Should We Start to Freak Out About Biden’s Poll Numbers? A Deep Breath Moment.

Photo: Chris Kleponis / Bloomberg

It’s baffling to many observers. Under President Biden, the jobless rate has fallen to near pre-pandemic levels and the number of new unemployment claims along with it. The three major stock market indices all recently hit new highs. Wages have shot up in the service sector, and America has reopened from lockdown in nearly all areas and industries. The pandemic is now largely spreading among the unvaccinated, and school-aged children have begun getting shots by the millions. And yet, Biden’s poll numbers sank to new lows recently: In the latest Washington Post / ABC News poll, his approval rating dropped to just 41 percent, down from 50 percent in June.

There are several reasons this is happening, but chief among them is higher prices. Americans are allergic to inflation, which has soared in the past few months, especially for highly visible and impactful gas and food costs. The common refrain among economic experts that the president cannot control things like gas prices and supply chain issues does not seem to have won many Americans over. Indeed, despite otherwise strong economic news, consumer confidence slipped to levels lower than at the worst part of the pandemic during lockdown, when we had just lost 22 million jobs and nearly everything was shuttered. The pundits have begun to warn that this sentiment will spell disaster for Democrats in 2022, with their slim majorities in the House and Senate at risk.

So are Democrats and Biden doomed? Let’s take a deep breath and look at some historical context.

In his first year in office, President Clinton’s approval numbers took a huge dip, falling to 37 percent. In his second year, President Obama’s numbers also fell, dipping to 43 percent. Why? One explanation is that both were faced with fixing big problems begun and left to them by their predecessors—the 1991 Bush I recession for Clinton and the 2008 Bush II Great Recession for Obama. With slim majorities in both chambers of Congress, Clinton managed to get the Omnibus Reconciliation Act passed, which cut federal spending while raising taxes (if you can believe it) thereby balancing the budget. Clinton went on to oversee the largest economic expansion in U.S. history lasting 115 months. President Obama pushed through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, pulling us back from the brink of economic chaos, followed by the Affordable Care Act which extended health care to tens of millions of uninsured Americans.

But despite being game-changing successes, these legislative efforts were also messy, painful, and divisive, just as we are seeing now with both the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework and the Build Back Better plan. What many Americans saw, particularly Democrats and Independents, just as they see today, was more of the same political dysfunction: promises undercut, favorite programs slashed, and ultimately a much watered-down bill. Disillusion will inevitably run high as historic bills move through Congress. What’s more, the benefits of these massive pieces of legislation aren’t always immediately felt, and so what lingers is a distaste for what we had to go through to get it. 

The disconnect is quite evident when you break down the polling. Per the same recent Washington Post / ABC poll, big majorities favor the massive BIF and the BBB spending packages, but the same people say they worry Biden is doing “too much to increase the size and role of government.” These two ideas are hard to reconcile. People who complain that the Democrats are bad at messaging need to contend with the fact that Americans are often quite tricky to understand.

The good news is that there is still a whole year before the 2022 election. By then, at least by most expert accounts, the pandemic largely will be behind us. Schools and businesses will be open. Long-stalled infrastructure projects will have been restarted, offering many blue-collar jobs that can’t be outsourced. And big investments in infrastructure will have begun benefitting average commuters. Gov. Hochul of New York, for example, just announced that there would be no subway fare hikes because the federal government came through with funding for subway maintenance and improvement. Expect similar good news in other states and localities.

If the BBB plan passes the House and the Senate in December or early next year, working parents will see their child care costs capped while seniors will see prescription drug prices fall and Medicare extended to cover the cost of hearing. Child tax credits will be extended, keeping millions out of poverty. And progressives will be able to cheer a half a trillion dollars in new measures to fight climate change.

Will all this be enough to stop the bad numbers from sliding further? Perhaps not in the short term. But I expect in the longer term they will begin to tick upward absent any Afghanistan withdrawal-level mistakes. The same weird quirk that causes voters to forget how bad things were just one year ago under Trump also means that if things like gas prices and food prices come back down to earth, that is what people will remember, too, come November 2022.

In sone ways, it’s almost better to have the bad news and low poll numbers happen a year out and spend the next year steadily climbing out from them as the midterms approach.