President Biden and the Democrats are passing legislation but losing popularity — why?
Congress wasn’t getting much done for about 18 months, creating a lot of disenchantment among young people, according to the managing editor of The American Prospect.
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore, Flickr
President Joe Biden’s approval rating is low at 39% — one of the lowest presidential approval ratings in history since the end of World War II. This all brings up a simple question: Why? What is driving such discontent with the sitting president who was supposed to bring us all together?
It’s not as if Biden hasn’t gotten things done. He passed COVID-19 support with the American Rescue Plan; he facilitated a $1 trillion infrastructure deal. The CHIPS Act recently passed, which will invest in domestic supply chains.
“The real issue is the Democratic base, right. His approval in the Democratic base is just 75% and for every previous president, including Trump, in their own party their support has been in the high 80s or the 90s.” — Shikha Dalmia, author of “The Unpopulist” Substack
Listen: Why President Biden is so unpopular despite passing large legislative packages.
Guests
Ryan Cooper is the managing editor at The American Prospect, a progressive media outlet. Cooper says that because Congress wasn’t getting much done for about 18 months, it created a lot of disenchantment among young people.
“They expect, you know, the government to act, to do something to fix the problems besetting us on every side that are just undeniable from the pandemic to climate change to the health care system just being totally dysfunctional and any number of a thousand other things,” says Cooper.
Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow with George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, where she has started a program to study and resist the rise of right-wing populist authoritarianism around the world and in America. You can follow her work on her Substack, “The Unpopulist.” She says Biden has not won over independent support nor shored up support from the Democratic base.
“The real issue is the Democratic base, right. His approval in the Democratic base is just 75% and for every previous president, including Trump, in their own party their support has been in the high 80s or the 90s,” says Dalmia.
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