Joe Biden’s Presidency in Terminal Decline

With less than nine months to go until Election Day, Democrats’ desperate efforts to reverse Joe Biden’s flagging poll numbers have shown few signs of success, and it increasingly appears as if the embattled president is in the midst of a terminal collapse in public support.

Public confidence in Biden is now so low that nearly half of American voters don’t even believe that Biden will make it to November as the Democrat nominee for president. According to a new Monmouth University poll released on February 15, 49 percent of likely voters believe Biden is in such poor health that he will be removed from his party’s ticket.

Moreover, just 32 percent of respondents said they were confident in the mental capacity and physical stamina of Joe Biden to lead the country.

This finding notably comes on the heels of a report from special counsel Robert Hur – a product of Biden’s own Department of Justice – which described the president as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” The report also described several instances where Biden could not recall key moments in his own life, including when his son, Beau, died, and the exact years he served as vice president.

The Monmouth poll is only the latest in a series of grim survey results for the president. A Gallup poll released in January found that Biden’s third-year job approval rating, just 39.8 percent, is the worst since Jimmy Carter, who went on to lose re-election to Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Last December, the Presidential Leadership Index, one of the most accurate polling systems in recent electoral history which measures “favorability, job approval, and leadership,” announced that Joe Biden’s chances of winning reelection are “slim at best.” According to Newsweek, the study found that “Biden is currently showing ‘significant’ vulnerability in 18 key demographics heading into November’s race, up from just five in November.”

Overall, just 40.1 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s job performance in the latest RealClearPolitics (RCP) polling average, while 55.7 percent disapprove.

While Biden is deep underwater with the American people in virtually every policy area, a few issues in particular seem to be dragging him down.

The first and most obvious is immigration. According to RCP, Biden’s approval rating on his handling of immigration is a dismal 32.2 percent, while a full 63 percent of Americans disapprove.

Those numbers aren’t likely to get any better with illegal border crossings continuing to shatter historical records. In total, more than nine million people have crossed the border illegally since Biden took office – and that’s likely a vast undercount.

Biden also has major issues when it comes to the economy, which continues to be an area of frustration for voters despite the administration’s insistence that the economy is doing quite well. 39.4 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the economy according to RCP, while 56.8 percent disapprove.

On inflation, those numbers are even worse; 36.5 percent approve of what Biden has done to address inflation, while 61.3 percent disapprove. Although the White House often points to the largely strong stock market as evidence that “Bidenomics” is working, rising prices and other economic factors like high-interest rates mean most Americans are still struggling, and inflation means those high stock prices are less impressive than they first appear.

Finally, Biden continues to struggle with voters when it comes to his handling of foreign policy – ironic given that Biden was billed to voters in 2020 as an expert diplomat who would restore American prestige on the global stage (despite the fact, of course, that former President Donald Trump had done more than any U.S. leader in decades to bring about world peace). 37.5 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of foreign policy according to RCP, compared to 58 percent who disapprove.

Looking back, one foreign policy fiasco in particular can be seen as the origin for all of Biden’s polling woes – the disastrous evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021.

That failure seemed to crystalize for voters that Biden was not up to the task of being president – either when it comes to foreign policy or any other matter. Although Biden came into office with a relatively robust 53 percent approval rating, it was after Afghanistan that more Americans disapproved than approved of Biden’s job performance for the first time, and his presidency has never recovered.

Since then, a string of other failures, combined with Biden’s obvious health issues, have provided little reason for voters to regain their confidence in the president. While Biden may have been able to overcome either concerns about his cognitive abilities or poor policy decisions with help from his allies in the corporate media, overcoming both is proving to be an all-but-impossible task.

Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.