By Jim Geraghty
Thursday, November 04, 2021
For the first few months of the Biden administration, the
president often cited public-opinion polls as irrefutable evidence that his
agenda was popular and that Congress, with its narrow Democratic majorities,
ought to promptly pass his preferred legislation.
Biden on February 17: “The truth of the matter is, the
polling data from last night, and all the polls you’ve all done — they come
from you guys; not you personally, but your networks and your organizations —
show that somewhere between 64 and 69 percent of the American people think we
have to do this.”
Biden on February 19: “According to the polls, there is
overwhelming bipartisan support. The vast majority of the American people —
more than 70 percent of the American people, with all the polls you all
conduct, including a majority of Republicans — want us to act, and act big and
quickly and support the plan.”
Biden on March 19: “The American Rescue Plan is a plan that
brings America together and benefits all America. That’s why so many polls show
that over 70 percent of the country support it, including Democrats,
Republicans, and independents.”
Biden on April 2: “Polls already show strong support
for infrastructure investment for the American people, whether they’re
Democrats, Republicans, or independents.”
Also note this White House fact sheet on prescription-drug prices from
August 12: “Public opinion polls show that the majority of Americans —
Republicans and Democrats — support this change.”
You may have noticed that the president’s approval rating
dropped quickly and significantly around the time of the Afghanistan debacle,
and support for his agenda dropped at about the same pace. The bipartisan infrastructure bill and “Build Back Better” are
not popular, even if separate surveys can find support for particular
provisions:
The ABC News/Ipsos poll, which was
conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel, found that a plurality (32 percent) of
Americans think the bills would hurt people like them if they became law, while
fewer (25 percent) think it would help them. Nearly 2 in 10 (18 percent) think
the bills would make no difference, and 24 percent said they didn’t know.
Even among Democrats alone, fewer
than half (47 percent) think the two bills would help people like them. A
quarter of Democrats think the bills would make no difference for people like
them and about 2 in 10 (22 percent) don’t know how they would impact their
lives. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of Republicans think the bills would hurt
people like them, and so do about 3 in 10 (29 percent) independents.
A CNN poll in October found that, “Only 25 percent of
Americans believe they and their family will be better off if the two bills
making up Biden’s agenda pass. Meanwhile, 32 percent say they’ll be worse off,
and 43 percent say they’ll be about the same. Among independents, who may be
souring on Biden, only 20 percent say the bills will make them better off.”
Shockingly, right around this time, President Biden
discovered that public-opinion polling doesn’t really matter and shouldn’t
influence the decisions of policymakers.
Biden from Rome on October 31: “Look, the polls are going
to up and down and up and down. They were high early, then they got medium,
then they went back up, and now they’re low. Well, look, this is — look at every
other president; the same thing has happened. But that’s not why I ran. I
didn’t run to determine how well I’m going to do in the polls.”
In other words, poll numbers matter — unless they show
disapproval for Biden or his agenda, and then they’re meaningless.
Wait, How Is the Economy Doing Again?
In Glasgow on Tuesday, Biden emphasized that the U.S.
economy is doing well under his leadership: “Lastly, you know, if you take a
look at what — what economy is growing? The United States. It’s growing. It has
problems, mainly because of COVID and the supply chain, but it’s growing. We’ve
created over 6 million jobs. We’re leading the world in terms of the fastest-growing
economy — major economies.”
The U.S. is not the world’s fastest-growing
economy; ranked by growth in 2021 by the International Monetary Fund,
we’re a respectable 15th, but we’re behind Ireland, Chile, India, Turkey,
China, Israel, the U.K., Hong Kong, and a handful of others.
Biden, explaining Democratic Party losses in Tuesday’s
off-year elections, said yesterday that, “People are upset and uncertain about a lot of things —
from COVID, to school, to jobs, to a whole range of things, and the cost of a
gallon of gasoline. . . . Look, people — people need a little breathing room.
They’re overwhelmed. And what happened was — I think we have to just produce
results for them to change their standard of living and give them a little more
breathing room.”
In Biden’s view, the U.S. has the world’s fastest-growing
economy, but Americans also feel upset, uncertain, and overwhelmed, need
breathing room, and are still looking for an improvement in their standard of
living.
Biden’s Lessons from Tuesday
Yesterday, when asked about Virginia, Biden spoke as if
Terry McAuliffe had won his bid to reclaim the Virginia governor’s mansion: “I was talking to Terry to congratulate him today. He got
600,000 more votes than any Democrat ever has gotten. We brought out every
Democrat about there was. More votes than ever has been cast for a Democratic
incumbent — I mean, not incumbent — a Democrat running for governor.”
McAuliffe did not get 600,000 more votes than any
Democratic gubernatorial candidate had ever gotten. McAuliffe won 1,579,591
votes; four years ago, Ralph Northam won 1,409,175 votes. Four years before
that, McAuliffe won 1,069,789 votes. It is accurate to say that McAuliffe won
more votes than a Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate had ever received
before. Then again, between 2017 and 2021, Virginia gained about 200,000 more people.
Biden continued, “No governor in Virginia has ever won
when he is of the same — where he or she is the same party as the sitting
president.” That is not true; in 2013, when Barack Obama was president,
McAuliffe won Virginia’s gubernatorial race.
Biden saw Tuesday’s election results — where Republicans
swept Virginia statewide offices, won back control of the Virginia House of
Delegates, nearly beat a New Jersey governor who was supposed to be a shoo-in,
gained seats in the New Jersey state legislature, and dished out a “shellacking” in New York’s local races —
as an endorsement of his agenda: “I do know that people want us to get things
done. They want us to get things done. And that’s why I’m continuing to push
very hard for the Democratic Party to move along and pass my infrastructure
bill and my Build Back Better bill.”
What the Past Week Means
One week ago today, President Biden told Congressional
Democrats that, “I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that the House and Senate
majorities and my presidency will be determined by what happens in the next
week.”
One week has passed, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure
Framework and the Build Back Better bill have not passed. The Democrats got
beaten almost everywhere they were on the ballot on Tuesday. And as Vice
President Kamala Harris declared at a rally for McAuliffe, “What happens in
Virginia will in large part determine what happens in 2022, 2024, and on.”
ADDENDUM: Even the American Civil Liberties
Union is publicly arguing that President Biden “hasn’t been fully briefed” on
what his own administration is doing. Yesterday, the president surprised
some people by insisting that reports that his administration is
considering paying $450,000 per person to migrant families separated under the
Trump administration are “garbage” and “not true.” The Wall Street
Journal reported this, and added that, “In recent months,
lawyers for the families and the government have told courts overseeing the
cases that they are engaged in settlement negotiations and hoped to reach a
deal by the end of November.”
It would be really shocking if these lawyers told courts
a lie about settlement negotiations.
In fact, the ACLU tweeted that, “Biden
may not have been fully briefed about the actions of his own DOJ as it
carefully considered the crimes committed against thousands of families.
But if he follows through on what he said, the president is abandoning a
campaign promise to do justice for separated families.”
Is Biden being kept out of the loop? Is Biden lying? Or
was Biden told about this proposal and simply doesn’t remember it?
But remember, only the worst people in the world would ask if Biden’s memory
is good enough to handle the job of the presidency.
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