Two days after Labor Day, President Joe Biden held an event for unions at the White House. Speakers hailed him, and he then praised himself as the “most pro-union president in history.”
“In my White House, you’ll always be welcome,” Biden told the adoring crowd. “You’ll always be welcome. Labor will always be welcome.” The next day, Biden followed up with a speech outlining his “six-pronged” approach to dealing with the coronavirus as the delta variant and stalled vaccination rates contribute to a resurgence of the pandemic.
The Biden administration is furiously trying to turn the page on a messy withdrawal from Afghanistan, moving the focus back to domestic issues. Even a deadly pandemic is considered more favorable political ground than the chaos in Kabul following the Taliban takeover and rapid evacuations.
Polls continue to show strong public support for ending the war, as former President Donald Trump also wanted to do. But Biden received low marks for the execution. Despite talk of a “historic” evacuation that only the United States could have accomplished, at least 100 Americans were left behind, as were a majority of Afghan partners in the U.S. war effort, according to the State Department.
“It involved some really painful trade-offs and choices for everyone involved,” a senior State Department official told reporters earlier this month. “Everybody who lived it is haunted by the choices we had to make and by the people we were not able to help depart in this first phase of the operation.”
The Biden administration repeatedly assured the public that evacuations would continue and that the U.S. would retain sufficient “leverage” to compel Taliban cooperation. But Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged last week that there were “complications” in getting flights out of Afghanistan. When one was allowed to proceed, the National Security Council issued a statement through the White House describing the Taliban as “businesslike” and “professional.”
All this has taken a toll on Biden’s public standing, accelerating a decline in his approval ratings that was evident in some polls even before Afghanistan was in the headlines. An Economist/YouGov survey painted a devastating picture. Just 39% approved of Biden’s performance in office, while nearly half disapproved, putting him underwater by 10 points.
Only 26% said the country is on the right track, while 60% believed the opposite. “President Joe Biden is confronting the worst public ratings of his eight-month-old presidency,” the polling firm wrote in an analysis accompanying the results, and his approval rating “overall and on his handling of major issues, have all fallen, dramatically in some cases. That includes the evaluation of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, one area where public support had remained high.”
The White House and allied Democratic operatives nevertheless remain confident that the public will eventually move on, with only the memory that Biden fulfilled his campaign promise to conclude a war that both Trump and former President Barack Obama failed to end during their terms remaining. “Pocketbook issues will trump foreign policy,” a Democratic strategist said.
But the Biden administration’s efforts here have also hit some bumps. While the unemployment numbers were positive for the White House, the number of jobs created in August was below expectations. Inflation remains a concern, with Biden’s top economic adviser having to tell reporters that rising grocery prices would be less of a problem if one excluded beef, poultry, and pork from the equation.
Inflation also figures prominently in the debate over the Biden administration’s next big initiative, “Build Back Better.” Sen. Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat from West Virginia, has cited inflationary concerns as among the reasons he does not want the full $3.5 trillion price tag for his party’s reconciliation bill, which funds a slew of liberal policy priorities and is to be passed on a partisan basis.
The Democrats need Manchin’s vote for this maneuver to work, however. They cannot afford a single defection in the 50-50 Senate, and at the moment, they appear to have two, with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona also telling local media she would like to see less spending. Concessions to Manchin, who has signaled he may support as little as $1.5 trillion of the reconciliation spending items, could jeopardize liberal votes in the House, which is only marginally more Democratic.
“If I had a dollar for every time this was called ‘dead’ — it’s about once every few weeks — I wouldn’t be that rich, but I could buy you a nice cup of coffee,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told a reporter aboard Air Force One.
The reporter responded that the question was actually about Afghanistan.
