Joe Biden’s re-election bid is in trouble
The front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination is under indictment for 91 felonies in four criminal cases, and he probably is, as one of his primary opponents remarked during the recent Republican debate, the most disliked politician in America. Democrats have reason to be smug at the prospect of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee—unless they take a hard look at the vulnerabilities of their own standard-bearer.
Fewer than one in four Americans (24%) want President Joe Biden to run again, according to a poll published on August 17th by the Associated Press. Even 55% of Democrats do not think he should run. Although his approval rating has ticked up, he remains one of the most unpopular presidents in modern history.
Mr Biden’s problems are obscured by the drama around Donald Trump’s arrests and the Republican nominating contest. But that is also becoming a problem for the current president: he needs to capture the country’s attention if he hopes to recapture its imagination. Only Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump himself—both one-term presidents, at least so far—had net-negative ratings worse than Mr Biden’s at this point in their presidencies, according to an analysis of aggregated polls by the political publication FiveThirtyEight. In late August, its summary of public polls showed that 42% of Americans approved of the job Mr Biden was doing, whereas 53% disapproved.
2023-08-31 04:17:49
Source from www.economist.com
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