Why Biden’s Popularity Plummeted and How Trump Plays His Cards to Get Back in the White House

Less than a year later, Joe Biden He goes through what seems to be his lowest hours since he arrived at the White House.

The fall of his popularity and the triumph of the republican candidate in the elections to governor of Virginia have set off the alarms in the equipment of the president and his followers.

SIGHT: Republican Glenn Youngkin wins Virginia gubernatorial election, a severe setback for Biden

Also in the state of New Jersey, where the Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, obtained a result well below expectations, although the media finally projected him as the winner of re-election.

One year after the midterm election (to be held on November 8, 2022), in which a Congress will be renewed in which Democrats now have a slim majority, Republicans show signs of recovery.

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Former President Donald Trump remains fully involved in politics and flirts with running again for the presidential elections to be held at the end of 2024.

There is a long way to go and experts agree that trends can be reversed, but the reality today is that Biden is losing steam.

What’s going on

Polls had been warning in recent months of a decline in Biden’s popularity, which at the beginning of November reached a disapproval level of 51%.

Republican Glenn Youngkin’s unpredictable win in Virginia, a state where Biden clearly prevailed in the presidential elections a year ago, and Democrat Murphy’s attrition in New Jersey have confirmed the trend.

According to Anthony Zurcher, BBC North America correspondent, “Politics in the United States is following a familiar pattern”.

“A new president is elected and, after an early wave of popularity, his attempts to advance his political agenda run into a headwind. The party that has lost power, goaded by its recent defeat and angered by the actions of the rival government, regains unity in the opposition, while the party in power suffers from internal divisions.

It has already happened with Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Trump himself, as well as in the second term of George W. Bush.

Biden is now suffering the consequences of that division and pays the price for Democrats’ lack of agreement in Congress to approve its star proposals: various spending packages on social services, the fight against climate change and infrastructures valued in billions of dollars.

Democrats have failed to agree in Congress on Biden’s big promises. (PETE MAROVICH / GETTY).

While the most radical Democratic congressmen consider it insufficient, other more moderate ones reject it as excessive, and in that tug of war the initiative has been stagnant for months.

To this the memory of the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan is added in August. Polls showed that public opinion suspended the Biden administration’s management of the withdrawal.

What about Trump and the Republicans

Ten months after Trump supporters stormed the Washington DC Capitol to prevent Biden’s proclamation and the scandal that followed, Republicans have regained favor with the electorate.

Trump, who has not stopped insisting without proof that Biden’s election was “a robbery” and has remained in the political arena, flirts with the idea of ​​re-launching himself into the presidential race in 2024.

Few in the Republican Party have dared to openly break with the former president, perhaps out of fear of upsetting his voters.

However, although the Republican candidates have repeated some of Trump’s messages, such as his denouncement of a “migratory crisis” on the border with Mexico or his rejection of the regulations that force the use of masks to contain the spread of covid-19 , some have begun to distance themselves.

Republican Glenn Youngkin surprised by winning in Virginia. (EPA).

Youngkin avoided appearing with Trump in his successful campaign to become governor of Virginia and focused on criticizing Biden’s management, with particular emphasis on the problems of an economy showing weaker growth and higher inflation than expected, and on the defense of the right of parents to decide on the education of their children.

Without the former president as a major player in the campaign, Democrats have had a harder time mobilizing many voters who, above all, rejected the controversial New York mogul.

BBC journalist Tara McKelvey says that “Youngkin relied on a law and order program, and opposed mandatory face masks, echoing the messages Trump uses, but kept his distance from him. He appealed to voters who like Trump’s stance, but are uncomfortable with his figure. “

McKelvey believes this could become a recipe repeated by other Republican candidates. “His victory will likely serve as a guide for other conservatives in the mid-term election campaign.”

It will be “el guion de Trump sin Trump”.

What can happen now

There is still a year to go before the elections that will be decided by Congress and much longer before a new race for the White House can be fired.

In addition, it is common for the party that is currently holding the presidency to suffer from the lower participation that usually occurs in elections in which it is not decided who will be the president.

But what happened has already opened the internal debate on the Democratic side and there is no shortage of voices demanding greater diversity in the choice of their candidates to mobilize African-American voters.

Neither do those who demand that they reach an agreement once and for all in Congress to approve the measures that Biden promised to his voters.

Zurcher believes that “the bad omens of a defeat in the midterm elections will unleash panic among Democratic congressmen and perhaps push them to action” so that the president and his party’s candidates have something to sell to the electorate.

There is no other way in which they can retain their minimal parliamentary majority.

Donald Trump flirts with the idea of ​​going back to the White House. (Reuters).

Trump, meanwhile, will closely follow each other, weighing his options to run again. And other Republicans will study theirs to challenge him in a primary.

There are many unknowns and very few certainties. The only one, perhaps, that, as Zurcher says, “The United States has been and continues to be a highly polarized and politically divided country”, and “there are no permanent government majorities.”

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