OPINION:
The Biden administration is a trifecta: low expectations, low performance, low ratings. This administration’s low polling should not surprise anyone other than its liberal apologists. Acorns do not fall far from the oak, and results rarely veer greatly from their origins. Considering this administration’s origins, what would be surprising is a good performance or a good reception.
Start at the top. President Biden was a career Senate backbencher for almost four decades. Before 2020, he ran for president twice; he failed miserably both times — never becoming a serious contender in either race, bowing out a amid plagiarism scandal (1988) and gaffes (2008).
Plucked from obscurity, he was tapped to balance the 2008 presidential ticket by being everything that the charismatic then-Sen. Barack Obama was not: old, White, and a moderate institutionalist. Mr. Obama, who would have won with any running mate, cakewalked into the White House (by 9.5 million votes — a 7.2 percentage-point margin and by 365 to 173 electoral votes) and took Mr. Biden along for the ride.
For eight years, Mr. Biden was a nondescript vice president, so much so that he was passed over for Hillary Clinton for the Democrats’ 2016 nomination. Mr. Biden found himself out of office for effectively the only time in his adult life. Four years later, he was only a minority first choice of Democrats; he survived a third ignominious nomination defeat with a win in South Carolina.
Despite surviving, he never really thrived; instead, he became the safe second choice as other candidates dropped out. In the end, he essentially reprised his role as vice president: putting a moderate face on the left’s immoderate agenda — doing so because no other Democrat could fill the role.
Kamala Harris owed her vice presidency to being what Mr. Biden was not. Her political career was as short as Mr. Biden’s was long — three years as California’s junior senator, six years as California’s attorney general, and seven years as San Francisco’s district attorney — less than half the length of Mr. Biden’s Senate tenure.
Like Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris washed out in her only presidential run, not only not finishing but not getting to the starting line, as she bowed out in December 2019. Before leaving, however, she landed perhaps the most telling blow in the plethora of the Democrats’ presidential debates, simultaneously labeling Mr. Biden a racist and herself a victim.
Despite the Bidens’ animosity to the remark (Edward-Isaac Dovere’s book, “Battle for the Soul,” recounts Joe and Jill’s expletive-laced responses to it), Ms. Harris landed the VP slot — and equally shockingly, she accepted it from someone whom she had tarred as being cozy with those who victimized her as a child.
Like Mr. Biden 12 years earlier, Ms. Harris got it by being what Joe was not. In a party ensnared in its identity-group shackles, the Biden campaign needed someone to offset Joe’s liabilities with the left — White, male, straight, old, and a moderate career politician. It also needed someone who would not upstage Mr. Biden.
The Biden-Harris campaign was marked by not campaigning. Despite a global pandemic, national lockdowns and an economy leveled by both, the Biden-Harris ticket won an electoral vote squeaker that was dependent on the outcome of a handful of states by a relative handful of votes in each. Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris got into the White House by the back door.
Despite being given an unprecedentedly favorable comparison by then-President Donald Trump’s mishandling of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, Mr. Biden has never reached great popularity. A series of policy fiascoes followed.
Foreign policy has been a falling domino of disaster: the Afghanistan withdrawal, China’s increased belligerence, Russia’s Ukrainian invasion, cozying up to Iran, and now Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel.
The economy has been tepid at best, while inflation has been torrid at worst.
The administration’s stoked spending has done likewise to federal deficits and debt. America’s domestic chaos extends from its unguarded southern border to its unpoliced urban streets.
Even the administration’s exorbitant environmental policy founded on subsidization has added costs to consumers and had little climate impact.
Mr. Biden himself has continued to prove himself a gaffe machine despite staying away from the press to an inordinate degree. Ms. Harris’ tenure has been marked by being even more out of sight than Mr. Biden; clearly, this is the administration’s decision — adding fuel to earlier fires of reports that she and her office were not up to the task.
For all these reasons, the administration’s poll numbers are extremely poor. According to Real Clear Politics’ Nov. 5 average of national polling, Mr. Biden’s approval rating is minus 15% (40.8% to 55.8%), and he trails Mr. Trump 44.9% to 45.4% in rematch polling. Mr. Biden’s favorability is minus 13.6% (41.4% to 55%); this is better than Mr. Trump’s minus 15.5% (40.4% to 55.9%).
But Ms. Harris’ number is worse than both, at a minus 17.2% (37.1% to 54.3%).
And there is little prospect of the Biden-Harris administration improving in the public’s perception. For most of their problems, they are the cause; where they are not directly — America’s urban chaos — their party is.
The Biden-Harris administration was elected not to be Donald Trump. Elected as a negative, it is not surprising that these have also been their results and the public’s subsequent appraisal of them. It is increasingly clear that the only case that this administration can or is even attempting to make for reelection is that they continue to not be Mr. Trump.
If that argument again prevails, America can continue to pay the high price of its low expectations.
• J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987 to 2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004 to 2023.
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