Biden started a visit to occupied Palestine and Saudi Arabia from July 13-16.
In reaction to his Middle East trip, analysts have written down Op-eds and commentary articles, among which the report published in Yahoo Finance reveals the approval rating of the US incumbent President.
A steady drumbeat of bad news has forced Biden’s approval rating below 39%, which is three points lower than Donald Trump’s approval rating at the same point in his term and about even with Jimmy Carter’s, in 1978, Yahoo Finance reported.
Among post-war presidents, only Harry Truman was doing worse than Biden in his 18th month, the source added.
The article names two deciding factors for the approval rating of the President; COVID and inflation.
Prices have been on an upward tear since February 2021, or in other words, the first month of Biden’s presidency. The annual inflation rate seemed like it was going to flatline at around 5% last summer, but it didn’t. It rose by nearly half a percentage point per month for the last year and now sits at 9.1%. Gasoline inflation has been far worse, with pump prices now up 60% year-over-year. That coincides fairly directly with Biden’s plunging approval rating, the report said.
Other factors have hurt Biden (the ugly pullout from Afghanistan last year) or helped him (the bipartisan infrastructure bill he signed in November). But COVID and inflation tell most of the story, the source noted.
If those two factors have brought Biden down, it’s sensible to ask if he could recover if both become less of a problem. The answer ought to be yes. That doesn’t mean Biden’s approval will go shooting back up if COVID gradually recedes and inflation drifts back toward 5% or 4% or 3%. In fact, Biden’s approval may never exceed 50% again, the report concluded.
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