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      Why It’s Hard to Explain Joe Biden’s Unpopularity

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      Joe Biden is one of the most unpopular presidents in modern American history. In Gallup polling, his approval ratings are lower than those of any president embarking on a re-election campaign, from Dwight Eisenhower to Donald Trump.Yet an air of mystery hangs around his lousy polling numbers. As The Washington Free Beacon’s Joe Simonson noted recently, just surfing around most American media and pop culture, you probably wouldn’t realize that Biden’s job approval ratings are quite so historically terrible, worse by far than Trump’s at the same point in his first term.Apart from anxiety about his age, there isn’t a chattering-class consensus or common shorthand for why his presidency is such a political flop. Which is why, perhaps, there was a rush to declare his State of the Union address a rip-roaring success, as though all Biden needs to do to right things is to talk loudly through more than an hour of prepared remarks.When things went south for other recent chief executives, there was usually a clearer theory of what was happening. Trump’s unpopularity was understood to reflect his chaos and craziness and authoritarian forays. The story of George W. Bush’s descending polls was all about Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. When Barack Obama was at his polling nadir, most observers blamed the unemployment rate and the Obamacare backlash, and when Bill Clinton struggled through his first two years, there was a clear media narrative about his lack of discipline and White House scandals.With Biden, it has been different. Attempts to reduce his struggles to the inflation rate are usually met with vehement rebuttals, there’s a strong market for “bad vibes” explanations of his troubles, a lot of blame gets placed on partisan polarization even though Biden won a clear popular majority not so long ago, and even the age issue has taken center stage only in the past few months.Some of this mystification reflects liberal media bias accentuated by contemporary conditions — an unwillingness to look closely at issues like immigration and the border, a hesitation to speak ill of a president who’s the only bulwark against Trumpism.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      La campaña de Biden cambia su estrategia para abordar el tema de la edad

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      Parte del nuevo plan de la Casa Blanca consiste en destacar más los viajes del presidente fuera de Washington y los encuentros individuales con votantes en las redes sociales.Lleva lentes oscuros de aviador y gorras de béisbol. Visita heladerías y asadores y pide reunirse con influentes que puedan difundir imágenes suyas en TikTok e Instagram. Habla más a menudo con los periodistas y responde a preguntas sobre Medio Oriente, los republicanos y, por supuesto, su edad.Nada de esto es una coincidencia. Mientras el presidente Joe Biden se enfrenta a lo que las encuestas muestran como una preocupación significativa por sus 81 años y a unas elecciones muy reñidas contra su virtual oponente, Donald Trump, la estrategia de la Casa Blanca es que salga de su burbuja protectora y afronte directamente las preocupaciones de los votantes.El tema se sobrecargó el mes pasado cuando Biden se defendió airadamente de un informe del fiscal especial que lo describió como un “hombre bienintencionado de edad avanzada con mala memoria”. El presidente se convirtió con rapidez en el chiste favorito de los presentadores de los programas nocturnos de entrevistas, lo que enfureció a sus aliados, quienes reconocen que aunque Biden no puede volver atrás en el tiempo, al menos puede intentar reajustar la imagen que los votantes tienen de él.“Llevo varios meses diciéndole a la campaña: ‘Por favor, déjenlo ser Joe Biden’, y lo mismo han dicho muchos otros”, comentó en una entrevista el senador demócrata por Delaware Chris Coons, aliado cercano del presidente. “No solo es bueno para la campaña. Es bueno para él y es bueno para el país que Joe Biden tenga la oportunidad de bajarse del podio y ser menos el presidente Joe Biden y más Joe”.Con ese fin, se espera que Biden plantee la cuestión de la edad en su beneficio al destacar sus logros legislativos en su discurso sobre el Estado de la Unión del jueves por la noche. El argumento que esgrimirá, según sus ayudantes, es que sus logros como presidente podrían haber pasado desapercibidos para políticos con menos experiencia.Biden bromeó sobre memes en una aparición en el programa de televisión nocturno de Seth Meyers en febrero.Bonnie Cash para The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      These Democrats Love Biden and Think the Rest of America Has Lost Its Mind

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      Andrea Russell is a fixture on Earp Street, the quiet strip of rowhouses in South Philadelphia where she has lived for 45 years. In the afternoons, neighbors come and go from her living room as her 16-year-old cat, George, sits perched above a television that is usually tuned to cable news.Ms. Russell, a 77-year-old retired legal secretary, thinks President Biden would fit right in. “He’d come on by Earp Street,” she said. “I could picture going up to him and saying, ‘Hi, Joe.’ I can see him here.” She identifies with him, she said, and admires his integrity and his record. She also loves his eyes.Her friend, Kathy Staller, also 77, said she was as eager to vote for Mr. Biden as she was for Barack Obama in 2008. “I am excited,” she said. “I hope more people feel the way I do.”Ms. Russell and Ms. Staller are ardent, unreserved supporters of Mr. Biden — part of a small but dedicated group of Democratic voters who think that he is not merely the party’s only option against Donald J. Trump but, in fact, a great, transformative president who clearly deserves another four years in office.They occupy a lonely position in American politics.Andrea Russell, 77, and her sixteen-year-old cat George, are fixtures of a quiet neighborhood in South Philadelphia. Ms. Russell is a committed supporter of President Biden. Mr. Biden, 81, has never inspired the kind of excitement that Mr. Obama did, and he is not a movement candidate, in contrast to his likely 2024 rival, Mr. Trump, who is 77. Historically, he has been far more skilled at connecting one to one on the campaign trail than energizing crowds with soaring oratory.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      For Democrats Pining for an Alternative, Biden Team Has a Message: Get Over It

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      When it comes down to it, a lot of Democrats wish President Biden were not running this fall. Only 28 percent of Democrats in a new survey by The New York Times and Siena College expressed enthusiasm about his candidacy and 38 percent said flatly that Mr. Biden should not be their nominee.But even as many Democrats both in Washington and around the country quietly pine for someone else to take on former President Donald J. Trump, who leads nationwide in the poll by 5 percentage points, no one who matters seems willing to tell that to Mr. Biden himself. Or if they are, he does not appear to be listening.Surrounded by a loyal and devoted inner circle, Mr. Biden has given no indication that he would consider stepping aside to let someone else lead the party. Indeed, he and the people close to him bristle at the notion. For all the hand-wringing, the president’s advisers note, no serious challenge has emerged and Mr. Biden has dominated the early Democratic primaries even more decisively than Mr. Trump has won his own party’s nominating contests.The Biden team views the very question as absurd. The president in their view has an impressive record of accomplishment to run on. There is no obvious alternative. It is far too late in the cycle to bow out without considerable disruption. If he were ever to have opted against a second term, it would have been a year ago when there would have been time for a successor to emerge. And other than someone with Biden in their name, it is hard to imagine who would have enough influence to even broach the idea with him, much less sway him.“There is no council of elders and I’m not sure if there was that an incumbent president, no matter who it was, would listen to them,” said David Plouffe, the architect of President Barack Obama’s campaigns and one of the strategists who helped him pick Mr. Biden as his vice-presidential running mate in 2008. “He thinks, ‘Hey, I won and I beat the guy who’s going to run against me and I can do it again.’”Members of Mr. Biden’s team insist they feel little sense of concern. The president’s closest aides push back in exasperation against those questioning his decision to run again and dismiss polls as meaningless this far before the vote. They argue that doubters constantly underestimate Mr. Biden and that Democrats have won or outperformed expectations in 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023 and even a special House election this year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      High Mortgage Rates Leave Biden Searching for Housing Relief

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      The president and his team are seeking ways to help Americans afford to rent and buy homes, as high borrowing costs dampen views of the economy.President Biden and his economic team, concerned that elevated mortgage rates and housing costs are hurting Americans and hindering his re-election bid, are searching for new ways to make housing more available and affordable.Mr. Biden’s forthcoming budget request will call on Congress to pass a raft of initiatives to build more affordable housing and help certain Americans afford to purchase a home. The president is also expected to address housing affordability for both homeowners and renters in his State of the Union address next week, according to people familiar with the speech planning.On Thursday, administration officials announced a handful of relatively modest executive actions, including steps to increase the supply of manufactured homes. White House officials said this week that they would announce “additional actions we are taking to lower housing costs.”The increased focus on housing affordability comes as congressional Republicans assail Mr. Biden over high mortgage rates and housing costs, and as allies of the president warn that those costs are hurting working-class voters he needs to win in November.There is little Mr. Biden can do immediately and directly to affect mortgage rates. Those are heavily influenced by the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policies, and the White House is careful not to appear to be pressuring the central bank to cut rates. Fed officials have signaled that they expect to begin cutting rates this year.New research from economists at Harvard University and the International Monetary Fund — including Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary — suggests high mortgage rates and other borrowing costs are contributing to Americans’ relatively gloomy mood about the economy, despite low unemployment and healthy growth. By weighing on consumer confidence, those costs could be depressing Mr. Biden’s re-election hopes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      5 Takeaways From Trump’s Big Win Over Nikki Haley in South Carolina

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      Donald J. Trump lapped Nikki Haley in the Midwest. He beat her in the Northeast. He dominated in the West. And now he has trounced the former two-term governor in her home state of South Carolina.After nearly six weeks of primary contests in geographically, demographically and ideologically diverse states, even Ms. Haley’s most ardent supporters must squint to see the faintest path to the presidential nomination for her in 2024.The race was called the moment the polls closed, and within minutes an ebullient Mr. Trump took the stage, avoiding a mistake he made in New Hampshire when Ms. Haley spoke first and, even in defeat, gave a rousing speech that had irked him.“It’s an early evening,” Mr. Trump beamed.But Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, is still vowing to plow on, warning her party that sticking with Mr. Trump and the distractions of his four criminal indictments is a pathway to defeat in November.“Today is not the end of our story,” she declared.Here are five takeaways from the South Carolina primary and what comes next:Ms. Haley cast her ballot on Kiawah Island, S.C., with her mother and children.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesIt was a home-state failure for Haley.She campaigned more aggressively. She spent more on television advertisements. She debuted a shiny new bus to traverse the state, and kept raking in donations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Asian Americans Are Often Invisible in Polling. That’s Changing.

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      Without much survey data, there’s little information about what issues matter to Asian Americans.This article is also a weekly newsletter. Sign up for Race/Related here.When Dr. Michelle Au ran for State Senate in Georgia in 2020, an experienced political operative told her: “Don’t waste too much time talking to Asian voters. They don’t vote.”That same year in Georgia, turnout among Asian American voters, who as a group rarely receive dedicated attention from politicians, nearly doubled, according to data from Georgia’s secretary of state. Dr. Au, a Democrat, became the first Asian American woman to be elected to the State Senate. Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since Bill Clinton, in 1992.“People really started to realize that there is a large and growing and quite powerful Asian electorate in Georgia, but one that people have, up until now, not been paying attention to at all because of this sensibility that the Asian population is too small to make a difference,” said Dr. Au, who is now serving in the state’s House of Representatives.Dr. Michelle Au at a campaign event in Johns Creek, Ga., in 2022.Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesPollsters face a population problem when gathering public opinion research on Asian Americans: They are the fastest-growing racial group in the country but still make up a relatively small share of the population, so it is rare for pollsters to reach enough respondents in a typical poll to warrant breaking the group’s responses out as a distinct category. More

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      Support for Teaching Gender Identity in School Is Split, Even Among Democrats

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      Americans are deeply divided on whether schools should teach about gender identity, two polls found. But there was broader support for teaching about race.Americans are deeply split over whether gender identity should be taught in school, according to two polls released this week that underscored the extent of the divide on one of the most contested topics in education.Many groups, including Democrats, teachers and teenagers, are split on whether schools should teach about gender identity — a person’s internal sense of their own gender and whether it aligns with their sex assigned at birth, according to a survey by researchers at the University of Southern California and a separate survey by Pew Research Center.But on issues of race, another topic that has fueled state restrictions and book bans, there was broader support for instruction. That extended to some Republicans, the U.S.C. survey found.The results highlight nuances in the opinion over two of the most divisive issues in public education, even as the American public remains deeply polarized along party lines.The U.S.C. survey polled a nationally representative sample of nearly 4,000 adults, about half of whom lived with at least one school-age child, and broke responses out by partisan affiliation.Democrats were by and large supportive of L.G.B.T.Q.-themed instruction in schools, yet were split when it came to addressing transgender issues for younger students in elementary school.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More