Biden is fighting for his political life
EVEN the smartest pundits in Washington can’t figure out what has been happening to President Joe Biden.
Unemployment is falling to historic lows; real incomes continue to rise; and inflation is falling, with some predicting that the Federal Reserve is close to fulfilling its mission and is done raising interest rates.
Remember the doomsayers who have been warning of the coming economic recession for the past two years? Well, it isn’t in sight. If anything, growth in the current quarter is booming at an annual rate of close to 5 per cent. Nor did the housing market collapse, as some feared.
Not to mention Biden’s successes in the international arena: solidifying the Western alliance and reviving the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in response to Russian aggression in Ukraine, without direct US intervention, while strengthening military partnerships with allies across the Pacific in the face of China’s surging geo-strategic and geo-economic power.
His nationalist economic agenda, “Bidenomics” – protecting America’s national-security-oriented technological base while restricting China’s access to it – has enjoyed public and even bipartisan support. At times, Biden sounds more of a protectionist and China-basher than former President Donald Trump; no one would accuse him of being a China-appeaser.
Yet with all this great news for the White House occupant, the latest Quinnipiac University polls indicated that 60 per cent of voters disapprove of President Biden’s handling of the economy, with only 35 per cent approving.
Poor polls
Other opinion polls are sending shockwaves across Washington’s political community, whose members have operated under the impression that former President Trump was history. Several polls show Biden statistically tied with his predecessor, and his overall approval rating stuck in the low forties.
That Biden has had several bad weeks adds to the sense of political depression among his supporters. His son, Hunter, was indicted on three felony charges and Republicans in the House of Representatives have opened an impeachment inquiry against him that is expected to dominate the political agenda on the eve of next year’s presidential election.
Most devastating are polls where a clear majority of voters believe that the 80-year-old commander-in-chief is too old for another term in office.
An August Associated Press-NORC survey found that 77 per cent of Americans – including 69 per cent of Democrats – thought Biden was too old to be effective for another four-year term. According to the pollsters, Americans describe the president as “slow” and “confused”.
The same survey finds that most Democrats want to nominate another presidential candidate, and that support for Biden is slipping among two key constituencies – African-Americans and Hispanics – while remaining low among young voters.
Vice-President Kamala Harris, who is in line to replace the current president if he becomes incapacitated in office, doesn’t enjoy much elite or public support – adding to Biden’s problems.
Most troubling for Biden is the growing unease, if not panic, among his supporters. Some, like influential Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, have called on him not to run again and to retire, opening the door for younger and more dynamic candidates.
It surprises many observers that Biden is now neck-and-neck with Trump, who is only three years younger than him and faces four criminal indictments. How is that possible, they ask?
Much of it has to do with America’s political realities: a nation divided into two warring camps. A majority of Republicans have rallied behind the former president, who once quipped: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”
The Republican Party now resembles a personal-political cult whose members would follow the former president even if he was indicted on four more criminal charges and was three years older than Biden.
The election is expected to be decided by a few thousand voters in key states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada. Trump can count on almost every Republican voter to show up on election day; Biden will have to depend on a less enthusiastic group of Democratic voters, who may or may not stand in line to cast their ballots for him next November.
Still a chance
Nonetheless, many Democrats hope that the spectre of Trump returning to the White House will energise the party’s electoral base and convince many independent voters – and even some moderate Republicans – to vote for the Democratic candidate.
These optimists note that other presidents had low approval ratings before rebounding and sailing into re-election.
They also recall that on the eve of the last midterms, the conventional wisdom in Washington was that the unpopular President Biden and the Democrats would be buried in a Republican “red wave”, losing not only the House of Representatives, but also the Senate.
Contrary to those predictions, Republican candidates – many of them allied with the former president – lost races in key states such as Pennsylvania and Arizona. The Democrats kept their control of the Senate, and President Biden went on to pass historic legislation and preside over a strong economic recovery.
Moreover, the Republicans have a tendency to overreach when they feel politically confident, as they do now. They seem to be intent on initiating an unpopular government shutdown, and an attempt to impeach Biden could ignite a political backlash that would hurt them in November. Ironically, these Republicans may prove to be President Biden’s most reliable allies.
