Nobody likes him. Everybody hates him. Perhaps he’ll go eat worms?
If you know President Joe Biden, you know he loves to be around people. He loves to schmooze with the men and put his paws all over the women. And whenever he gets the chance, he loves to hit the campaign trail to help out his fellow Democrats, just like he did in Virginia in the fall.
But then, the candidate he campaigned for in Virginia lost, didn’t he?
This year, Biden is having a very hard time getting Democratic candidates to appear in the same place with him. Already, Democratic candidates for governor in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Florida have bent over backward so far to avoid being on the same stage. And they are only the first of many who will find ways to create schedule conflicts any time Biden visits their states. Incredibly, some candidates prefer to raise money with Hillary Clinton, the worst Democratic candidate for president since Walter Mondale.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what’s going on here. Biden is toxic. Democrats are fearful of what will happen to their reelection efforts this November, when most of them face reelection, if the Biden-Harris anchor is tied around their necks.
There are 15 states in which Democrats completely control both the governorship and the state legislature. Democratic governors’ economic records are not especially impressive, thanks in large part to their stubborn insistence on keeping pandemic-era restrictions in force long after it was appropriate — long after experience and evidence showed that lockdown policies do not stop the spread of the coronavirus.
In fact, the eight states with the highest unemployment rates (ranging from 5.7% to California’s 6.5%) are all under complete Democratic control. Meanwhile, nine out of the 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates (ranging from 1.7% to 2.7%) are under total Republican control, and the 10th (Vermont) has a Republican governor.
On its own, this might not be too bad for Democrats — 6.5% is bad by today’s standards but not horrible by historical standards. But if you throw in an incompetent president whose mental acuity is constantly cast into doubt, things start getting ugly.
In addition, there are several incumbent Democratic senators with negative approval ratings who are polling far below 50%. Some of them even trail their likely Republican opponents at this early date. But they know they still have at least a small chance because not a single one of them has poll numbers nearly as horrible as Biden’s.
Biden is 13 points underwater nationally, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average. It’s even worse in some of the most important states for 2022. In Arizona, a Morning Consult poll last month found that 54% of voters disapproved of Biden’s performance, and only 41% approved. In Georgia, only 34% of voters approved of Biden, with 61% disapproving. In New Hampshire, 58% disapproved of Biden’s job performance, and only 41% approved. Note that Biden somehow carried all three of those states less than 14 months ago. It has taken less than a year in office for him to squander all the goodwill he won while running against former President Donald Trump and then some.
There are vulnerable Democratic senators in all three of those states. You can bet that those endangered Democrats would sooner eat shards of glass or even sit through a four-hour Kamala Harris speech on C-SPAN than have Air Force One show up in their backyards.
Is there any state where Biden could be useful on the campaign trail? Well, consider it this way. In 2014, then-President Barack Obama faced low approval ratings, so he campaigned for gubernatorial candidates only in places where he was popular. He went to two Democratic states for gubernatorial races: to Maryland, to campaign for Anthony Brown, and to Maine, to campaign for Mike Michaud. Both Democrats were heavily favored to win their elections. Both lost.
So ask yourself: If Obama, who was at least attractive and personally sympathetic, couldn’t help those Democrats over the finish line in races they were heavily favored to win, why on Earth does Biden, who is none of those things, think he ought to campaign in 2022?
The best way to deal with radioactivity and toxicity is to stay away. That way, you don’t get burned, poisoned, or cooked from the inside.
Can you blame these Democrats for not wanting Biden to come anywhere near them?
