President Joe Biden has been haemorrhaging support from the entire spectrum of political demographics over “lack of leadership”, according to an analysis offered by a CNN panel on Sunday.
"It's an environment of overall discontent", said "Inside Politics" host Abby Phillip, as the reasons for Biden’s cratering approval rating were scrutinised by panellists.
According to CNN's latest poll, the POTUS enjoys a 39 percent approval rating. However, a recent Quinnipiac University survey had Biden at 33 percent, as compared to 54 percent of Americans who disapprove of the Democrat’s job performance.
Panellists Jordan Fabian, a Bloomberg White House correspondent, CNN Capitol Hill reporter Melanie Zanona, and Time Magazine national political correspondent Molly Ball weighed in to pronounce that Americans largely perceive that Joe Biden is “not in control of the situation".
According to the Time Magazine correspondent, Molly Ball, Biden’s public support began to dwindle after his botched handling of the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan last August.
"And I think ever since that Afghanistan last summer, people have had - voters overall - have not had a sense of leadership from the White House, have not had a sense that there's a president in control, who is strong and consistent and knows what he's doing and can project a consistent message from one day or the next", she said.
The CNN panel segment focusing on Biden was accompanied by the caption, "Are Voters Tuning Biden Out?"
While it is chiefly Biden’s lacklustre economic efforts that Republicans have been blasting, as inflation surged to a new four-decade high of 8.5 percent in March from the same period a year ago, according to the Labour Department.
Skyrocketing gasoline prices have been driving over half of the increase as some of the sweeping sanctions slapped on Moscow over its special operation to demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine have only served to backfire.
Biden and his team have persisted in continuing to blame the rise in gas prices, food, and other everyday items on the "Putin price hike", refusing to acknowledge that it might be fallout from their own policies.
Joe Biden is losing support among young voters, Bloomberg’s Jordan Fabian insisted, because he "hasn't delivered" on campaign pledges, such as student loan forgiveness. A recent Gallup poll revealed that the President’s approval rating had gone down almost 20 points with Generation Z.
With 39 percent of Generation Z respondents saying they approve of the job Biden has done as President, this is a 21-point decline from 60 percent of those who showed approval when Biden first took office.
41 percent of millennial respondents approve of Biden’s performance - a 19-point decline from his first months in the White House.
"Those numbers are a tremendous failure for a Democratic president to have numbers like that among young voters", warned Fabian.
Meanwhile, environmental progressives are fuming, particularly over the latest move by Washington to resume the sale of oil and gas leases on federal land.
The Interior Department announced on 15 April that it was set to hold its first onshore oil and gas lease sales since the Democrat president took office, opening approximately 144,000 acres (225 sq. miles; 580 sq. kilometres) up for lease next week. It also stated that the department would be charging oil and gas companies higher royalties to drill on federal land, with rates rising to 18.75 percent from 12.5 percent for oil and gas lease sales.
‘Stepping’ on His Own Messaging
The panellists said that Joe Biden’s often contradictory statements have consistently driven the White House into “damage control” mode.
Even though some Americans may "agree" decisions pertain to the Ukraine crisis, Ball said Biden continues to "step on his own messaging".
The correspondent was referring to how the administration had to walk back the 79-year-old president’s misleading comments made during his Europe trip.
Thus, the WH rushed to clarify Biden’s words addressed to US troops in Poland. When he praised Ukrainian people as having "a lot of backbone", he appeared to suggest that the troops would be in Ukraine itself soon.
This is something that Washington officials have repeatedly ruled out.
"And you're going to see when you're there… And some of you have been there. You're going to see - you're going to see women, young people standing - standing… in front of a damn tank, just saying, 'I'm not leaving. I'm holding my ground'. They're incredible", Biden told the 82nd Airborne Division.
A White House spokesperson clarified the remark, saying:
"The President has been clear we are not sending US troops to Ukraine and there is no change in that position".
Then there was also an unscripted remark during a speech in Warsaw, Poland, when Biden said that that Russian President Vladimir Putin "cannot remain in power". White House officials rushed to offer assurances that the US was not calling for regime change.
Panel host Abby Phillip played clips of Democrats in Congress distancing themselves from Biden, adding that it was sure to ring "alarm bells" for the president.
"It is a sign that they sense that there is nothing to be gained by continuing to be allies of the president", said Ball. Furthermore, the numbers have been feeding Democrats’ fears regarding the outcome of the looming November midterm elections, where they could lose their slim control of Congress.