In the lead-up to the State of the Union address on March 7, Biden's supporters were afraid. They had every reason to be.
The president's approval rating dropped from 42% to 38%, which is even lower than former President Trump's approval rating before the January 6 riot. Biden's position on the Israeli-Gaza conflict was losing support from the left wing of his party. The Justice Department special counsel investigating Biden's handling of classified documents described him as “an elderly man with a failing memory.” With each lawsuit filed against Trump — last month he lost decisions that resulted in $453 million in fines on New York state and on author E. Gene Carroll an additional $85 million — his supporters became more committed and his control of the Republican Party more ironclad. -Clothed.
And every day, 81-year-old Joe Biden gets older.
The atmosphere in the Houses of Parliament on 7 March was tense and hostile. Democrats and Republicans rarely communicate with each other, and that's usually not the case: the senators and representatives in the SOTU speech make at least a token effort to appear collegial. Democratic women wearing white to support reproductive rights lost due to the overturn of Roe v. Wade; Republican women wore buttons bearing the name of “Lakin Riley,” a young nurse who had been murdered that morning by an illegal immigrant.
Official White House photo by Adam Schultz. Source: Wikimedia Commons
So the speech had more weight than usual. Everyone knew that what the president said didn't matter as much as how he said it. Perhaps more than any other speech in Biden's career, this one will be a visual affair, highlighting the inevitable comparisons with his rival in the upcoming presidential race: Who looks younger? Who seems stronger?
Biden is out fighting. The first minutes of his 68-minute speech were his most political and most effective. He described Trump as a “Salafist” instead of referring to him by name, and stressed that the former president “is bowing down.”[ed] All the way to the Russian leader” in ignoring the Ukrainian issue, and that “January 6… posed the greatest threat to democracy since the civil war.”
The rest of the speech was standard: a list of the administration's accomplishments and grandiose proposals for future legislation that have no chance of passing through a closely divided Congress. But optics trumped substance. The final hour was nothing more or less than a televised stress test in front of 32.8 million skeptics: Can the president speak at length without fatigue or confusion? Are doubts about his health, competence and age justified or exaggerated?
If the looks of relief on the faces of TV commentators are any indication, Biden performed better than expected: He looked like he had enough strength to keep him out of the house for the foreseeable future. But whether the period of relief lasted more than a few hours – or whether the speech eased the public's suspicions – is another matter entirely.
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Several issues that have arisen or intensified over the past year have also contributed to Biden's dismal approval ratings.
Although a majority of American citizens still support military support for Ukraine, recent polls conducted by Gallup and NBC indicate that many believe there should be a time limit; In the past few months, Republicans have blocked bills to appropriate new money. J.D. Vance, the first-term Ohio senator who quickly emerged as Trump's most visible supporter, took a public position that even massive amounts of support would not win the war; The West simply cannot keep up with Russian ammunition and weapons production, and a negotiated settlement is inevitable. It's an ominous view that is quietly gaining more attention, and we can expect to hear it from Trump's mouth in the coming campaign.
Biden's position on the southern border of the United States is even more shaky.
During his first months in office, the president eased Trump's strict border regulations and halted wall construction. Illegal immigration rose to an average of two million people per year, and the governors of Texas and Florida began shipping busloads of illegal immigrants to sanctuary cities like New York and Chicago. In return, mayors flocked to Washington to demand federal money — which they did not get. Tensions arose even between factions sympathetic to illegal immigrants, and Biden began to back away from his position.
It was the most glaring error of the president's tenure. While Biden teetered — he built small part About Trump's planned wall – Right-wing media produced videos of migrants cutting through barbed wire at border crossings. When the president finally mustered bipartisan support for a tougher border bill, Trump instructed Republican senators to vote against it. Now both sides have slurry at each other: Biden will criticize Republicans for undermining the bill they called for, and Republicans will berate the president for being “weak” on immigrants until he sees that public opinion was against him.
This all came out in the State of the Union address. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right lawmaker from Georgia, wore a bright red MAGA outfit and screamed the name of the murdered nurse. Later, in Republicans' televised response to the speech, Senator Katie Britt of Alabama sat at her “kitchen table” crying crocodile tears for all the mothers who fear their children will be attacked by illegal immigrants. (Her look was later brilliantly imitated by Scarlett Johansson Saturday Night Live.)
The conflict between Israel and Hamas is another area where American public opinion is deeply divided, this time by age: a majority of older voters support Israel, while voters under 45 support Palestine. As one radio commentator said: “For the older generation, Israel is David; For a younger generation, Goliath.
So, Biden has a narrow line to cross.
In the days immediately following the October 7 massacre, the president took his usual strong stance in support of Israel. But as the number of Palestinian casualties increases and the administration's negotiating skills prove less effective, Biden has moved to a “centrist” position that currently satisfies no one.
In his SOTU speech, he tried to balance condemnation of Hamas attacks with criticism of the Israeli response, and announced the construction of a floating bridge on the Gaza coast. But the damage had been done. In last week's Democratic primaries, 20% of voters in Minnesota and 13% in Michigan voted “non-committal” in protest against Biden's policy toward Israel and Gaza. The president desperately needs those votes in November; In 2020, he won the most electoral votes in both states, but only by a narrow margin. It is very likely that a large percentage of these “disengaged” voters will miss the presidential election entirely.
Unsurprisingly, Trump has remained silent about the war – except to say that he can end it within 24 hours.
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Which brings us to the elephant in the room – not exactly Trump or his policies, but the sense that an irresistible tide is driving the Trump campaign forward, and no one can do anything to stop it.
Consider the results of late February The New York Times/Siena poll, in which 48% of participants said that they would support Trump for president of the country, while only 43% behind Biden. Only 83% of those who supported Biden in 2020 will vote for him in 2024, while 97% of Trump's supporters in 2020 will vote for him again. At least one in four voters felt that the country was moving in the right direction. Even though the US unemployment rate has fallen to 3.1%, wages are rising, the stock market has reached new highs, and inflation has slowed to 3.7% from 8.5%, a majority of Americans feel the economy is in bad shape. ; Stubbornly high food prices could be a major factor in the 2024 election. Only 23% are “enthusiastic” about Biden, while 46% say the same about Trump; 32% are dissatisfied or angry with Biden as head of his party, while only 18% are dissatisfied with Trump.
With eight months to go before the elections, such statistics – despite all the limitations surrounding them – are worrying and disturbing.
What has Trump been doing in the past few months? When he wasn't appearing in a court proceeding — at present he has 91 criminal charges against him in four different cases — the former president campaigned against his main rivals Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, both of whom were handily defeated in all but one GOP primary. While the The New York Times/ The Siena poll indicated a lack of support among suburban and college voters, and Trump has gained strength among black and Latino voters, especially among women — constituencies that Democrats can count on until the 2022 midterm elections.
Whether a Trump wave is inevitable – and despite warnings that a criminal conviction against him could change the entire face of the election – the fact remains that Democrats have lost touch with their base, and Trump has managed to maintain his image as president of the United States. The voice of national discontent and the less he talks about actual politics, the better. In Trump's first term, his policies were little more than populist isolationism and business-oriented pragmatism.
The fact that Senator Britt's rebuttal of the SOTU letter made no reference at all to Trump suggests that his policies, or even his physical presence, are not vital to his re-election. (It will likely bypass the presidential debates just as it has bypassed the Republican primary debates.) Millions of people seem to want not Trump, but his meme — a “tough guy” who expresses unfulfilled anger.
It's not clear how Democrats should respond. Logic and listing political achievements will not help. Although some of the bills Biden moved through Congress directly benefited Trump supporters, this group did not view them that way. Can any approach change the opinion of this hard-line constituency, while at the same time appealing to the 10% of “undecided” suburban, college-educated voters, many of whom are moderate Republicans whom Trump rejects?
Although Biden may have passed the SOTU speech stress test, his supporters will remain very afraid, and they should remain very afraid.
