Biden’s Bounce in Polls Peters Out

P resident Biden returned from his European summit meetings last week to a Congress that is increasingly hesitant to pass his policy agenda. One reason may be that his approval ratings are slipping.

Joe Biden won the popular vote by 4.5 points last November, but his national approval rating doesn’t compare well now with that showing. As of Friday, he was at 51 percent in an average of five brand-new national polls, ranging from 48 percent approval (Rasmussen) to 53 percent (Politico).

Biden backers point out that his approval rating is significantly higher than that of Donald Trump, who was at about 45 percent approval at this point in his term.

But Trump is not the president sources say Biden compares himself to in private. Biden has a competitive drive to outdo Barack Obama, who often disparaged his vice president’s political skills to aides. So Biden’s current showing must be disappointing to him. At this same point in his presidency, Obama’s average approval rating for June 2009 was 61 percent.

The key to Obama’s higher numbers? He scored higher among independents, averaging 59 percent with them in mid 2009. In the latest Monmouth University poll, Biden is backed by only 36 percent of independents. He is at 39 percent support among independents in the Economist magazine poll.

The reasons aren’t hard to grasp. In his first five months in office, Mr. Unity has strong-armed Republicans seeking a compromise on his “stimulus” bill, ratcheted up racial tension, completely mishandled illegal-migration issues, proposed job-killing new taxes, and lurched further to the left on social issues than Obama did. Democrats are disappointed that he hasn’t gotten more of his agenda through Congress despite his boasts that he had a united party behind him.

Then there is inflation. The Monmouth poll found that nearly half of Americans were “very concerned” that Biden’s spending plans could lead to a big jump in prices. Another 24 percent were “somewhat concerned.” The worry was across the ideological spectrum — 93 percent of Republicans, 55 percent of Democrats, and 70 percent of independents have inflation concerns. That should be a wakeup call for the Biden White House, unless its plans actually include artificially juicing the economy before the 2022 election.

Joe Biden may look in the mirror and see another Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson staring back at him, but he’s unlikely to achieve his goals with approval so far below the numbers he’s previously posted. Damon Linker, a liberal columnist for The Week magazine, isn’t optimistic. He wrote last week that Biden has to act like more than a president of the Democratic States of America if he is to reach for the status of another FDR or LBJ. “But that requires swimming against incredibly powerful countercurrents,” he writes. “So far there’s no sign of all that he’s making headway.”

And unlike Obama, whose approval ratings did fall a year into his presidency but was nonetheless able to win a narrow reelection in 2012, a fragile Biden isn’t a likely candidate for a second term in 2024.