For starters, he’s had a lousy year, and an extraordinary run of bad luck.
He presided over a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan capped by the deaths of 13 American service personnel, a renewed migrant surge on the southern border he refused to call a “crisis” but which plainly looked like one, the Covid-19 delta surge and its impact on the economy, and other economic problems including shortages, inflation, and widespread labor discontent. On top of that, both of his signature domestic agendas are still hung up in Congress, and he seems unable to tame his own party.
But the whole may be larger than the sum of the parts: “From Afghanistan to his legislative agenda to the economy to the coronavirus, the narrative has been the same: that Biden is floundering and ineffective,” Vox says (see story here). Americans don’t like weak presidents, and probably the biggest rap on Biden is he looks weak.
It’s unlikely a majority of Americans would trade him in at this point for another go with Trump. But a tired, traumatized, demoralized country yearning for a normal life likely would swap him for a leader of either party who appears strong, confident, in control, and speaks their language.
The just-concluded Virginia elections are regarded as a bellwether in many political circles. Republicans ran the table on Democrats in that state. They did it with candidates who avoided Trump, sounded reasonable, and talked about real concerns of voters. That’s significant; the Virginia results aren’t an embrace of Trump by the suburban voters who rejected him in 2020. These candidates are reminiscent of the pre-Trump Republican Party.
That could be a template for how to compete going forward. A big chunk of the Republican Party is still Trumpy, shrill, crazy, and potentially violent. But a rational conservative approach to government still works with voters. Virginia just demonstrated that. What worked for Biden in 2020 is that he wasn’t Trump and didn’t sound crazy. That was enough then. But now, Americans are looking for someone to lead them out of the wilderness of the last few years.
President Biden is unpopular because he is not crazy and does not act crazy. I think the Republicans that did win in several states did so because they knew that Trumpism would not win them votes. However, that does not mean that once in office they would not turn to Trumpism. Remember Cuba. There the people believed they were getting Democracy instead they got Communism.