New Morning Consult Poll: Biden Approval Still Bombs Despite Legislative Wins

Democrats have been pinning their hopes on turning things around for the 2022 midterms by moving some part of President Biden’s legislative agenda through Congress. They succeeded on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, but have so far failed with the Build Back Better Act stuck in the Senate. Despite the small victories, Biden’s approval rating among registered voters, in the latest numbers from Morning Consult, has hit a new low. It may be the most wonderful time of the year, but not for Congressional Democrats staring at a red wave shaping up in 2022.

What seems evident, at this point following passage of the infrastructure bill, is that Biden’s brand is tainted, and nothing seems to offer any reprieve with voters:

-In polling conducted Nov. 28-30, 45 percent of voters approved of Biden’s job performance and 52 percent disapproved, marking a low in his net approval rating in daily tracking after a gradual decline that was accelerated by the chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan in mid-August.

-Neither Biden’s Nov. 15 signing of the bipartisan infrastructure bill or House Democrats’ Nov. 19 passage of the Build Back Better Act, his social spending and climate legislation, yielded any sustained boost to public sentiment about the president.

-That stasis is also apparent among Democratic voters, among whom 44 percent “strongly” approve of his job performance, virtually unchanged since his infrastructure bill passed on Nov. 5.

So much of this still stems back to the Afghanistan withdrawal when Americans seem to have lost total faith in the Biden administration’s ability to handle any major crisis. Following the botched withdrawal order, the President seemed to distort the facts or be misinformed about what was really going on or appeared to be lying in some instances about the advice he may or may not have received. Those actions, despite most Americans supporting a withdrawal from the Aghan theater, seemed to destroy whatever trust existed between Biden and voters of all stripes.

In December, many months after Afghanistan has faded from the headlines, but remains an absolute mess, those events are still dragging down the Biden presidency.

Couple this with ongoing Covid failures and the clear and obvious way Biden over-promised with regard to vaccines ending the pandemic entirely by July, then look at the struggling inflation-ridden economy, and there are no good answers from this White House.

The end result, explains Morning Consult, is that Democrats have done nothing in the past few months to stop the bleeding, and there isn’t much more they can do to remove the stench of distrust and disapproval surrounding Joe Biden:

After Biden’s job approval rating fell underwater amid the Afghanistan withdrawal, there was talk that time and legislative victories could help heal the public’s view of the president. But polling over the past several weeks — which came as voters raised concerns about inflation and yet another variant of the coronavirus — suggest that reversing course will be difficult.

Less than a year out from the midterm elections, that could prove challenging for the Democrats working to hold on to the House and Senate, especially given the fact that voters’ views about Biden look strikingly similar to perceptions about then-President Donald Trump four years ago — before Republicans went on to suffer heavy losses en route to the House minority.

It was pure fool’s gold to think anything that Congress does would somehow rescue Biden overnight. The infrastructure bill, despite being softly supported by the public as a whole, remains controversial and is likely contributing to the ongoing inflation problem.

The hole is deep, and Biden has been unable to do anything to dig his way out. If Covid gets under control in the spring, Biden’s legislative agenda somehow becomes popular, and the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, then perhaps Democrats might become motivated to vote next year. All or none of that could happen, or any combination thereof. Democrats need a home run, but their batting average under Biden has been stuck well below .200 for months.