It’s Still the Economy Stupid

Why is Biden so unpopular? | Power Line (powerlineblog.com)

Harry Enten, formerly of FiveThirtyEight and now of CNN, takes up the question. He writes:

While the causes of Biden’s decline are numerous (e.g. declining trust of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan), perhaps the biggest one is that Americans believe there are big economic problems and that Biden isn’t focused nearly enough on them.

I think that’s right. Enten notes, as we have, that approval of Biden on the economy has tracked almost perfectly with approval of him overall. Says Enten, “Right now, [Biden’s] economic approval is in the low 40s, just as it is overall. In the early summer, it was in the low 50s — as it was overall then, too.”

I think Enten is correct to highlight not just the economy’s performance, but also Biden’s lack of focus on it. Enten points to a CBS News/YouGov poll finding that 60 percent of Americans believe that Biden is not focusing enough on inflation. At the same time, only 37 percent say that Biden and his fellow Democrats are focusing on the issues they care a lot about.

Yes, it doesn’t appear that Team Biden even cares about the economy. As long as that seems to be the case, his numbers will continue to fall. I’m not sure at what point he becomes toxic even to Democrats, but I suspect we’re not far away from that number.