right direction, while 67.3 percent say it's on the wrong track. 

Romano goes on to include various voices interpreting why Biden is failing so terribly with the American people, including on the major issue of inflation. Another thoughtful point was raised by Ed Kilgore of New York Magazine. "The positive statistics … need to be reflected over time in real-life experiences — and they need to persist until the moment voters decide how to vote," Kilgore offers. 

These reporters aren't the only ones seemingly shocked that the voters aren't warming up to Biden. As a VIP piece delved into earlier this month, the White House has been trying to sell "Bidenomics," which, it can't be emphasized enough, the American people aren't exactly feeling. This is even after POLITICO's AM Playbook for July 13 tried to cheer on Biden's "good week" and series of wins, including on the economy. 

"Smerconish" wasn't the only weekend show to tackle Biden's approval ratings. On Sunday's edition of CNN's "State of the Union," host Dana Bash pointed out to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) that a Quinnipiac poll from last week showed that 58 percent disapprove of Biden's handling of the economy. "Why is that? And what does he have to do to turn that around?" Bash asked. 

Pelosi's response didn't inspire much confidence. "Well, a lot of it's about messaging, of course. I'm so proud of this president," she gushed, prompting Bash to push her further as to "why isn't the American public giving him credit for it?" 

The president's cheerleader once more spoke to a "messaging" narrative. "It has to be messaged. It is a legitimate question I ask myself all the time, too. This president did such a remarkable job. He is a person of such knowledge, such vision for the country, such knowledge of the issues, such strategic thinking, and such a legislator, and, on top of it all, a person who connects with the American people," Pelosi claimed. In addition to how "it has to be messaged," Pelosi spoke to how Biden "just has to get out there," something he is not doing. 

Jared Bernstein, who was recently given the undeserved promotion of chairing the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), was confronted on "Fox News Sunday" by host Shannon Bream about the president's unpopularity as well. He, too, offered the points Kilgore had mentioned. That "it takes a while for people's sentiment to catch up to those new trends, especially given everything they've been through."

It's worth pointing out that there's plenty of time, especially since the election is over a year away. The Democrats also beat expectations in last November's midterm elections, which Biden and his fellow Democrats were all too happy to brag about. 

While Democrats lost 15 seats in the House and three seats in the Senate during Carter's midterm election in 1978, they only lost nine seats in the House and actually gained a seat in the Senate during the 2022 midterm election. 

However, it's still worth asking how much longer the White House expects the American people to wait for their situation to get better.

Bream read Bernstein poll findings from a Monmouth University poll released last week, delving into the specifics of how only 30 percent of Americans believe that the country is doing a better job recovering economically from the pandemic compared to the rest of the world, and a Fox News poll from May showing respondents believe the president's policies are actually hurting economically.

A plurality, at 48 percent, believe the president's policies are hurting their family, while 31 percent said it makes no difference. Just 20 percent said they're helping. 

When asked to explain if such experiences "aren't legitimate or valid," Bernstein tried to offer, "Well, certainly we don't question people's experience," as they're the best arbiters of how they're doing Though he did go on to say, "But I think we also have to understand what folks have gone through," as he blamed their woes on the pandemic, blaming that pandemic for inflation, as well as referencing Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February of last year. These are popular refrains from the Biden administration, including Biden himself, but that kind of response doesn't exactly answer Bream's question, no matter how many times Bernstein or someone else says it. 

Many in the Biden administration, including and especially Bernstein himself, have tried to not only blame inflation on the pandemic but tried to downplay it as "transitory." No wonder the president only has a 33.6 percent approval rating on inflation. 

There's another point raised in Romano's article, which is why it is that Biden's campaign has only spent $1.1 million in the second quarter, while Obama had spent 11 times as much. "Biden, in other words, hasn't really started selling himself to voters yet. Assuming the economy keeps improving, a national campaign — and the contrast it could create with the even-less-popular Trump, Biden's likeliest GOP rival — might help the president become more popular over the next 16 months," Romano offers. "In July 2011, Obama was underwater too; by Election Day 2012, his net approval rating had climbed to +5% or so."

That's not quite the whole story, though. There's chatter that Biden might not even be running for reelection after all, as Matt highlighted on Monday, though he's certainly not the only one to do so, given the number of columns for Townhall, as well as at our sister site RedState. Reporting from the Washington Post on Saturday notes that they haven't even established the main campaign office yet. Vice President Kamala Harris has upped her attacks on Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who is currently running in the Republican primary. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), who continues to insist he is not running, still also continues to raise chatter that he actually is. 

Even with the president's low approval ratings, including in that Monmouth poll, that poll still showed him beating former and potentially future President Donald Trump, who is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination. That poll shows Trump with even higher unfavorable ratings – which have been growing – than Biden, while larger numbers of voters say they "definitely won't" vote for him in 2024. 

Nevertheless, the hypothetical 2024 match-up of Biden and Trump currently remains competitive, with RCP showing that Biden is leading Trump with just a +0.1 spread.