This week’s White House Report Card shows signs of life in President Joe Biden’s reelection effort as several new national polls have him catching up to former President Donald Trump.
Granted that many of the polls have shown a neck-and-neck race nationally, Democratic pollster John Zogby — one of our co-graders for the report card — said the president has seen a string of recent surveys nudging him ahead of the Republican.
In the new John Zogby Strategies poll shared with Secrets on Saturday, Biden leads Trump 47% to 44%. In his Hopium newsletter this week, liberal activist Simon Rosenberg cited six new polls with Biden leading. “Joe Biden is in the midst of his best run of polling in some time. Six post-State Of The Union polls show him with leads,” he wrote.
Zogby told us that the difference appears to be growing support for Biden among independents, the key voting group all sides are fighting over.
“Right now, Biden appears to be capturing the important independent vote. Trump’s recent statements and predicaments are not what these voters are looking for,” Zogby said. “However, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. does well among this group and can have a real impact, especially if the two-party nominees continue to bash each other for the next six months,” he added.
Biden did score some wins this week. Congress OK’d another budget. The president defied the Supreme Court and approved more student loan forgiveness. And he switched to a new pair of fall-proof shoes.
But as conservative grader Jed Babbin said in dishing his weekly “F,” Biden continued to challenge Israel and fumbled further on the border issue. And Biden Inc. was called out in a House hearing where a key witness told of how the president’s family profited by making Joe Biden their “brand.”
John Zogby
Grade: B
Eight of the most recent nationwide polls, including one by John Zogby Strategies, show President Joe Biden holding very slight leads over former President Donald Trump.
In our poll, Biden is polling 88% to 6% among Democrats, while Trump is polling an almost identical 87% to 7% among GOP voters.
For the first time in a while, the president leads by a respectable margin among independent voters (47%-37%). His approval ratings are still stuck at 40%, although a poll by Florida Atlantic University, which has Biden and Trump tied at 44% in a 2-way matchup, shows the president with a 47% approval rate.
Biden has been able to travel to battleground states and have photo ops in real communities, with real new jobs, and substantial federal investment. Meanwhile, Trump finds himself pleading for delays, for money, and for positive headlines. It is not all roses for the president, but this was a better week.
Jed Babbin
Grade: F
This was another one of those weeks for which President Biden and his crew would have richly earned a grade lower than an “F” if there were one. Let’s just hit the highlights in ascending order of importance.
Biden forgave another 457,000 student loans (at a cost of nearly $6 billion) despite the Supreme Court ruling that said he didn’t have the power to do that. Buying votes with taxpayer money ought to be illegal. But, then again, Biden wouldn’t obey a law. He feels free to disregard the Supreme Court.
The Biden crew issued new emission standards that will mandate that fewer than 30% of cars sold in the U.S. in eight years will be gasoline-powered. That’s right: cars and trucks that are gasoline powered will be enormously more expensive because Ol’ Joe is requiring that the vast majority be electric vehicles. EVs are a lousy solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Consumers understand that better than our government ever will.
Biden is now tottering along in his new stumble-proof shoes, but that didn’t prevent him from declaring that London, Rome, Berlin, and Toronto are U.S. cities. And now we get to the worst stuff.
The Biden administration has enabled about 200,000 deportation cases to be dismissed because they didn’t file their papers on time. An accident? Hardly. Biden will do everything possible to keep our borders open.
Former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski told Congress this week — in sworn testimony — that first son Hunter and the president’s brother James both lied under oath several times. Bobulinski testified that Joe Biden, when he was vice president, participated extensively in meetings with Hunter’s Chinese and Ukrainian business partners. According to Bobulinski, Joe Biden was the “brand” Hunter and James were selling. It was, according to Bobulinski, who witnessed much of it, nothing more than an influence-peddling scam. Joe Biden was enabling his son and brother to sell influence on U.S. policy.
And then we get to the Biden-created Israel disaster. After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that demanding a ceasefire before Hamas was routed from the southern Gaza city of Rafah equated to hoping Hamas won its war on Israel, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that was “nonsense.” Then Biden summoned Israeli negotiators to a conference on Rafah this coming week. Next, he and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are sponsoring a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire and, purportedly, the release of hostages.
Biden is living in an alternative universe where the good guys are bad, and the bad guys are good. And he’s damaging U.S. interests severely while he’s at it. Israel can no longer trust the U.S. to do the right thing. Biden is determined to do the wrong thing.
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John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His podcast with son and managing partner and pollster Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Their firm polls for independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Follow him on X @ZogbyStrategies
Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on X @jedbabbin