This week’s White House Report Card finds support for President Biden growing among Republicans, conservatives, and older voters.
Pollster John Zogby, our Democratic report card grader, said his latest survey found that GOP support jumped from just 5% in the 2020 election to 30% today. In grading an A, he said that has “emboldened” the president to push for his COVID-19 relief bill without Republican support.
Conservative grader Jed Babbin, who dished a D+, found little to praise this week. He noted that Biden continued to toss off executive orders dismantling the Trump agenda, gave up the goal of bipartisan unity, and had his secretary of state OK the flying of gay pride flags at U.S. embassies.
John Zogby
Grade: A
Biden is taking advantage of both a honeymoon period from the public and press, as well as the serious disarray within the Republican Party.
The new John Zogby Strategies poll out this week shows a 56% approval rate for handling his job, with 36% disapproving. This rating represents a hike of 5 percentage points over the percentage of votes he received in 2020. He holds on to the 61% support among both 18-29 and 30-49-year-olds and has improved his position among voters over 65 — from a 53%-47% deficit in the election against Donald Trump to a 55%-38% advantage. Most importantly from a polling standpoint is that from winning only 5% of the vote from Republicans last November, he is now approved by 30% each among Republican, conservative, and very conservative voters.
Clearly, this has emboldened Biden to reject a scaled back COVID-19 relief bill by 10 Republican senators. He and his party leaders in the Senate have paved the way for passage of most of the $1.9 trillion package via reconciliation. The Democrats also made a strong statement this week on removing controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, from her committee seats — something her GOP colleagues were unable/unwilling to do. On the flip side, Vice President Kamala Harris, most probably with a green light from the White House, made a bone-headed decision to conduct an interview in West Virginia, angering a vital ally in Sen. Joe Manchin.
The president announced that the United States would return to global engagement and told Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the world that the U.S. would no longer be tainted by activity in the brutal and inhumane war in Yemen. Two very good weeks in a row.
Jed Babbin
Grade: D+
Biden pushed his agenda hard (and Republicans out of the way) this week in a manner reminiscent of former President Barack Obama’s first months in office. The fusillade of Biden executive orders continued, a budget reconciliation measure passed the Senate (without any Republican votes), and Biden’s first foreign policy “crisis” came in the form of a coup in Myanmar that the White House criticized severely but has no leverage to change.
After Secretary of State Antony Blinken approved the flying of the gay pride flag at every U.S. embassy, Biden appeared at the State Department to give a foreign policy speech. In it, he promised diplomacy (instead of former President Donald Trump’s supposedly ineffective approach), said he ended support for the Saudi war against Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, and said he would increase the number of refugees admitted into the U.S. by over 900% next year.
Biden’s executive order campaign this week dealt mainly with immigration, ending the Trump policy that required applicants for asylum to remain in Mexico while their applications were readied for hearings. Biden’s action resumes the “catch and release” policy that allows arrested illegal immigrants to be released until a future hearing for which they may or may not show up. (Does that include the 11 Iranian illegal immigrants caught last week?)
Biden is probably in back-channel discussions with Iran aimed to get the U.S. back into the 2015 Obama nuclear weapons deal. So far, there are no public announcements of progress. There was little more than a generous “harrumph” from the White House as the coup in Myanmar arrested the country’s leader, Aung Sang Suu Kyi, and imprisoned her on bogus charges. Biden (again, like Obama) has a penchant for manufacturing crises in which he has no power to do anything to resolve them.
The last vestige of Biden’s pretense of bipartisanship was shot to pieces early Friday morning when Harris cast the tie-breaking vote for a measure authorizing a budget resolution that includes all of Biden’s wish-list items on the COVID-19 relief package, including hundreds of billions of dollars in aid to cities and states that have spent themselves into penury, the increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, and lots of other bad ideas. This measure enables Senate Democrats to pass a budget resolution with only 51 votes, discounting all Republicans and vitiating the necessity for any compromise.
Meanwhile, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden would use “strategic patience” on China and mocked the Trump-founded U.S. Space Force. Well, at least the Navy had the courage to send a destroyer through the Taiwan Strait on a freedom of navigation exercise. That ticked off the Chinese, as did Blinken’s remarks on human rights for people in Hong Kong.
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Poll and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His weekly podcast with son and partner Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on Twitter @TheJohnZogby
Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on Twitter @jedbabbin
