Polishing a turd isn’t easy, but White House chief of staff Ron Klain gives it a good try:
I hate to spoil the narrative but this poll shows @potus approval rating moving up, and solid public confidence on the two biggest problems he inherited: COVID and jobs. https://t.co/OPrkWPZxYO
— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) May 22, 2022
In the CBS News poll he’s discussing, Biden’s job approval indeed moved up… from 42 percent to 44 percent — with 56 percent still disapproving. In the CBS News poll from May 2018, President Trump’s job approval was 4o percent… and we all know how the 2018 midterms turned out for Trump’s party.
And as you might suspect, Klain is really cherry-picking when he points to “solid public confidence” on Covid and jobs.
On Covid, the pandemic is no longer a major factor in American life, which has more to do with the vaccines and tens of millions of American catching Omicron this winter than any particular Biden policy. And yet even here, just 53 percent say Biden is doing a “very good” or “somewhat good” job. The other 47 percent are “somewhat bad” or “very bad.”
On the issue of jobs, Klain is rephrasing the question, “looking ahead to the next few months, are you generally optimistic or pessimistic about jobs in your community?” In the survey, 52 percent say optimistic, 48 percent say pessimistic. As noted in today’s Morning Jolt, there are 11.5 million unfilled jobs in the country right now. We don’t lack job openings, we lack workers and applicants for those jobs. We are learning the hard lesson that an avalanche of new job openings does not necessarily mean a thriving economy and prosperity for everyone.
And other questions reveal that even if a slim majority of Americans feel good about job creation in their community, they don’t feel good about the economy as a whole. Just 26 percent say they feel “very good” or “fairly good” about the economy — only 6 percent say “very good” — while 69 percent say they feel “fairly bad” or “very bad about it, with 39 percent saying “very bad.”
Biden’s job approval on the overall economy is just 36 percent, and just 30 percent of respondents approve of how he’s handling inflation. Biden is at 40 percent approval on immigration, crime, and abortion. It’s a terrible poll for a president six months before the midterm elections, and no amount of hand-waving by Klain will change that.