Voters want big changes from Biden’s failed policies, but many are not in Trump’s plan.
Democratic leaders sound understandably cautious when talking about whether President Donald Trump has a mandate, or what steps Democrats should take now. They are respecting the voters who put Trump back in office, and they recognize the elites have gotten a lot of hot-button issues wrong.
We will have no clue about the Trump mandate or what Democrats should do, of course, unless we are frank about what happened with Joe Biden and what changes voters want. Major parts of the mandate will help Trump, but failure to deliver change will hurt. And other parts of Trump’s agenda insult voters in ways that will push down his already unimpressive approval ratings.
Knowing what happened starts with knowing voters were more fearful of “Biden continuing as President” than “Trump winning a second term.” A 53 percent majority in a Democracy Corps survey felt that. And that majority grew to 54 percent after seeing all the Trump attacks.
President Joe Biden gave an upbeat account of his progress, but he was deeply and singularly unpopular. About 60 percent disapproved of his presidency in our November election poll. And other polls have shown his approval and favorability decline further as he left office in January.
Kamala Harris ran much worse with working-class voters than Biden did in 2020, but his approval in our November poll was below her vote. His support was eroding further. And how do you get a strong vote in the base when 37 percent of Blacks, 56 percent of Hispanics, and 59 percent of white millennials disapproved of Biden on Election Day?
According to Gallup, 3 in 5 Americans thought the country “lost ground” under Biden on debt, immigration, crime, the economy, “the gap between the wealthy and less well-off,” and “United States’ position in the world.”
What is so difficult for all of us to process is that Trump has a mandate to fix where Biden failed on the border, the economy, crime in cities, and certain aspects of the woke agenda. Those actions will help Trump.
The full article can be read at The American Prospect.