On August 18 of this year, when the current occupant of the White House first began to implode with respect to his approval ratings, this column weighed in on the subject. I said:
To watch his approval ratings hover near 50 percent during the past six months has been to lose faith in the American people and the standards we demand of our leaders. There are people out there who legitimately believed Biden is OK and Donald Trump was not because the latter was often vituperative on Twitter.
Well, the one thing about failure is that sooner or later you can’t hide from it anymore. And seven months in, Joe Biden has no place to hide.
The media, as Matt Keener noted yesterday, has begun to turn on him. Oh, they’ll still prop him up here and there, but the Afghanistan debacle has opened a lot of legacy corporate newsroom eyes to the fact the ship is taking on water. And the Democrats in Congress are beginning to lose heart. Yes, AOC and some of the others on the Left are now screeching loudly about how the Afghan refugees can’t be left behind and ought to be relocated to a town near you. But that isn’t exactly standing by their man.
And it sounds like the Biden and Kamala Harris camps are in open warfare. There was a report yesterday which would have explained why Harris, who has hovered like a masked vulture behind Biden at nearly every one of his press statements, was strangely absent during his drive-by Afghanistan blame-cast Monday. According to the report, when Harris was requested to stand near Biden she refused, exclaiming “you will not pin this s**t on me.”
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And the public has begun to recognize the sinking of the ship at long last. The weekly Reuters/Ipsos presidential approval survey had Biden at 53 percent a week ago, a maddening number. Now he’s down to 46, a seven-point drop. YouGov has Biden’s approval rating down to 44 percent, and he’s underwater by a 36-47 count on public confidence in his ability to handle an international crisis.
Worse for him, a Rasmussen survey asking whether Biden or Trump would be the preference in a hypothetical snap election came back catastrophic for Biden…
Stunning new poll numbers from Rasmussen Reports suggest nearly 1 in 10 Democrats regret their vote in the 2020 Presidential election, with 12 percent of ‘Moderates’ saying the same, and 14 percent of Black Americans expressing regret.
Furthermore, asked how people would vote if a presidential election were held today, just 37 percent said they would vote for Joe Biden, down from 45 percent who said they did. Forty-three percent said they would vote for Donald Trump.
It’s all going to hell for him, like we knew it would.
And in the face of all this, what did Biden do Wednesday?
He pivoted to COVID. He’s now demanding that all staffers in nursing homes be vaccinated or else he’s suspending Medicare and Medicaid funds to those facilities. And he’s attacking red-state governors for fighting the abject institutional child abuse of mask mandates for schoolchildren.
This is what’s so dangerous. The vortex Biden’s sinking ship is going to create will only grow, and it’s going to take some hard swimming to avoid getting sucked in. The worse things get for him the more authoritarian he’s going to be.
It gives me no pleasure to have been proved prescient in that column. And of course, it’s hardly a signature feat of prognostication that Biden’s approval ratings would tank further over the last few months. It was obvious Biden had nothing to offer that would fuel his political recovery.
But today, his situation is worse, and unquestionably so. The Marist poll which in August had Biden ahead on job approval by a 49-44 count, has flipped completely and now shows him 41 up and 55 down.
Overall, more than half – 55 percent – of Americans disapprove of Biden’s performance, including 44 percent who strongly disapprove. His disapproval ratings have jumped 20 points since he took office, reaching a record high this month. The number who strongly disapprove jumped 6 points since a Marist poll conducted just one week earlier.
Biden is likely feeling the heat over a trifecta of concerns troubling Americans this holiday season, according to Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute of Public Opinion. Those fears include rising prices as inflation nears a 40-year high, the omicron variant threatening to compound the latest surge of coronavirus cases, and Biden’s legislative agenda stalling in Congress.
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“There’s lots of uncertainty out there,” Miringoff said. “He’s being hit for lack of leadership. He’s being hit for the fatigue of the pandemic and concerns about inflation.”
Disapproval of the president stretches across most demographic groups, with his level of disapproval topping 50 percent among white and non-white voters, people living in cities and in rural America, and voters in every age range except those over 74 years old.
Biden still garners strong support among Democrats, with 87 percent approving of his job performance. But even among blue voters, his disapproval rating has jumped 7 points since he took office. Republicans are similarly entrenched: 95 percent disapprove of the job Biden is doing.
Perhaps the most alarming drop for the White House and Democrats heading into the midterm election year is Biden’s support among independents. Two-thirds of independent voters disapprove of Biden, including half who strongly disapprove. Both numbers are up at least 30 points since he took office. Just 29 percent of independents approve of his job performance.
The innards of that Marist poll are nothing short of disastrous for Team Biden. Among the numbers…
Democrats: 87% approval/11% disapproval
Independents: 29/66
Republicans: 4/95
White voters: 40/56
Latino voters: 33/65
Non-white voters: 44/52
White no college: 32/63
White college alumni: 52/46
Gen Z/Millennials: 41/54
Biden voters: 86/12
Suburban women: 57/41
The only real strength Biden has left is with affluent white liberals and leftists. With every other group he’s either tanking or has tanked. And Hispanic voters hate him with a passion, so much so that we’re in the middle of a demographic sea change in which the Democrat Party is rapidly losing the single fastest-growing ethnic group in the country, perhaps permanently.
Which brings us to the danger.
There’s a smart, if forgotten, quote from Alexis de Tocqueville to remember here. He said, “A man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.” Team Biden is made up of people who perfectly embody de Tocqueville’s line, and especially given that now it’s impossible to deny that Americans have just as much contempt for this president and his handlers as they have of us.
This is worth remembering today, as Biden prepares to give a speech blaming the unvaccinated for our economic problems and national malaise. The “pure blood” folks are soon to be the kulaks and Jews of the current regime, scapegoated and harassed by Democrat-run governments from Capitol Hill to City Hall. In New Orleans, there will be vax passports required for five-year-olds at the beginning of the year. Dr. Fauci says you’ll have to wear a mask to get on a plane for the rest of your life. And this came out of the White House on Sunday…
They hate you and want you dead if you refuse to submit to their program. pic.twitter.com/KR3EKoxlkQ
— Nate Fischer (@NateAFischer) December 20, 2021
This administration is in a death spiral less than a year after its inauguration, and it’s populated by people for whom the possession of, or access to, political power is essentially the sole justification for life.
And the contempt is palpable.
We are already seeing a Cold Civil War in this country between those on the political inside and the rest of us. Let’s pray that, as these numbers get worse and Team Biden grows more desperate and contemptuous, that cold war doesn’t turn hot.
