Joe Biden has spent much of his presidency branding Donald Trump as a “loser,” particularly during the presidential campaign.
“He’s a loser as a candidate and, more importantly, in my view, I’m just going to say it straight up: he’s a loser as a man,” Biden said back in October.
But as we turn the page on 2024, there can be no doubt that Joe Biden is the real loser. His presidency ends with an 18-point approval deficit, cementing one of the most abysmal ratings of his tenure. According to RealClearPolitics, Biden’s approval rating now sits at a dismal 39%, with 57% disapproving — a far cry from the 20-point advantage he enjoyed when he took office in January 2021.
Biden’s approval ratings started trickling down almost immediately upon taking office, but it wasn’t until August 2021, following the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, that his approval ratings went underwater, where they have remained ever since.
His presidency was hobbled by a series of missteps, including dropping the ball on inflation and the unanswered border crisis. Joe Biden’s biggest success was making the American people nostalgic for the Trump years. Biden’s lowest average polling came in July 2022, when he was 21 points underwater with only 37% approving of the job he was doing and 58% disapproving.
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Low numbers like that meant that it wasn’t just Republicans that didn’t approve of Biden, but his own party too. Countless polls showed that his party didn’t want him to seek a second term. He did, of course, and while his party publicly rallied in support of him, Democrats were dejected behind the scenes. Despite the best efforts of the White House and the mainstream media, it was impossible to hide Biden’s physical and mental decline.
Finally, in June of this year, his debate performance made the reality of his physical and mental decline impossible to ignore, and even his longtime allies who had been making excuses for his frailties were jumping ship, and the party ousted him in a palace coup weeks later. Democrats thought they might have a chance of winning with a younger candidate, but in the end, the failures of the Biden-Harris administration were too much for any Democrat candidate to overcome — certainly too much for Kamala Harris, who, prior to being crowned as the next nominee, was the most unpopular vice president in the history of polling.
Many on the left blame Biden for not dropping out sooner or for seeking reelection in the first place, convinced that had either of those scenarios taken place they could have beaten Trump. But there was no way. The election was, without a doubt, a rejection of Biden’s failed presidency. Elections are always a referendum on the incumbent party, and any Democrat under any circumstance would have lost to Trump.
That’s why Joe Biden is 2024’s biggest loser, not Kamala Harris. Sure, she spent over a billion dollars only to lose every single swing state, but the election was nevertheless a course correction from the path that Joe Biden sent us on starting on Jan. 20, 2021.
Joe Biden ends the year with his approval ratings in the toilet and his presidential legacy in tatters. After leaving office, his party will quickly move on from him. He won't have the star power of other past Democrat presidents like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.
It's all downhill for him from here.
