Over the past week, we’ve seen some of the worst polling for Joe Biden since he took office.
The latest Gallup survey found that only 37% of Americans approve of Joe Biden’s performance—the lowest approval rating of his presidency. His approval ratings also slipped to a new low in the latest Washington Post-ABC News survey, with only 36% of Americans approving of his job performance, down from 42% in February. The survey also found that a solid majority of Americans, 63%, don’t believe he is mentally sharp enough to be president.
The survey found that Biden also trails behind both his likely GOP challengers—Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis—by seven points. Biden’s candidacy is so weak that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s running what is widely considered a vanity campaign for president, is preferred by roughly 1 out of 5 Democrats, according to recent polling.
Further adding to Biden’s troubles is the fact that his embattled son Hunter, in addition to facing four potential charges by U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware, a Trump appointee, has an ongoing paternity suit that is threatening to expose his corrupt financial dealings, and an ongoing investigation by the House Oversight Committee, which promises to reveal some bombshell evidence on Wednesday.
Related: Why Aren’t We Talking About the 25th Amendment?
On the surface, it looks like Joe Biden is in a bit of a pickle. For whatever reason, he decided to run for reelection despite two years of polling showing Americans don’t think he can hack it, putting the onus on the White House to make voters feel more comfortable with the possibility that Kamala Harris may have to step in in the event he can’t serve a full second term. An impossible task if I’ve ever seen one.
Despite all of these recent developments, there’s no reason to believe that Biden can’t pull off a victory in November, and if you’re thinking that the 2024 election is going to be a breeze, get out of that mindset now.
I spent much of the 2016 election season convinced that Hillary Clinton’s victory was inevitable. When Trump won, in addition to the chorus of “Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election” accusations, there were the endless postmortems pointing to Hillary’s notorious unlikability and phoniness as being contributing factors to her loss. We also heard that the only thing that kept her from winning was the foresight of our Founding Founding to set up the Electoral College system.
Hillary, despite being a horrible person and certifiably unlikable, had nevertheless won the popular vote by nearly three million votes. Fast forward to 2020. Joe Biden runs for president from his basement, and when he does hold a rally, they are barely attended, and his cognitive decline is obvious to anyone who sees him attempt to conduct an interview. Democrats didn’t even particularly like him; they just saw him as the most electable Democrat in the clown car. Despite all this, he won the national popular vote by roughly 7 million votes.
Related: Things Are Getting Worse for Joe Biden
Let’s be honest, Joe Biden isn’t a popular guy. He’s been on the wrong side of history so many times I can’t even count. His past presidential campaigns have been a disaster, and he was only a contender in 2020 because Barack Obama needed someone with foreign policy experience on his ticket to compensate for the fact that Barack Obama was a newbie. It didn’t exactly matter that Biden’s foreign policy experience was full of wrong decisions. But I digress.
In 2022, a majority of Pennsylvanians voted for John Fetterman despite being the fact that he was clearly cognitively impaired following his stroke. His election was a warning that Democrats would vote for a vegetable before they’d let a Republican win. As horrible as Joe Biden is, the Democrats’ hunger for power is stronger, and Republicans can’t let their guard down. They must fight like they’re five points behind, not seven points ahead.
