President Joe Biden is pushing back on 2024 Republican presidential candidates who contend the country is worse off under his leadership.
But the candidates are supported by polling that indicates the public considers the country to be heading in the wrong direction as Biden underscores the Inflation Reduction Act’s first anniversary this week before next year’s general election.
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Direction of the country polling captures “many things,” including how congressional Republicans are “blocking action” and how courts are “going against the will of the people,” according to Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.
“The direction of things that affect people’s lives like consumer confidence and food prices are moving in the right direction,” Lake told the Washington Examiner.
But that has not prevented Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), among others, from describing the country as being in “decline,” the governor promising New England reporters this week he would reverse that trend.
“As president, I’ll be the leader, but it’s not going to be focusing on me,” DeSantis said. “It’s going to be focusing on what the American people need so that we could get this country on the right track and we can stop our nation’s decline. And that’s what I’m committed to do.”
Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg similarly downplayed direction of the country polling, asking DeSantis rhetorically, “In decline relative to what?” as he dismissed the governor’s “Great American Comeback” economic policy.
“The ‘Great American Comeback’ happened under Biden,” Rosenberg said. “Our recovery today is the best of any G-7 nation; inflation is much lower here than it is in Europe. … So I think the arguments about decline, about America being in bad shape, are off tenor. They’re off key.”
Rosenberg also cited July’s jobs data, which reported 187,000 net new positions, 3.5% unemployment, and 4.4% average wage growth. With 3% inflation and 3% third-quarter gross domestic product growth projections, a soft landing appears possible, easing pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates, per the Hopium Chronicles author.
Regardless, direction of the country polling under Biden is net negative 41 percentage points, averaging 24% right direction to 65% wrong track, according to RealClearPolitics. The president additionally has an average 41% job approval-54% disapproval rating, as well as 40% favorability and 54% unfavorability.
“Joe Biden has 15 months to make his case, and he’s got a very powerful case,” Rosenberg said. “His case for reelection got much stronger this summer, and the Republican Party’s case to win the presidency got much weaker.”
“I don’t think people really understand that we haven’t, we don’t have any campaign happening right now, and they do,” he added. “Once the Biden campaign really turns on in the fall, he’ll start waking up Democratic voters.”
Biden responded to that decline criticism during remarks this week at electric engineering firm Ingeteam Inc. in Milwaukee, which aimed to amplify how it had been one year Wednesday since the president signed the Inflation Reduction Act.
“All I hear from my friends on the other side of the aisle is what is wrong with America,” the president said Tuesday. “There’s a lot wrong with America, like every country. They tell us America is failing, but they’re wrong.”
“Democrats, Republicans, independents, conservatives, liberals, I don’t think they understand the average American,” he continued. “Whatever we set our mind to as a country, we’ve always accomplished. … There’s nothing beyond our capacity. America isn’t failing. America is winning.”
Biden commemorated the Inflation Reduction Act with a White House ceremony Wednesday promoting his so-called Bidenomics economic plan and Investing in America agenda despite scrutiny from climate change activists who are dissatisfied with its environmental provisions after, for example, the deadly Hawaiian wildfires. Republicans do not like it either.
“As Biden celebrates one year of his tax hike, American families are paying more for less,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said. “Biden is so out of touch with the American people that he thinks higher gas prices, lower real wages, surging interest rates, and sky-high costs on everyday goods warrants a victory lap.”
The White House remains adamant it can emphasize Biden’s accomplishments amid former President Donald Trump‘s legal problems, with Trump poised to spend most of next year in a courtroom, repeating that the incumbent’s measures are popular.
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“We recognize the American people have been through a rough few years coming out of a pandemic, facing the spikes in inflation that were created by Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine just 18 months ago,” deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton told reporters en route to Milwaukee. “Coming out of that, we’re now starting to see the impact of, again, all of this historic legislation the president has managed to get passed, the impact of Bidenomics taking root.”
“They’ll take time for people to feel,” she said. “We believe we’re headed in the right direction, and people are going to increasingly see that, and the president is going to keep talking about it.”
