Biden’s Unpopularity Mystifies the Media - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Biden’s Unpopularity Mystifies the Media
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If you spend much time perusing the musings of political pundits you may have noticed the emergence of a subgenre of opinion writing that devotes itself to the following question: Why is President Biden so unpopular? A recent contribution to this growing body of work was offered a few days ago in Newsweek. Matt Robison, a former congressional staffer turned podcaster, laments that Biden boasts a long list of “massive achievements” yet somehow endures historically low approval ratings.

For anyone rude enough to ask for examples of these achievements, Robison credits Biden for the low unemployment rate, though most economists trace it to the COVID-driven drop in the labor force participation rate. Oddly, he fails to connect the President’s policies to the continuing decline in real wages, the slow economic growth rate, or the stubborn persistence of inflation. Robison does praise him for “the most successful American vaccination program in history,” despite the vexing fact that he inherited it from his predecessor.

This follows the usual formula for the subgenre since it first emerged in the fall of 2021, when publications like the Atlantic, New York Magazine, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and many others first attempted to plumb this baffling mystery. The archetypal example appeared in U.S. News & World Report in January of 2022 under the inevitable title, “Why is Joe Biden so unpopular?” Its author, Susan Milligan, described a disconnect between Biden’s approval rating and his 2021 “accomplishments”:

On paper, the Biden administration has racked up some impressive achievements: more than 6 million new jobs were created, a single-year record. Unemployment dropped from 6.2% to 3.9%, another single-year first. Childhood poverty and hunger are down while average wages went up. Biden has the first majority non-white Cabinet in history and presides over the most diverse administration in history. He passed a massive COVID-19 relief bill and an expansive infrastructure package many previous presidents tried and failed to achieve.

Like Robison and his counterparts at other publications, Milligan credits Biden for accomplishments that did not result from his policies but never calls him out for conspicuous failures irrevocably connected to his incompetent leadership. The most obvious of the latter category is inflation, which began skyrocketing in late 2021 due to one of his “achievements,” the huge and wholly unnecessary COVID-19 relief bill. She mentions inflation only once in her column — in order to dismiss it as a cause of Biden’s low approval numbers.

Milligan credits Biden for creating 6 million new jobs that were obviously “created” when businesses reopened after the ill-conceived COVID lockdowns. She also lauds him for reducing childhood poverty when, in reality, the official childhood poverty rate was higher in 2021 than in 2019. As to presiding over the “most diverse administration in history,” this is unlikely to impress voters very much while real wages shrink and prices continue to rise. Yet Paul Krugman wonders why most Americans are so negative about the economy:

Partisanship surely explains much of this divergence. A newly published study shows that who holds the White House has huge effects on views of the economy; this is true for supporters of both parties, although the effect appears to be about twice as strong for Republicans. The study also finds, however, that these changes in reported views don’t appear to have any effect on actual spending — that they reflect “cheerleading,” as opposed to “actual expectations.”

Krugman expects us to believe that the presence of a Democrat in the White House has more to do with the public’s perception of the economy than objective facts encountered every day in the real world. He insists that the economy is in far better shape than most Americans realize. This is no different than saying, “Wagner’s music isn’t as bad as it sounds.” Unlike Mark Twain, to whom this quip is usually attributed, Krugman expects such nonsense to be taken seriously. This reveals the abiding contempt with which he regards his readers.

Indeed, scorn for the public is a common thread that runs through every specimen of the subgenre under discussion. Another recent example from Vox drives home this point. Zack Beauchamp asks: “The president’s had a string of recent wins. So why do his numbers suck?” He gushes about May’s job growth (339,000) without noting that unemployment increased by a greater amount (440,000). He crows that inflation is at a two-year low but fails to note that it remains well over three times higher than the 1.4 percent rate Biden inherited.

Curiously absent from Beauchamp’s piece is any mention of the bipartisan rebuke Biden received from Congress concerning his student loan vote-buying scheme. Presumably he will blame the scam’s ultimate demise on SCOTUS, which will drive the final nail into its coffin later this month. Beauchamp, like Krugman, Milligan, and Robison, clearly assumes his readers are too dumb to know any better. This points to the real conundrum the corporate media can’t solve. They keep reporting that Biden is a success but no one believes them.

This suggests that the Fourth Estate should focus less on why Biden is so unpopular and ask, “Why are we so unpopular?” A recent report produced by Gallup and the Knight Foundation revealed the following: “Only 26% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the news media, the lowest level Gallup and Knight have recorded in the past five years, while 53% hold an unfavorable view.” Here’s some advice that may reverse a trend that will destroy what remains of the free press: Stop lying to the public and start doing your stinking jobs.

David Catron
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David Catron is a recovering health care consultant and frequent contributor to The American Spectator. You can follow him on Twitter at @Catronicus.
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