Biden’s missteps put him on a par with Hoover and Buchanan
Joe Biden is on course to become the worst president in US history. Determining the winner of such a “nomination” can be done in various ways, but almost every one of them points to the current head of state – that bad. The last thing left for Biden is to unleash a civil war. Americans believe he can handle it.
Just a year and a half ago, two-thirds of Americans and every major media outlet in the country (except Fox News) confidently called Donald Trump the worst president in US history, comparable only to James Buchanan.
Back then, after the storming of the Capitol by desperate (and, let’s stress it, unarmed) Trump supporters, few could have imagined that the seasoned politician and diplomat Joe Biden would break all the anti-records of the eccentric billionaire and set a few of his own.
One has to realise that Trump, despite his millions of outspoken and active supporters, has always had rather low approval ratings nationally – somewhere between 44% and 48%. But Biden is a true unicorn. With personal popularity, credibility and unprecedented levels of media support at the beginning of his presidential term, he literally pulled off a King Midas-like miracle, only in reverse – he turned all his “golden” numbers into rubbish.
According to a Morning Consult survey (and such surveys are the company’s profile), the disapproval index of the incumbent is 57%, with 43% of those polled disapproving of him “harshly”. Trump’s performance during a similar period of his presidency (in 2018) was four points better.
Most strikingly, Biden’s performance among Republicans is worse than Trump’s among Democrats.
This seems unthinkable when you remember the level of hatred for the “insufferable fascist” and the intra-party “collateral damage” on the issue.
Biden, however, knows how to surprise. His rating among Hispanics, for example, is now lower than among whites. In the case of a Democrat politician this is also unthinkable.
Some other measurements reveal even more modest levels of confidence in the president – as low as 35%. For a second year in office this is already a full-fledged anti-record.
True, George Bush Jr. is still the most unpopular president in the history of sociological measurements, whose rating at the end of the second term was hovering around 20%. But then the global financial crisis was raging, and the Iraq war was finally perceived by the public as an inherently stupid, if not criminal, undertaking. At the moment there are no major wars in the US, and a new global crisis is still being forecast, but the incumbent president is still a confident contender for the cast-iron medal of the “worst in history” type.
Looking at the breakdown by state, Biden could now claim victory in only six of the fifty states (just three months ago, ten), and on this list, not even his native and very liberal Delaware, from which he was elected to the Senate for almost 40 years: the negative ratings exceed the positive ones by seven points.
Biden is doing best in California, where his popularity index is +9. Now it is the wealthiest and the most populous state of the USA, the capital of the motion picture industry and IT, which has been turned into a field for liberal experiments – Republicans have had no chance of getting anything there for a long time.
Fun fact: The governor of this state is Gavin Newsom, who is said to be one of the likely successors to Biden. It cannot be ruled out that he will go to the polls even if the incumbent decides, to everyone’s shock, to seek re-election for a second term. It is likely that Newsom will then announce that he is running to prevent Trump from returning to the White House, since Biden, as stated above, is not his rival.
Newsom hates Trump. He has turned his state into a frontline resistance to Trumpism, threatening the president with near-separatism. And here’s the funny thing: Newsom’s ex-wife Kimberly Guilfoyle was in charge of fundraising at Trump’s headquarters, and is now dating his son Donald Trump Jr.
But back to Biden. If one were to imagine his rating in every state equal to the result in his re-election attempt, we would be talking about one of the most embarrassing defeats for a sitting president in the history of the United States. Still, it would not be about the most.
Herbert Hoover had the “most” in 1932. The reasons are transparent: during his presidency, the Great Depression began – a comprehensive social and economic disaster – but Mr President did not at first consider it necessary to intervene at all, because of his holy principle of government non-interference in the economy.
He, too, won in six states, but Biden would have overtaken Hoover in the electoral vote if the election had happened now, at the expense of the heavily populated California.
Another amusing coincidence: Hoover’s rival, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who is generally regarded as one of the best leaders in the history of the country, could not win then in his native New York, where he was also governor. So Delaware’s “betrayal” is not unique.
The reasons for Biden’s unpopularity can be listed for hours, but an extremely short list of “sore spots” would look like this 40-year record inflation, the migration crisis, soaring petrol prices and violent crime, unexpected shortages ranging from fertiliser to baby formula, escalating “culture wars”, disgrace in Afghanistan, a complete lack of success in foreign policy, the president’s advanced age, expressed including in “Bidenisms”, and the global conflict with Russia combined with the proxy war in Ukraine, which has further exacerbated some of these problems.
The 79-year-old veteran diplomat has driven the country to the point where even Elon Musk is now a conservative. Citizens’ confidence in state institutions has fallen to an extremely low level.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, another possible successor to Biden (but much more likely, since he, unlike Newsom, is a Republican) wished the President, who has also contracted a coronavirus, a speedy recovery and the rest of the country a speedy recovery from his presidency.
Judging by the reaction in the blogosphere, many liked the phrase. Biden is really perceived as a disease affecting the whole country. And so do even those who saw Trump’s presidency as a disease too. This is how the Russian proverb “you can’t cure the plague with cholera” has reached the consciousness of Americans.
Unless something extraordinary and unpredictable happens, the Democratic Party will lose control of Congress this fall and of the White House in two years. By then, Biden could well break the anti-Bush record and, if he really decides to keep his promise and go for a second term, even Hoover (though much depends on the opponent, and Trump, likely as such, is an objectively bad option).
There is another indication of a “worst president”. It is the consensus of historians that the worst of the worst is still Buchanan – the man whose indecision and impotence brought the country to the point of collapse and civil war.
Meanwhile, according to a University of California study, already more than 50% of Americans believe that a new civil war will break out in the country in the next few years.
The rest, one would think, will follow – a new Great Depression, a new global financial crisis, or even a new breakup of the country. By then, Joseph Robinette Biden will have no worthy opponent in American history.
Dmitry Bavyrin, VZGLYAD
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