New Poll Reveals How Americans Are Really Feeling About Joe Biden
A new ABC News/Ipsos poll has found that just one in five Americans has a “great deal” of confidence that President Joe Biden will make progress in unifying the country.
Unity, of course, was a major theme of Biden’s inaugural address; however, he sent mixed messages during the speech and followed it with a slew of divisive executive orders.
When respondents were asked the question, “How much confidence do you have in Joe Biden to make progress on unifying the country?” just 22 percent selected “a great deal.”
Another 35 percent said “a good amount.”
“Not so much” was how 19 percent replied, and “none at all” garnered the vote of another 24 percent of respondents.
A larger percentage found Biden’s call for unity in his inaugural address to be convincing when shown a clip from it, which is quoted below.
“We can see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors. We can treat each other with dignity and respect. We can join forces, stop the shouting and lower the temperature. For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury,” the president said.
“No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos,” Biden continued. “This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward. And we must meet this moment as the United States of America.”
“History, faith, and reason show the way, the way of unity. We can see each other not as adversaries, but as neighbors. We can treat each other with dignity and respect…
Unity is the path forward. And we must meet this moment as the United States of America.” —President Biden pic.twitter.com/BlgNL4XawZ
— CAP Action (@CAPAction) January 20, 2021
Forty-four percent who watched that clip found the views the new commander in chief expressed to be “very convincing.” Another 26 percent saw it as “somewhat convincing.”
Ten percent believed it was “not so convincing” and 19 percent said it was “not convincing at all.”
Put me in that last group, and I need look no further than remarks Biden made within the same speech, just a few short sentences before the excerpt above.
Without going so far as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s infamous 2018 claim that America “was never that great,” Biden sort of skirted around the edges of it, describing the country’s past and present in harsh terms.
“Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear and demonization have long torn us apart,” he said. “The battle is perennial.”
“And now, a rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat,” Biden proclaimed.
The new president then said the only way “to restore the soul and to secure the future of America” is through unity.
The problem is that in order to have unity, you must have something for people to unite around.
Biden noted that in the nation’s past, the “better angels” of our nature have prevailed, such as during the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War II and more recently 9/11.
But what was the glue that held people together then?
The vision contained in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Well, on day one Biden abolished former President Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission, whose mission was to “enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union.”
It had been established to counter the “1619 Project” way of thinking, which Biden apparently supports, which holds that America’s founding should be defined as the year slavery was introduced into the British colony of Virginia, rather than July 4, 1776, when liberty was unleashed that eventually changed America and the world.
That was just one of many divisive executive orders that included canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline, re-entering the Paris climate accord, ending construction on a border wall, mandating that biological men can compete in women’s sports, pausing discounting insulin and EpiPens for low-income Americans, freezing deportations of illegal immigrants and banning new oil and gas drilling leases on federal lands for at least 60 days.
That of course includes fracking, which Biden promised during the campaign he did not oppose.
These are not the kinds of actions that show a readiness to find consensus.
It is no wonder such a small percentage of Americans are really confident that Biden can unify the country.
Words are nice, but actions speak louder, and so far this president is governing as a far leftist.
The ABC/Ipsos survey was conducted from January 22-23 among 504 adults. The margin of error is +/- 5 percentage points.
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