It’s sort of amusing that while Boris Johnson’s political troubles in the UK make the Irish mainstream news on an almost nightly basis, you’ll barely find a mention of how Joe Biden is getting on in America. This marks a bit of a step change from the last American President, whose declining approval ratings were a matter of almost maniacal obsession for the Irish Press corps.
The answer to the question “how is Joe Biden getting on”, incidentally, is: terribly. The latest poll, from Civiqs, puts him lower than Donald Trump ever went: Only 33% approve of his job performance. If he goes much lower, he’ll be in Micheál Martin territory:
It’s much worse than Mr. Martin, in reality, because Ireland has a multi-party democracy. You can win elections on 33% very comfortably. But Americans have only two options: Mr. Biden, and his Democrats, or the Republican Party, last led by Mr. Trump.
The Republicans, by the way, should be nobody’s idea of an ideal. It features, these days, people like Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene who, eh, “sure does love guns”, to cite one of her milder public statements.
We don’t agree on much in Congress, but we all sure do love guns.
The privileged elites are protected, but we leave Americans defenseless, especially kids in gun-free school zones.
Red-flag gun confiscation laws destroy due process rights & the #2A.
I’m voting NO. pic.twitter.com/XZAgREcOEd
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) June 9, 2022
That’s what Joe Biden is losing to.
And it’s not surprising, either: Americans, to their very great credit, are much less tolerant of things like super high prices for fuel than Europeans are. The price of gasoline in the United States has just passed $5 a gallon for the first time ever. Inflation is biting. The economy does not feel great.
And then there’s Biden himself, who is caught between two stools.
Consider that Donald Trump, for example, never lost the loyalty of his most hardcore supporters: If things were going badly for him, he was always able to do something to “own the libs” and fire up his voters: Withdrawing from the Paris Climate accords, for example, or announcing a ban on immigration from Muslim countries, or saying Covid was a “China virus”. He always had some card to play with his own people.
Biden, by contrast, does not: Having promised progressives the sun, moon and stars in terms of policy during the campaign, he has been unable to deliver. Zilch is his record on climate legislation, for example. Gun legislation is going nowhere fast. His massive spending package died a death. And he is, by temperament, not a fire-breather like Trump. His supporters are depressed, and this isn’t helped by things like the rumoured and leaked ruling on Roe V Wade. They want to expand the Supreme Court and pack it with liberal judges, but Biden can’t do that either.
And then, there’s the middle: Ordinary Americans who just want safe schools and cheap gas and good paying jobs, and don’t really care what the nuts on either side do. Those voters have a long tradition of “kicking out the bums” when things are going badly, and things are going badly right now.
As it stands, Biden’s Presidency is on course to be a disaster for him personally, and his party. So much so that there are increasing rumblings that he may not get the Democratic nomination next time, without challenge. Those rumblings will only increase if and when, as expected, Democrats take a shellacking in the midterms this November.