I'm not quite sure I understand why.
The polls like NYT/Siena are instructive.
Yes Israel/Gaza is an issue but I think a lot is down to piss poor reporting and media coverage. He got shit the other day for talking about a ceasefire whilst eating an ice cream. But he was in an ice cream store FFS, they asked him the question, he would have got shit if he hadn't answered.
The issue is not media coverage of Biden eating an ice cream, it's media coverage of a bombing campaign that has killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians. Here is an
AP-NARC poll from 1st of February. It finds that 50% of U.S. adults think Israel has gone too far. That includes 63% of Democrats, 52% of Independents, and 33% of Republicans. The article interviews a few people. This is one of them:
Melissa Morales, a 36-year-old political independent in Runnemede, New Jersey, says she finds herself watching videos and news from Gaza daily. Images of Palestinian children wounded, orphaned or unhoused by the fighting in Gaza make her mind go to her own 3-year-old boy. “I just can’t even imagine, like, my son roaming the streets, wanting to be safe. Wanting his mom. Or just wanting someone to get him,” she said. Israel’s offensive has gone too far, Morales says, and so has the Biden administration’s support for it. Biden has supported Israel militarily and diplomatically since the first hours after the Hamas militant group’s Oct. 7 attacks, which Israel says killed 1,200 people. “These kids ... they’re needing the end of this,” Morales said. “It’s such an unfair fight.”
A lot of people don't like seeing this stuff and the longer they see it the less good they feel.
Immigration is an issue but again, what isn't being covered nearly enough is the vast amount of people Biden's administration have deported. It's more the red tape and slow moving process that's just as much of an issue as the influx.
According to the
NYT/Siena poll, 50% of voters support making it harder for migrants to seek asylum, and 43% do not support it. The people who'd be most supportive of "vast amount of people his administration has deported" are likely to be Republicans or conservatives, who'd disapprove of him overall for many other seasons. The 43% of people who do not support making it harder to seek asylum probably wouldn't give him a boost for deporting vast numbers of people.
He gets on well with foreign leaders and has restored stability in overseas relationships with allies and his support of Ukraine has been ok, as have his measured responses to issues regarding Iran and striking back against the Houties with the shipping crisis in the region. One thing is for sure, he has been a lot more stable than Trump.
The problem is that one of the premises of the Biden presidency was to restore stability and normalcy, but the U.S. and the world have been
more unstable during the Biden administration than during Trump's, not less. There is the Gaza campaign, which has been going on for five months, the Ukraine/Russia war which has been going on for two years, there was an inflation crisis, and there was the 2nd year of COVID. We can debate the merits of Biden's response, but he is not just being penalized for the response, he is being penalized for the existence of all these issues. They generate a sense of chaos and instability.
This chaos and instability feeds into the other great concern people have: that Biden is too old to handle the job. This is a consensus opinion in the entirety of the American electorate, with numbers as high as
86%. And it is a perfectly valid and reasonable concern.
There isn't a single issue that's killing him, the problem is they all feed into each other.
No daily issues or rants on Twitter to cause or cover up illegal acts or stupid mistakes. No constant media coverage or needless rallies to boost his ego. No disrespecting grieving war widows. No burger buffets to championship winning sports teams...... No porn star ex wife, claiming other countries will pay for things they clearly weren't going to. No continual slagging of the military, FBI, Police and any other thing he felt like on that particular day. .
None of this stuff matters that much. Let's be serious. It only matters because it feeds into the perception that he's not up for it.
But Biden has his own similar issues, his repeated age-related gaffes which remind people that he's too old and also not up for it.
