Even a modest erosion of support among progressives could drive his numbers into the 30s.
Even a modest erosion of support among progressives could drive his numbers into the 30s.
P resident Biden’s approval ratings crashed during the bungled withdrawal of Afghanistan in August and have never recovered. But there’s a good chance that, as a result of the collapse of Build Back Better, they are about to get worse.
The reason for this is that we will probably see some more erosion in his support among progressives. Remember, Biden was never the preferred choice of progressives, who were torn between Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. For much of the primary season, Biden was dismissed as a boring old white guy who would try to make deals with Republicans and who wouldn’t fight for the type of sweeping changes they wanted to see.
Once he became the nominee, however, progressives rallied around the goal of beating the shared enemy in Donald Trump and made the pragmatic calculation to try to get Biden to embrace their policy preferences.
During the campaign, in a show of unity, Biden created a number of task forces with Sanders on key issues and had various progressives serve as co-chairs of each topic area. For instance, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez served as a co-chair of the climate panel and Representative Pramila Jayapal, currently chair of the House Progressive Caucus, co-chaired the health-care one.
Months before Biden’s election, Jayapal said: “As soon as we get him in the White House, and even before with these task forces that we had, we were able to significantly push Joe Biden to do things that he hadn’t signed on to before. So he is movable, he is listening and he does understand that we need turnout from young people, from folks of color.”
In the early months of the administration, it appeared as if the progressive campaign had paid dividends. Biden used the cover of “Covid relief” legislation to deliver $1.9 trillion in spending on liberal priorities — including enhanced unemployment benefits, an additional $1,400 in cash checks, hundreds of dollars a month in child allowances, and an expansion of Obamacare.
When it passed, Sanders declared it “the most significant piece of legislation to benefit working people in the modern history of this country.” Jayapal took credit for the win, telling Politico that, “We believe it’s our work that made it as progressive as it is.”
It was after the passage of this law that the media began to crank up the comparisons to FDR and LBJ, notwithstanding the historically narrow majorities Biden was dealing with. Biden did not disappoint, quickly following up the $1.9 trillion law with a series of proposals for an additional $4.1 trillion in new spending on infrastructure, green energy, child care, and universal pre-K. This would eventually end up as the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better bill that Senator Joe Manchin walked away from.
Democrats are signaling that they are committed to reviving Build Back Better talks in the new year, and House progressives are urging Biden to take executive actions to address the same issues. In a Wednesday statement, progressives said that while the legislative push continues: “The White House must continue to act on a parallel track by using the President’s incredibly powerful tool of executive action. The legislative approach, while essential, has no certainty of timing or results — and we simply cannot wait to deliver tangible relief to people that they can feel and will make a difference in their lives and livelihoods.”
In reality, there is not much that Biden can do on the executive-action front that would replicate the expansive programs being pursued in Build Back Better — or certainly nothing that he could do that would survive a court challenge.
If the Build Back Better effort fizzles in the new year, there won’t be much of a window for major progressive legislation in the rest of Biden’s term, as Republicans are widely expected to take back at least the House in 2022. Thus, for many progressives, Biden will have exhausted his usefulness to them, and the marriage of convenience will begin to break up.
This isn’t to say that Biden will on net be unpopular among liberals. But his approval rating has so far been hitting a floor in the low 40s because he is being propped up by liberals. In the recent Morning Consult/Politico poll that had him at 43 percent approval, for example, 81 percent of liberals said they approved of Biden at least “somewhat.” It wouldn’t take a large number of disillusioned liberals to sour on Biden, meaning that we are likely to start seeing polls showing his approval ratings dipping into the 30s. Not exactly great news for Democrats in an election year.