Biden’s Approval Numbers are Atrocious. Does the Administration Care?

Blaming other people — even former President Donald Trump — for current woes is not working for President Joe Biden.

And suggesting his falling approval numbers are the fault of Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema is even more foolhardy.

Instead of allowing unhinged morons to lash out, maybe read and understand what the Arizona senator — who’s still never voted against Biden’s position during her tenure — wants.

Even with the old theory that 30-40 percent of Americans will vote Republican and the same number supports Democrats, Biden’s standing with independents is similar to Trump’s at this point in his presidency.

With all the media and cultural bias, that Biden is as unpopular among independents as the 45^th president was late in 2017 shows an administration in peril.

“Biden’s continued strong support among Democrats likely will not translate into congressional victories. Progressives will say it’s more important to energize the base for the midterms are wrong,” Henry Olsen wrote in Tuesday’s Washington Post. “Democrats’ 2018 wave was fueled much more because they won independents by 12 points than by turning out more Democrats. The Republican 63-seat House pickup in 2010 was also fueled primarily by independents; the GOP won this demographic by a whopping 19 points that year. Tea party activists claimed the credit for the win, much as progressive women’s and youth groups garnered accolades for 2018, but in each case, it was the quiet independent voters who made the difference.”

Related: Battleground Troubles for Biden

Biden won independents by 13 points in the 2020 election. He is now down by the same amount with that key group. A deeper explanation is required for this debacle than “polls will go up and down.”

Part of the issue is that the White House and insular Democrats think they’re doing popular things — leaving Afghanistan, new entitlement programs, tax hikes on the rich — but issue polls are flawed.

And for more background, Gerard Baker noted in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, “The Biden presidency is a metastasizing shambles, a real-world case study in the perils of progressive impossibilism: open borders; fiscal incontinence; naive strategic idealism; mask-wielding, mandate-waving, dissent-canceling, authoritarian collectivism. Mr. Biden is Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Walt Disney’s brilliant, nightmarish “Fantasia.” He’s seized the magician’s big hat and now everything he touches becomes a cascading waterfall of destruction.”

Maybe those progressive policies aren’t so popular or workable. Joe the president should reach out to Joe the senator and Kyrsten more than Pramila and Bernie.