Biden seeks cure for a bad case of the presidential blahs
CBC
Joe Biden has a virulent strain of a condition endemic to the American presidency: he's got a bad case of the first-year blahs.
And he's counting on a massive budget bill to cure what ails him.
Democrats are getting close to a legislative win that would advance some of the priorities he campaigned on, touching climate, tax, health and child policies.
It's far from certain that even if that package passes it will save the party in midterm congressional elections a year from now.
Biden's approval rating is now the second-lowest of any president since the post-Watergate era at this stage of his first term.
While it's not uncommon for a president to see his approval slide in year one, this skid is steeper than most.
Among the last eight presidents, only one president had a lower approval rating in late-October of his first year than Biden's current average of 42 per cent: Donald Trump.
Outperforming Trump is no longer a given, either. One pollster, Quinnipiac, actually has Trump's current approval rating one point higher than Biden's.
Numbers like these are why polling analysts view Republicans as the clear favourite to regain control of Congress next year.
"It looks very, very bad right now [for Democrats]," said Cameron Easley, senior editor at the polling firm Morning Consult.
"If things don't get much better, the question will go from whether it'll be bad to how bad it's going to get."
To retain control of Congress, Easley said, as a general rule of thumb, the president needs an approval rating in the low-50s — around 52 or 53 per cent, well ahead of Biden's current rate.
The stakes of next year's vote are considerable. Victory would give Republicans not only the power to block Biden's legislation, and potentially his judicial nominees, but also control of congressional committees, which would allow them to launch investigations against the president and cancel efforts such as the inquiry into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
So, what's happened with Biden's ratings?
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