Afghanistan! Delta variant! Hurricanes! Wildfires! Chaos, chaos, chaos! Hie thee to thine lifeboats, fellow Americans! The good ship Biden is sinking!
The evidence? President Joe Biden’s approval ratings have now sunk to a roughly 45% average based on FiveThirtyEight’s latest aggregate of polls. As usual, the media is doing its news cycle tango, questioning Biden’s ability to push through his agenda in the face of these numbers. Why, one poll even revealed (insert blood-curdling scream) that Donald Trump would edge out Biden if both were on the ballot again in 2024! Yes, Donald Trump, the well-known and not-at-all-Adderall-addicted statesman who just happens to incite bloody insurrections for shits ‘n’ giggles. That guy.
Color me … not all that worried, honestly.
Don’t get me wrong: August was bad for Biden. Very bad, though I happen to think he’s taken undeserved criticism over his Afghanistan withdrawal, and he’s doing all he can to quash the surging delta variant while delta’s dipshit Biff Tannen toadies (aka GOP governors) root for pestilence from the peanut gallery.
In fact, most of the chaos Biden is currently encountering has been either Republican-caused or Republican-facilitated. Would people be drowning in their basements in New York and New Jersey if climate warrior Al Gore had been elected in 2000? It’s impossible to say for sure, but I can’t imagine we would have been in worse shape. But hey, Biden is sitting in the big chair, so he’s taking responsibility. Unlike this half-baked prairie loaf …
Okay, so Biden’s presidency is on a downswing. By now, COVID-19 was supposed to have been brought to heel, and Afghanistan—which, until about a month ago, was far less interesting to the national media than Britney Spears’ conservatorship—generated some truly awful headlines.
But let’s keep this in perspective, shall we? It’s typical for presidents to experience a honeymoon period before seeing their fortunes flag as reality creeps in. With the body blows Biden has taken over the past month, it’s a miracle his approval rating is still as high as it is. And there’s no reason to think he’s in a downward spiral that will doom his presidency and/or his reelection prospects.
For example, notorious chaos agent Donald Trump often saw his poll numbers vacillate over the four years of his misrule—and 45% approval was his high(est)-water mark.
Don’t believe me?
Oh, lookee! That’s Donald Trump hitting 45.5% approval. In January 2017! In fact, Trump’s salad days—i.e., when his approval rating still somehow topped his disapproval rating—lasted less than two weeks. From February 4, 2017 on, he remained underwater. He briefly reached 45.8% approval in March 2020 as our COVID-19-spooked country attempted to rally around its pendulous donkey scrote of a “leader,” but his rating plummeted thereafter, reaching its nadir (38% approve, 58% disapprove) four days before he left the office he’d tried to steal back like Gollum in pursuit of his precious.
Meanwhile, here are President Biden’s recent “disastrous” aggregate polling numbers:
Yup, that looks bad. But only because he wasn’t treading in quicksand for his first 200 days in office, like Trump was. For the record, at this same point in Trump’s presidency—Sept. 8, 2017—our oafish ocher overlord clocked in at 38.7% approve and 56% disapprove. And yet he could have likely been on a glide path to reelection if his shitty response to the COVID-19 pandemic hadn’t stunk so much it became impossible to bury under the floorboards.
Meanwhile, Biden’s approvals are now underwater—by 4.1%—for the first time in his young presidency. Trump’s were underwater for 1,446 days. No, that’s not a typo.
So the media will do what the media does. As for me, I’ll be gobbling up my Chill Out Crunch cereal with soy milk instead of briny liberal tears. And I’ll wait for the next news cycle to bring us all glad tidings.
That day will come. Just wait.
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