NPR sounded the alarm over its latest poll on Thursday's Morning Edition: Biden's approval rating sunk to 42 percent, a record low as president, and poll results on their massive spending packages "really raises a lot of red flags for the party."
Anchor Steve Inskeep asked NPR political editor Domenico Montanaro for the bad news, charitably phrased:
MONTANARO: You mentioned Biden's low approval rating. He's at 42%, which, again, is the lowest in this survey since he's taken office. And it's particularly bad with independents where he's underwater. And that's a big deal because Biden won independents in 2020. They were a big reason why he won the presidency.
You know, people largely, when we tested the infrastructure bill, say that they support it, but they're less supportive of the Build Back Better bill, which expands the social safety net and addresses some issues when it comes to climate change.
Worse for President Biden is that even though the Build Back Better bill is intended to help regular people with an expansion of the social safety net, people say they're pessimistic that it would actually help people like them. They don't see either bill as likely addressing their top economic concern, inflation, by the way. And that just shows you how the Democratic messaging really hasn't broken through at all with both of these bills.
NPR can't seem to imagine that massive federal spending could be worsening inflation. Notice that NPR calls Biden's socialist bill "Build Back Better" without any "objective" distancing from the sales term.
Later, Montanaro added this sign of danger: "Democrats really don't seem to be all that confident in Biden's presence. Only 38% of Democrats said they strongly approve of the job the president is doing, while 76% of Republicans say they strongly disapprove of the job he's doing. So you have double the negative intensity toward Biden than the positive stuff."
Inskeep turned to congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell: “Let's follow up on the child tax credit, which already is law. These are direct payments to parents, hundreds of dollars per month per child, an amount that would make a big difference to a lot of families. So why do people downplay any benefit to them?”
Snell lamented a “perception disconnect,” that “among those people who did say that they're receiving the child tax credit, two-thirds said it only helped them a little, and 1 in 5 said it didn't help at all.”
Then this would really upset the NPR crowd. Inskeep added “people who do know they got the cash don't necessarily give Biden credit, which is another layer of this. In this survey, 17% said that Biden was most responsible for getting them the money, but that's not very many, and 17% said Republicans were responsible, even though they largely opposed it. Zero Republican senators voted for it, but they get the credit!”
Montanaro this poll “really raises a lot of red flags for the party, especially when they thought that these two pieces of legislation, the infrastructure bill, the Build Back Better bill, if they can get that passed, could be something that they could put their cap on…it doesn't look hopeful for them, especially if it doesn't look like people feel like that the Build Back Better bill will be something that will help them, which was the whole point of it in the first place.”
Buying votes with wealth redistribution isn’t working!
