In an op-ed for the Washington Post published today, columnist Jennifer Rubin argued that Americans’ grumpiness — not Joe Biden’s job performance — is to blame for the president’s extreme unpopularity.
THE QUOTE
Biden shouldn’t be too put off by his historically low approval ratings because, “Americans these days don’t like, well, anyone,” Rubin wrote in the essay, titled “Biden shouldn’t feel bad. Voters don’t like anyone these days.”
- Rubin pointed to upside-down polling for other politicians of both parties, for major U.S. institutions and for the direction of the country as a whole, noting that “less than 20% of Americans say the country is on the right track, according to the RealClearPolitics average.”
- “As anyone who has dealt with a spouse in a foul mood can attest, sometimes one must take statements from a grumpy individual with a grain of salt,” she observed, on a folksy note. “Ask voters whether we are doing enough to fight inflation, to help Ukraine or to do just about anything else, and you’ll likely get a resounding ‘no.’ Perhaps a more constructive question would be: ‘Considering the difficult circumstances we find ourselves in, do you think X has at least done their best?'”
- Rubin also questioned the utility of polling itself, writing, “Rather than using this polling data to conclude that ‘Biden is cooked’ or ‘Democrats are doomed,’ perhaps it’s time for pundits to question how much guidance they can glean from polling when Americans are endemically dissatisfied with politics and just about anyone associated with it,” and later, “Given the less-than-stellar performance of pollsters over the past couple of election cycles, analysts, pundits, politicians and media consumers would be wise to show more humility and less certainty in their prognostications. And certainly let’s dispense with the notion that ‘history’ says much about what’s about to happen. This is uncharted territory.”
SAME ENERGY
Rubin — who was much less skeptical of former President Trump’s bad poll numbers — would not be the first mainstream media pundit to try to pin the Biden administration’s failures on the American people.
