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Inflation and crime, more than any others, are the political issues that voters feel in their gut rather than consider in their mind. For President Joe Biden, this is a massive problem because not only are Americans deeply worried about both, they blame the sitting president.
According to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, 56% of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of crime, compared to a mere 38% who approve. On inflation, it’s even worse, with the president 26 points underwater.
Taxes, foreign policy, even something as emotionally fraught as abortion are ideas that most people grapple with intellectually, weighing concepts and compromises, deciding whose approach they prefer.
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But when you look at the grocery bill being tallied and worry you don’t have enough left over to get your kid that thing he wants for his birthday, when you’re waiting for your ride-share hoping it arrives soon, so you don’t get mugged, these are visceral sensations that can’t be spun.
Police and crime scene investigators respond to multiple people shot at in Philadelphia, on Nov. 21, 2023. (Steven M. Falk/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)
Not that Biden hasn’t tried, of course.
Three years ago, inflation was “transitory,” two years ago it was all just “Putin’s Price Hike,” last year we were told that “Bidenomics,” is working, and we simply aren’t sophisticated enough to see it.
But as the playwright David Mamet once wrote, “your excuses are your own,” and all three of these failed whoppers are deep in the rearview mirror today.
Now, Biden tells us that inflation is down over the past year, but even if that is true, it is down from astronomical heights that he created when he made all the money machines go whirrrr and, more importantly, high prices are still pinching the average American.
On crime, it is much the same, but with a new wrinkle that former President Donald Trump has been quick to seize upon. Just in time for the general election, the crime issue has taken on a new dimension, as Trump bluntly puts it, “the migrant crime crisis.”
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his husband might feel safe walking the dog around Capitol Hill, but for denizens of Washington D.C., who don’t have a security detail, it is a gauntlet of carjackings, shootings and vagrancy.
Police officers are being attacked, nursing students are being murdered, women are being sexually assaulted, and criminal gangs are growing in our prisons all because Biden absolutely refused to secure the border for three years.
The inescapable conclusion is that none of this would have happened had our commander in chief been doing his job, that this parade of horribles is entirely owing to his policies.
US Border Patrol agents prepare to transport migrants for asylum claim processing at the US-Mexico border in Campo, California, US, on Friday, April 5, 2024. (Mark Abramson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Suddenly, Biden says he may shut the border down in a style much like Trump’s, is it any wonder why? It is because he is rightfully being politically thrashed for his utter incompetence.
Finally, securing the border is a good idea that will help Americans, and it may be that Biden can patch together some last-minute policy Hail Marys to help him get across the electoral finish line.
However, none of them will address the real problem, which is that when the American people tell their president that they are fearful and concerned, he just, honest to God, doesn’t seem to care.
When President Bill Clinton heard from the American people about their worries and plight, he’d bite his lip and make it clear that he understood and felt our pain.
Biden’s version of this is to lash out at the American people by basically saying, “you don’t know how good you’ve got it, Jack!.”
I’m sorry, that is not a winning message.
Joe Biden doesn’t feel our pain. Joe Biden mocks our pain.
And it is always about Joe. He tells Americans struggling paycheck to paycheck about his dad in the 1950s, who was apparently under constant and brutal economic pressure, wanting to say, “Joey, it’ll be alright.”
He tells the families of murder victims about the losses he has suffered in his own family.
Biden’s empathy is always directed inward.
Crime and inflation are inescapable realities for Biden in the 2024 election. Even if they improve, they aren’t going away.
However, none of them will address the real problem, which is that when the American people tell their president that they are fearful and concerned, he just, honest to God, doesn’t seem to care.
This pair of issues are emotional gut punches to the electorate and the real problem for Biden, no matter what he does between now and November, is that for three years not only did he do nothing to make them better, he told us they weren’t a problem at all.
Even the longest general election in American history may not be long enough for Joe Biden to escape these cold, honest facts.