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LZ Granderson is an opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times.
New job approval numbers for President Joe Biden are out, and they tell a familiar story: Much of the country doesn’t approve.
Of course, nowadays poll numbers tend to say more about our growing political tribalism than they do about a president’s performance. The last time an occupant of the White House headed into reelection season with a 50 percent approval rating or better was 1996, when President Bill Clinton was riding a wave of economic growth.
A lot has changed. What hasn’t is the truism that got Clinton into office the first time: It’s the economy, stupid.
Biden’s overall job approval rating is 42 percent. Specifically, it’s the 36 percent rating for his handling of the economy that should trouble him. That would indicate the shots taken at “Bidenomics” are more than just partisan bickering. But why such a dour verdict on the economy under Biden? It’s a rather odd development, given that a recent Quinnipiac poll found nearly 60% of Republicans and more than 70 percent of Democrats described their current financial situation as “good” or “excellent.”
So Biden and his team are left to figure out the disconnect between his administration’s measurable economic successes and how voters feel about them. Clinton’s unofficial campaign slogan about the economy was used to antagonize the incumbent, President George H.W. Bush, while reminding voters of the recession and nearly 8 percent unemployment rate.
Today that rate is 3.5 percent. How does that work in an attack ad?
It doesn’t. Nor does it need to.
Politics are personal. What does it matter to a struggling family in Indiana whether the U.S. handled recent inflation better than Western Europe did? What does it matter to striking union workers if a record 13 million jobs have been added during Biden’s first term? The job participation rate is returning to prepandemic levels, and yet Motley Fool reported the average savings account is down from a year ago.
When President Donald Trump took office, he had no kind of “mandate.” Not from the people; he lost the popular vote. And not from the engines of the economy; the 2,584 counties he won in 2016 contributed just 36 percent of the gross domestic product, according to the Brookings Institute.
On the flip side, the counties Biden won in 2020 represented 71% of the GDP. In fact, half of the richest counties that went for Trump in 2016 flipped to Biden in 2020. The reversal by one of them, Maricopa County in Arizona, helped deliver the Electoral College to Biden.
Has Biden done enough economically to satisfy the voters who switched sides? Or more to the point, do these voters feel as if he’s done enough?
One of Biden’s strongest traits as a campaigner is his relatability, and that comes through clearly with conversations regarding hardship and loss. But the White House communication surrounding his economic policies comes across more “esoteric” than “everyman.” Recognizing this, the Biden administration is using the one-year anniversary of the $750 billion Inflation Reduction Act to reset the message around his economic policies.
The numbers reflect how things have improved. Can Biden get people to pay attention? We’ll see whether this new attempt will change how voters feel about the economy.
Nearly 65% of the counties that are benefiting from IRA-related investments have above-average poverty rates, according to the Treasury Department. A Bank of America report estimates 86,000 jobs and $132 billion in private investments have come from 270 clean energy projects alone.
This all reads like a good thing. It reads like Biden is doing his job as an elected official. But will it be at the top of Americans’ minds next year when they step into the voting booth? Making sure of that is his job as a candidate.
