Joe Biden's job approval rating in the Real Clear Politics average reached a new low over the weekend.
In the aggregate of several recent opinion polls, 40.5% approve of the job he is doing as President while 55.3% disapprove. With a gap of negative 14.8%, he's deepest under water since taking office in January 2021 when the gap was a positive 20%.
Biden entered office with the promise to heal partisan divisions, defeat the corona virus pandemic and spur economic growth and prosperity. What he has delivered stands in stark contrast to those promises.
Partisan divisions have grown. The Biden administration has set the FBI on parents who speak out against critical race theory, mask and vaccine mandates at school board meetings. In a recent speech Biden compared people who oppose the federalization of election rules to segregationists. Although he promised to leave the Senate filibuster alone, he recently pushed to have it scrapped in order to pass the federalization of elections by a simple Senate majority. Arizona Democrat Kirsten Sinema and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin voted with all 50 Republican Senators to oppose the election federalization bill.
Biden's administration attempted to discriminate against white Americans in a farm relief bill while the FDA is laying out guidelines urging health care providers to discriminate against white Americans in the administration of Covid treatments.
Inflation is currently running at around 7%, while GDP growth has slowed to 2%. When campaigning in 2020, Biden specifically promised not to institute a vaccine mandate. After becoming President he reversed this promise an signed an executive order mandating vaccinations to workers in businesses with more than 100 employees. The mandate was first put on hold at the urging of business leaders in order to avoid disruptions during the Christmas shopping season. It was then struck down by the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision. Nevertheless, hiring for new jobs has come in well below expectations many times during Biden's first year in office as the labor force participation rate remains far below pre-pandemic levels.
Three years into the pandemic, and one year after inheriting 3 vaccines from the previous administration, the Biden administration was caught flat footed when first the delta and then the Omicron variant of the coronavirus emerged. Testing kits are in short supply. More people have died from or with Covid under Biden than under Trump, the man Biden replaced.
After Joe Biden rescinded border policies of the Trump administration, the flood gates opened. In 2021 around 2 Million illegal immigrants crossed the Southern border into the United States. The Biden administration spends time and effort to shuttle these migrants around the United States, often in overnight flights in what appear to be attempts to avoid scrutiny.
So far, Joe Biden's foreign policy has been marked by the disastrous retreat from Afghanistan. During the rushed evacuation, 13 US soldiers died in a bomb blast at the Kabul airport. Hundreds, if not thousands of Americans were left behind, as were around $ 80 Billion worth of military supplied, including Apache attack helicopters. In a recent press conference Joe Biden seemed to give Vladimir Putin the go ahead to stage a "minor incursion" into neighboring Ukraine by indicating that such action would go unpunished.
In the few public appearances Joe Biden has made, he has appeared slow, distracted, forgetful, angry, and incoherent, with apparent signs of advanced cognitive decline.
It remains to be seen how much further Biden's approval can sink and where his hard floor of support is. It seems that his low approval makes it hard for Biden and his advisers to govern effectively.