Joe Biden polls see a ray of light – albeit a small one: Sometimes it’s down, sometimes it’s up.
A ray of light – albeit a small one – shone on the prospect of President Joe Biden’s re-election ambitions, with a new poll showing that his popularity rating among voters rose, with a sliver more Americans saying that they approve of him as opposed to those who don’t.
The new poll from Rasmussen Reports put the president’s approval rating at 49% with a disapproval rating of 48%. While this marks the first time the president has had better poll numbers in recent months, his poll numbers, in general, are still largely negative.
Data from poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight shows that more than half of Americans disapprove of the president’s performance – with 55% saying they aren’t happy with Biden, as opposed to the 40% who approve of how he’s been doing so far.
Despite the slightly better poll, Biden’s generally low poll numbers are especially noteworthy given that at this point in the term, all presidents stretching back to the late Ronald Reagan had better approval ratings with American voters – including former president Donald Trump.
The Biden struggle continues
While Biden and his campaign continue to try to divert public attention from his many, many issues – chief among them his age and all the other issues that come with it, the strategy thus far has yet to bear any fruit.
Many have questioned Biden’s ability not only to mount what promises to be a stressful campaign next year, but also his capability to serve another four years in the White House.
While people close to him, like Vice President Kamala Harris, continue to repeatedly stress that he is “going to be fine”, his public gaffes and fumbles add fuel to speculations about his soundness of mind – at least in terms of serving a second presidential term.
The president struggled to say a simple acronym at a forum in the White House, and bizarrely referred to Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown as hailing “from Baltimore”. More recently, Biden accidentally uttered what many consider a racial slur, calling legendary rapper LL Cool J a “boy” on top of botching the two-time Grammy winner’s name by calling him “LL J — Cool J” – during the Congressional Black Caucus’ Phoenix Awards no less.
The Hunter Drama
Media headlines also continue to bear the name of his son, Hunter, who is currently facing gun charges leveled by Special Counsel David Weiss. On top of that, the legal defense his son is expected to mount directly contradict the stricter gun regulation advocacies Biden and his administration have been espousing for years. In relation to this, the president is also facing impeachment as House Republicans continue their investigation into a possible direct link between him and his son’s shady business dealings. Any while any evidence has yet to surface, it would be naïve to say that none exist, either.
Horrible prospect for Democrats
Despite Democrats’ seeming to fall in line to support a second Biden-Harris run next year, Biden’s overall polling numbers continue to raise red flags – which obviously don’t bode well for his re-election prospects.
Talk show host and comedian Bill Maher has pointed out that another Biden run for the presidency could very well hand back the country to former president Donald Trump. He has likened Biden’s situation to that of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who, instead of retiring during the administration of then-president Barack Obama and allowing him to name a liberal justice to replace her, chose to keep her seat.
When she passed away during the Trump administration, a conservative judge was elevated to the Supreme Court instead, which paved the way for the conservative supermajority that holds sway in the country’s highest tribunal today.
Maher sums up Biden’s problem perfectly: “Someone has to convince President Biden that if he runs again, he’s going to turn the country back over to Trump and go… down in history as Ruth Bader Biden, the person who doesn’t know when to quit and so does great damage to their party and their country.”
Tim Ramos has written for various publications, corporations, and organizations – covering everything from finance, politics, travel, entertainment, and sports – in Asia and the U.S. for more than 10 years.
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