As of Friday morning, President Joe Biden’s favorable rating in the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate sits at 39.6 percent favorable, 55.3 percent unfavorable — a negative 15.7 percent spread.
Vice President Kamala Harris is doing even worse: 36.2 percent favorable, 55.0 percent unfavorable, a negative 18.8 percent spread.
Compare this with former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner whom both the administration and its media enablers have painted as an insurrectionist, an election-denier and a threat to democracy: 41.6 percent favorable, 55.9 percent unfavorable.
That’s a negative 12.3 percent spread — not great, granted. But when the administration and the establishment media of the United States and the West — almost all of which parrot the Democrats’ lines — have spent nearly a decade painting Trump as the unholy amalgamation of Mussolini, Joe McCarthy and Godzilla, the fact that both the sitting president and vice president have lower favorability ratings than that guy should speak loudly of their failures.
So what’s the real issue here, particularly going into an election year? What can the Biden administration change so that Joe and Kamala aren’t looking for new gigs come next January?
Well, Harris sat down with Katie Couric for an interview this week and she said she had the answer: It was about time they started taking “adequate credit” for their accomplishments.
You heard the vice president correctly, folks. They’re just unpopular because they’re too darn modest.
In the hardest softball thrown in an interview of Couric-lobbed softballs on Tuesday, the former “CBS Evening News” host noted the “accomplishments” of the Biden administration — and how, somehow, that hadn’t translated into through-the-roof popularity.
“An infrastructure bill, finally,” Couric said. “The CHIPS Act, the Safer Communities Act, addressing gun violence, to name three legislative accomplishments. Low unemployment. Millions of jobs created. Inflation down. The stock market up … and yet, you and President Biden’s approval ratings are at historic lows.”
“Why do you think that is, given what I just outlined?” she asked.
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Perhaps it was because she was speaking to a simpatico interviewer who seemed as clueless as she was about why she and her boss were at historic lows when it came to approval ratings, but she let a bit too much on.
Harris began by saying that if she “listened to polls, I would have never run for my first office, or probably my second or third, for that matter, so I only put so much stock in polls.”
She then listed the minor “accomplishments” the Biden administration had racked up on the economy, prescription drug costs, student debt and infrastructure.
“Historic work has happened, no question. It is incumbent on us to let people know who brung it to them, frankly,” the vice president said.
“So, you’re right, we have a lot of accomplishments, and I think what the American people want most in their leaders is that we actually get things done — and we have done it,” Harris said. “We haven’t taken adequate credit for it, frankly, and we’ve got to do a better job of getting the word out about what we have accomplished and who did it.”
Kamala Harris explains why she and Biden are historically unpopular: “We haven’t taken adequate credit” pic.twitter.com/Ofzi0Krsxd
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 25, 2024
Where, indeed, to begin? Let’s start with her claims about the economy, in which she talks about “rising wages” and “bringing down prices.”
“We have historic accomplishments in terms of the economy,” claims Kamala Harris.
“Rising wages” (real wages down ~2.5% under Biden), “bringing down prices” (prices up 17.3% under Biden).
“It is incumbent on us to let people know who brung it to them, frankly.” pic.twitter.com/o55IsE9A8z
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 25, 2024
This is bunkum, unless you’re the type who believes someone who takes someone’s boot off of someone else’s neck can take credit for improving the person’s respiration. Both economic growth and job numbers have more to do with extended COVID lockdowns, a product of the Democratic Party, depressing a strong economy, which bounced back — albeit not as quickly as it should have, and with plenty of bumps along the way.
Inflation is lower than it was, but that’s not saying much: It was at 40-year highs during the first few years of the Biden administration, and those price increases are now baked into the economy; considering that the most widely used inflation metric is year-over-year price increases, saying that inflation is lower than it was ignores the fact that prices aren’t rising as quickly as they were when inflation was out of control.
As for wage growth, consider that roughly 60 percent of Americans said their salary increases had not kept pace with inflation, according to a November Bankrate survey. So, sure, unemployment numbers may be low — and they were under Trump, as well — but those jobs aren’t paying the bills for Americans the way they should.
Biden’s infrastructure bills have been lard-filled disasters that have — and here’s a shocker — yet to yield any drastic improvements.
Consider that, as of November, $7.5 billion allocated to build electric vehicle chargers in an infrastructure bill passed in November 2021 had yet to yield a single completed electric vehicle charger. Are they not taking “adequate credit” for this kind of astounding efficiency? Is that the problem, Mrs. Vice President?
As for student loan “relief” and the administration’s gun-grabbing policies, the same thing could be said for both: Thanks to the fact that what the Biden-Harris White House wanted was legislatively and/or legally untenable, the progress on those fronts has been too slow for progressives and horribly alarming for conservatives.
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