A survey published by The Economist this month included a surprising but not surprising finding: Nearly 7 in 10 Americans believe things in the country have gotten out of control.
That's a problem for President Biden, who campaigned in 2020 offering a return to normalcy after four years of chaos under Donald Trump.
Biden promised, in fact, to make America normal again, but “normal” never fully returned. COVID-19 restrictions ended, but the resulting recovery brought high prices and rising mortgage rates. Wars broke out in Ukraine and Gaza; Protests broke out on university campuses. And domestic politics remained bitterly polarized; The bipartisan unity that Biden promised to achieve remained out of reach.
“People are reeling from the feeling that we can't move in the right direction,” said Celinda Lake, one of Biden's top pollsters, recounting voters' feelings in focus groups. “They have been shocked by events they never expected: Afghanistan, the war in Ukraine, Gaza, even the wildfires in Maui and the bridge collapse in Baltimore.”
Unsurprisingly, Trump has responded by blaming Biden for everything that goes wrong, from surges in illegal immigration to foreign wars.
“If I were president, [the Oct. 7] “The Hamas attack on Israel would never have happened, the war in Ukraine would never have happened and now we would have peace around the world,” Trump wrote on his social media account, an alternative history that, luckily for him, cannot be proven. nor refuted.
The combination of adverse events and Republican attacks has taken a predictable toll on Biden's image. The Economist poll found that 58% of Americans consider Trump a strong leader, but only 36% see Biden as strong. Biden scores higher on other qualities; most voters see him as more honest and more likable than Trump. But those attributes may not be as important to voters in an era of instability.
“When people feel uncertainty or anxiety, they look for strong leaders,” said Doug Sosnik, a political adviser to President Clinton during his 1996 re-election campaign. “Trump's narrative, plain and simple, is… portraying Biden as weak. If that's what the election is about, Trump will win.”
The pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, Sosnik added, “are reinforcing the existing Trump narrative.”
Despite Trump's claims, Biden can't really be blamed for the wars in Ukraine or Gaza, let alone the wildfires or bridge disasters. It is a matter of debate whether he should be blamed for the inflation, although inflation in the United States has been lower than in most other countries.
Still, in an era of economic and political volatility, the new normal is that there is no normal. And that makes every incumbent vulnerable to bad news during his tenure.
Case in point: Donald Trump in 2020.
Four years ago, in the midst of a pandemic, a recession and the discord that followed the police killing of George Floyd, many voters blamed Trump, if not for causing the crises, then for mismanaging them.
In a July 2020 Economist poll, 80% of Americans said they thought things in the country had gotten out of control.
That's why many voters turned to Biden, hoping he could end the chaos and restore order.
But some scholars have concluded that incumbency, once considered an advantage for a president seeking re-election, has increasingly become a burden, primarily because in an era of polarized politics, presidents receive less deference from voters on the other side.
“In the past, Democratic voters could sometimes support a Republican president…and Republican voters could sometimes support a Democratic president,” political scientist Lee Drutman of the New America think tank recently wrote. Now, he added, “there is simply nothing Joe Biden can ever do” to win the support of Republican voters.
“No national political figure is popular at the national level,” he added. “This is part of Biden's problem. It is not just about his age, nor about the economy, nor about his foreign policy.”
Despite voters' bad mood, Biden and Trump appear evenly matched in the most recent national polls. But two factors could change those numbers before Election Day.
One is the focus of the campaign. So far, it has largely been a referendum on Biden's record. But the president and his campaign are trying to turn the lens on Trump, turning the election into a “dual referendum” on both candidates.
“Remember when he literally told us to inject ourselves with bleach?” Biden said at a campaign rally last month, referring to one of Trump's most memorable moments during the pandemic. (In fact, Trump didn't tell anyone to inject bleach; during a White House press conference, he asked his aides to investigate whether it would be an effective therapy.)
In another appearance, Biden said Trump was “mentally unfit to be president.”
The other factor, of course, is events. A ceasefire in Gaza, a continued decline in illegal immigration, a decision by the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates or a conviction of Trump in any of his four pending criminal cases could help Biden. A new rise in inflation, a surge in immigrants or riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago could boost Trump.
But neither candidate can credibly promise to bring “normality.” No matter who the next president is, voters will soon be disappointed that life has not returned to normal.
