OPINION:
A new NBC poll found President Biden isn’t just falling in favor with the American people, but that he’s falling in favor so badly he needs a complete “reset” to show he can be competent.
Wow. N.B.C.
Moreover, it was Chuck Todd of MSNBC — that is to say, far from right-wingism — who delivered the bad news.
“Our new NBC News poll suggests Mr. Biden does need a reset, because he’s lost his identity a bit,” Todd said, as Mediaite reported. “He’s no longer seen as competent and effective, no longer seen as a good commander-in-chief or, perhaps most damaging, as easy-going and likable.”
That means even the low information voters who choose candidates based on whether they’d make a good beer drinking mate or dinner guest, rather than on policy, are seeing Biden as a failure.
Only 43% of NBC’s polled audience gave Biden a thumbs-up for job performance.
Only 22% said the country is headed in the right direction — versus 72% who said America is swimming the wrong way.
Now combine that with all the other polls out there showing Biden’s consistent slide into disfavor with the American people, and Todd’s got it right: It’s “shellacking” time for the Democratic Party.
“History shows that kind of presidential approval rating leads to a shellacking for the party in power,” Todd said.
You’d think the party in power, the Democrats, would start to pay attention. You’d think party leadership would start to look inward, start to reconsider recent actions, start to think of ways to turn the tide and bring back the American people to the Democratic dinner table.
But no.
Team Biden simply digs in deeper.
“Jen Psaki defends Joe Biden jab at ‘stupid’ Ukraine question,” The New York Post wrote a few days ago.
“Jen Psaki defends Biden’s refusal to release visitor logs,” The Daily Mail wrote, also a few days ago.
“Psaki defends Biden’s against claims they broke mask mandate,” The Independent wrote in October.
“Psaki defends Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal decision,” PBS wrote in September.
Sensing a theme?
Biden bungles; Janitor Jen, the White House press secretary, rushes to clean up his messes. Nary a change in administration direction comes. Nor will it.
In mid-January, just this month, a reporter asked Psaki during a White House press briefing, “At what point do you take stock and say that things need to change internally? Whether it’s your outreach for [Capitol] Hill, whether it’s the leadership within the White House, you seem to be stagnant on an incredible number of fronts right now.”
Stagnant? That’s generous. More to truth, plunging.
Psaki’s response was to talk up the numbers of vaccinated and employed — conveniently leaving out crucial contexts of the eyebrow-raising scores who’ve fled the job market — and then to mention how very difficult it was to get stuff passed through Congress without clear majorities in both Houses. She then assured all was good, but that maybe she and the reporter just didn’t “see it through the same prism.”
OK.
Or, as this same journalist then asked, “So, the sense is things are going well, there’s no need for change right now?”
And read on, because Psaki’s answer says all that needs to be said about the potential for this administration to rise above the dismal ratings they’re receiving from the American people and chart a course toward popular support.
“I think that having worked in a White House before, you do hard things in White Houses. You have every challenge at your feet, laid at your feet,” she said. “And we could certainly propose legislation to see if people support bunny rabbits and ice cream, but that wouldn’t be very rewarding to the American people. So the president’s view is we’re going to keep pushing for hard things, and we’re going to keep pushing the boulders up the hill to get it done.”
Snide? There’s an understatement. Somewhere between bills about bunny rabbits and presidential decisions to abandon American citizens and allies in Afghanistan must be a gray area. But Psaki, ever snarky, and her boss Biden, ever arrogant and incompetent, either aren’t seeing that gray area — where that long-promised national unity dwells — or they don’t care, because they’re too bent on advancing a globalist vision and elitist doctrine.
“6 in 10 say they would back someone other than Biden in 2024,” The Hill just wrote.
“Fox News Poll: Voters reluctant to give Biden a second term,” Fox News just wrote.
“Poll finds 60 percent would vote against Biden if election was held now,” the New York Post just wrote.
And Janitor Jen, heading for cleanup on aisle five, busily passes out ice cream cones while pulling a rabbit out of her hat.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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