Biden Approval Up
Gallup has him at his highest point in a year.
Gallup reports: Biden’s Job Rating Rises to 44%, Highest in a Year.
Historical context:
The latest improvement in Biden’s overall approval rating puts him in better standing in the August before midterm elections than five of his predecessors over the past 40 years — Ronald Reagan in 1982, Bill Clinton in 1994, George W. Bush in 2006, Barack Obama in 2014 and Donald Trump in 2018.
However, Biden’s August job rating is dwarfed by the 61% to 75% readings for Reagan in 1986, George H.W. Bush in 1990, Clinton in 1998 and George W. Bush in 2002. Obama’s August 2010 pre-midterm rating matches Biden’s current 44%.
The biggest uptick by partisan ID is among independents.
He is up in the 538 composite of approval polls, although not at 44%
The run of legislative successes likely has helped, although no doubt the recent decline in gasoline prices has been of more than a little significance.
But but but I read that the 2022 midterm elections were supposed to be a GOP wave…
Really, I have no idea how November is gonna turn, but speaking as a DEM, I’m feeling pretty good right now.
I wouldn’t discount Trump spouting his insanity on Truth Social often enough that people are remembering why they wanted Biden in the first place…..drama-free. I don’t know about anybody else, but I am freakin EXHAUSTED from having to hear about Trump non-stop, 24/7, and I really appreciate that there’s a President in the White House who most likely isn’t stealing top secret documents and doodling on them. Or constantly crying on Twitter. Biden’s social media is actually run by professionals, not a raging old man-toddler on the shitter at 1 am.
I hope this trend continues. This trend is why I believe(d) the student loan forgiveness is a bad idea politically. Why not wait until after the midterms? I doubt it’s going to push a whole lot of younger people to show up, and it’s most definitely going to piss off people like my sister, who graduated with 18K in student loan debt and took 5 years paying it off. It will not keep her from voting for Dems, but it’s certainly angered her because she played by the rules.
As @Jax: suggests, TFG’s rantings and the public’s waking up to the seriousness of the document theft, doesn’t hurt Biden.
@EddieInCA: My old man played by the rules too. He graduated debt free. So did my mother. So did my oldest sister. And my middle sister. And my youngest sister.
Point being only that once upon a time, this country did things differently. We can again.
@EddieInCA:
My guess is that the political calculus went like this: The people who are going to be upset already hate Biden. The people who like the idea are winnable youth, and of course parents who are often the ones paying. There is a third group who’ll roll their eyes and mutter about the yutes, but I doubt this really changes their votes.
@OzarkHillbilly: I figure it is still likely that the House goes R, but the Senate staying D is looking better.
@EddieInCA:
People play by the rules and get crushed ALL THE TIME. Are we not supposed to help them because someone else played by the rules and didn’t get crushed?
I have no idea what to make of current Gallup approval/disapproval polls, or right track/wrong track polls. The granular information is interesting, even a bit useful on August 26, 2022. But not so much thereafter. We shall see what happens on mid-term election day.
I am pleased there is a grownup man, if elderly, in the White House who understands the gravity of being the President of United States in the year of our lord 2022. Joe may not be right on particular policy questions, but he does not see the federal government as his personal fiefdom.
This alone is a vast improvement on Administration 45.
Biden’s numbers had to go up at some point, I guess the relevant question is why now?
As far as the mid-terms, things definitely do look better for Democrats. Besides the numerous GoP own-goals, the economy at least feels better, thanks to gas prices and low unemployment. Those may be somewhat canceling the effects of high inflation. The economy is still very weird.
@Michael Reynolds:
I think you’re right about the political calculus behind the decision, but I’m skeptical this will change a lot of votes one way or the other. It did piss off a lot of people I know who are aligned with both Democrats and Republicans, but I don’t see it changing votes. And a lot of people in my circle just don’t care.
@Han: Not to mention that I paid one tenth (literally, I looked it up) of what students pay now to go to the school from which I graduated and that my job actually paid for a year’s tuition at the private school to which I went and even a minimum wage job summer job paid what it cost to go to a state university for a year.
The argument I keep hearing is “I don’t see why we should do this now when no one offered it to me back then.” (And we didn’t even have loan displacement/substitution programs that forgive part of a loan for working at targeted employment when I went to school, either. Course, we didn’t really NEED them, but nobody offered and that what matters.) I’m not sure that “I played by the rules” isn’t really a kinder and gentler (h/t George W Bush) version of “…no one…” but I got no dog in the fight. Whinge about whatever you want to.
Success breeds success. Particularly success that is actually marketed and sold heavily as success. Contra the BBB round, it rather seems the Democrats Left has acccepted firing on own wins for not being big or pure enough is not a winning strategy.
@OzarkHillbilly: The “but” are rather puzzling as normally signaling false forecast. Until facts changed, it was a very solid forecast. But between the political idiocy of the Supreme Court ideologues drive on the abortion ruling highlighting the sheer extremism – applied – of the anti-movement, and the interventions of Trump in favour of Trumpist, the facts changed. Plus the unexpected win of the Climate bill and even better the Left this time not repeating the first round error of attacking own-partial win.
Now with Trump back the news cycle in a negative manner and as usual focused purely on himself, you have an opportunity to obtain a Defence win. No “but but but”- an evolution from changed approaches and some sheer luck plus some late pivoting of the Central Bank to bleed out some of the policy error of excess fiscal movement.
@Andy: General populations (broadly in developed countries) appears generally to have a six to nine month, or at longer end of things, 12 months perceptual memory for economic. Thus, it was always best for the Democrats to have a quick, sharp and short intervention by the Fed to pull inflation heat out, and have a rebound, rather than for the Democrats to engage in inflation denialism or poopoohing, really committing structurally the same errors of the 1970s.
There is a decent chance of a quite minor economic recession with inflation cooled to low-middle single digits, which is generally a positive base for them.
The Trump development with that Affadavit… I have rather the feeling that Madame Cheney long-term bet may pay off, certainly the Republican leadership in Washington were utter fools to not take the opportunity after 6Jan to put some long-knives in the back of Trump rather than the cowardly short-termist play they followed.
@EddieInCA: Because of my loan agreements, I wound up paying for my grad school education three times over. I discharged my debt, but having done that, I toss donation appeals from Yale into the trash, unread.
@SC_Birdflyte: If Universities are going to behave like corporations, I don’t understand why they think they can play it both ways and ask for donations as well.
Pick a business model.
@EddieInCA: “It will not keep her from voting for Dems, but it’s certainly angered her because she played by the rules.”
To paraphrase Stephen Croeder (link in the open forum), would she be mad if someone she knew died of an illness but now they’ve come up with a cure for it so more people don’t have to die? Since she suffered does she insist that everyone else who comes after her has to suffer at least as much?
Isn’t this just a horrible way to think? (No disrespect to your sister…)
@SC_Birdflyte: I don’t think that will cause a problem for Yale’s endowment, which made $1.5 billion in income last year (exclusive of new donations?). When I was teaching at Clark College in Vancouver, WA, their foundation was one of the 5 largest 2-year college endowments in the US and was seeking ideas for how to distribute a surplus of income a couple of years. It literally had more money available than it had places to spend it. I got to go to one or two conferences on the foundation’s nickel even though I was only an adjunct instructor because of the surplus.
@EddieInCA:
Not based on what I’m hearing from my younger peers or seeing from young people Instagram and TikTok right now, where Biden is jokingly being nicknamed “Daddy” and enthusiastically praised.
@DK: The internet social media is a shit way to forecast any material change in voting.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I literally had a family member tell me that I should just get a summer job to pay for my yearly tuition. It’s like dude I already work two jobs just to survive and a third one aint going to cover tuition/books/etc…
He just couldn’t understand why I am so irresponsible because when he went to college all he had to do was work in summer to cover all his costs. So clearly I’m irresponsible because I cannot do the same 30 years after he did it..
@Matt: There are 24 hours in a day, and you’ll be sleeping all the time once you’re dead. So…
On a more serious note, good luck with your education. It’s only a matter of time until we (boomers) all die off, and you may be able to fix the damage we did then.