A.B. Stoddard: ‘The Polling Across the Board Is Terrible’ for Biden

EXCERPT:

STODDARD: "It’s true, Andrea, these — the polling across the board is terrible on questions of competence, on questions of whether or not this administration has accomplished enough, and it comes from a narrowing support among independents, most critically, and then even among Democrats. And so this is really something the administration is grappling with, and there’s widespread fear across the party about how they’re going to fare in next year’s elections. The most important thing to stop the bleeding is to get this package done and get to a compromise. Everybody knows cuts will be made. It’s just picking this program or that and resolving the fight over sunsetting short-term programs, moving to more universal benefits instead of targeted relief. As soon as they get that done, the President can focus again on Covid. As soon as Covid stabilizes and the pandemic feels more contained to the public, we’ll see a rebound in the economy and people will appreciate the programs the government has passed. Right now, because of the surge in the Delta variant, if you look at polling, Americans who were helped by the American Rescue Plan passed last winter do not feel and appreciate the benefits that came to them because they feel their long-term financial prospects are grim. That’s all because of Covid. The administration has to get this behind them so that people in the administration can focus on Covid and containing the pandemic and focusing their messaging to the public on it and then hope by the midterms that the public feels an improvement from the programs that they passed."