3 upvotes, 4 direct replies (showing 4)
View submission: Casual Questions Thread
What could have Biden done during his first term so that he'd be "above water" in polls?
Comment by Please_do_not_DM_me at 29/12/2023 at 21:52 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
You can maybe narrow this down to "What could have Biden done during his first term so that he'd be "above water" in *swing state* polls?
All of those states in the NYTs poll lost real income at the median. So it's very likely that something like 60+% of their populations are poorer now than in 2019 and they know it.
Towards the start of his administration there was a lot of talk about a second new deal all of which just kind of melted in 2021/22. Since there wasn't even anything concrete passed along those lines he's basically abandoned economic populism. I'd guess just undoing that would be enough to get him "above water" in those swing states.
(I'm not actually sure it would make much sense to look at his popularity nationwide just because his party affiliation makes half the electorate, more or less, hate his guts.)
Comment by sporks_and_forks at 29/12/2023 at 19:44 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
probably not much. someone had to reap the whirlwind of our economic policies; turns out it's him. it doesn't help a slew of his promises never came to fruition, and some of those which did were a bit bungled.
Comment by bl1y at 27/12/2023 at 15:18 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
He had half the right plan with the windfall profit tax following the pandemic. *If* that had passed and *if* the government just returned the money as an increase to the EITC, he'd probably have picked up a lot of popularity.
I think he probably hurt himself also with trying to smuggle a vaccine mandate through. It might seem like a small thing now, but I'd wager that people who had to get vaccinated to keep their jobs only to have the mandate struck down a couple weeks later (as basically every legal analyst predicted) aren't going to be quick to forget or forgive.
Comment by zlefin_actual at 25/12/2023 at 01:13 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I'm not sure there's anything he could've done, sometimes in politics you have bad polls due to situational factors you can't help. The nature of how the republicans have been of late means they'd be hating him in the polls regardless of what he did; and there's enough miscellaneous problems in the world and the US that he can't keep all the factions in the Dems happy.