Biden Gets Off to Slow Start, Lags Behind Obama and Trump with First Approval Rating
President Biden’s first approval ratings are in, and they are lower than the initial approval ratings of each of the previous two presidents.
According to Rasmussen, “48% of likely U.S. voters approve of President Biden’s job performance. Forty-five percent (45%) disapprove.”
For comparison, 56 percent of likely voters approved of Donald Trump’s job on Jan. 20, 2017, while 44 percent disapproved.
In Barack Obama’s case, he boasted a staggering 67 percent of likely voters who approved of his job on Jan. 20, 2009. Only 32 percent disapproved.
The bad news for President Biden doesn’t stop there.
“The latest figures include 36% who strongly approve of the job Biden is doing and 38% who strongly disapprove,” Rasmussen reported.
“This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -2.”
As the last Democratic president elected before Biden, Obama’s approval index was +25 on his first day in office, while Trump’s was +2.
So what is it that has caused President Biden to lag 27 points behind his former his boss? For one thing, he has already isolated some voters on both sides of the political isle.
Unfair as it may be, some Republicans had probably made up their minds about Joe Biden before his first day in office. Yet for those who hadn’t, the new president did not make much of an effort to reach out to them early on.
After preaching unity in his inauguration speech, President Biden went on to issue a flurry of executive orders that opened up borders and expanded abortion access.
Of the 17 executive orders or actions he issued on day one of his term, nine of them were direct reversals of Trump administration policies, according to the Tennessean. That is not how you make friends with the other side of the aisle.
Even figures on the left were displeased with some of Biden’s orders. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a liberal, said he was “disappointed” in Biden’s decision to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, Fox News reported.
Other activists were upset with Biden’s cabinet picks back in December, which apparently were not “woke” enough for them. Varshini Prakash, the founder of the liberal Sunrise Movement, expressed concerns to The New York Times.
“It is still an older, whiter, male-er group in general,” she said.
“We are never going to develop the leadership we need for decades to come if we keep appointing people who are in their 60s and 70s who have served in multiple administrations already.”
Something President Biden has not seemed to realize about the radical wing of his party is that he cannot satisfy them. For every inch he moves to the left, they will push him another mile.
Yet even outside of his policies, Joe Biden has another barrier to approval: he’s boring.
Barack Obama was heralded as a shining picture of hope and progress. Donald Trump was a divergence from the monotony of career politicians.
Joe Biden? Well, he’s a career politician. His far-left policies do not satisfy Republicans, and his lackluster, decades-long political history does not satisfy the most progressive Democrats.
Despite the establishment media narrative, the initial approval ratings paint a disappointing picture for President Joe Biden: many Americans just aren’t that excited about him.
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