Democrats are still wary of campaigning alongside President Joe Biden as he returns to the campaign trail. Perhaps it is because he is still as toxic as ever.
The Hill details that Democrats have avoided Biden on the campaign trail over the summer. In Ohio, Senate candidate Rep. Tim Ryan and gubernatorial candidate Nan Whaley recently skipped a Biden event, and Rep. Marcy Kaptur has put out a campaign ad that asserts that “she doesn’t work for Joe Biden.” Senate candidates in Arizona, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania haven’t appeared alongside Biden recently either.
This is despite his “rebounding” approval numbers, which have rebounded from dreadful to mildly less dreadful. A Yahoo News-YouGov poll put his approval at a paltry 40%, which is its highest number for him since May. His RealClearPolitics polling average is also at its highest since May, at a lackluster 41.8%. He is still underwater by 13 points.
This is also despite his recent “wins,” as members of his administration and establishment media have described them. One of those wins was killing al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri, which, while good news, also served as a reminder that Biden allowed Afghanistan to become a haven for terrorists after promising his withdrawal would lead to no such thing. Another is the climate bill that will make inflation, the issue voters care about most, worse. You may recall that Democrats boldly named it the “Inflation Reduction Act.”
And now there is his “win” on student loan debt. After announcing that he would unilaterally eliminate student loan debt, costing taxpayers somewhere between $300 billion and $980 billion over the next 10 years, Democrats in competitive races distanced themselves from the plan. That includes Ryan, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), Sen. Michael Bennett (CO), and Rep. Chris Pappas, who is running in a swing district in New Hampshire.
Biden’s “rebound” has his supporters boasting of a 40% approval rating and his party’s most vulnerable members and most promising candidates doing all they can to avoid being tied to him. Biden’s been a toxic electoral commodity for a full year now, and even Democratic politicians see through the administration (and media) spin about how Biden has turned the corner.
