Joe Biden Has Worst Month of Political Career 4 Years After Major Comeback

President Joe Biden had one of the worst months of his political career, a strikingly different February from the one he saw four years ago when he made a major comeback that blew up the 2020 Democratic primary.

In the last month, Biden saw the release of a damning report about his mental capacity, the liberal media’s subsequent shift away from him, polls that show Democrats missing Trump-era policies, a troubling message from Michigan’s “uncommitted” voters and a win from his independent opponent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who got on the ballot in both Arizona and Georgia. On top of all that, Republicans have made it their mission to hammer Biden on immigration and border security, a strategy that appears to be working now that Biden is considering issuing an executive order to crack down on the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

But four years ago, Biden’s political future had been filled with promise. His landslide victory in South Carolina’s 2020 primary breathed new life into his campaign. Brought by a surge of support among African American voters, and two days before Super Tuesday, Biden’s victory marked a turning point for the Democrat. It was the first time Biden, who had previously ran two unsuccessful campaigns for president, won in a presidential primary.

His win in South Carolina resurrected his campaign, pushing his moderate challengers out of view, blunting the rise of Senator Bernie Sanders’ progressive campaign and ultimately handing him the Democratic nomination that would lead him to defeat Trump in the general election.

“Four years ago, the progressives were strongly supporting Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. However, after South Carolina, it became clear that the moderates would control the election, and then Biden would become the nominee,” strategist Steve Mitchell told Newsweek.

But this year’s February has not been as auspicious. Today, “Biden is in a very difficult place, heading towards re-election in 2024,” Mitchell said.

The general election is shaping up to be a rematch between him and his predecessor. And RealClearPolitics’ current 2024 projections show Trump leading Biden by 2 percentage points, with Trump’s advantage growing even larger to 3 points when support for Kennedy is factored in.

“February was a tough month for Biden. His one consolation is that Trump had a tough month, too,” political scientist John Pitney told Newsweek.

Immigration & the Border

February’s polls not only delivered bad news for Biden, but also good news to Trump. The most recent Harvard CAPS-Harris poll shows that 35 percent of Democrats say they miss the former president’s policies on the economy, immigration and crime and 70 percent say the country needs a new president.

These figures come amid a prolonged border battle in Washington, where congressional Republicans, egged on by Trump’s opposition to the legislation, have refused to pass the deal backed by the Biden White House. Inaction on the southern border has pushed the president to weigh invoking executive action to restrict migrants’ ability to seek asylum in the U.S. if they crossed illegally, a measure reminiscent of actions that Trump took when he was in office. Such a move is likely to invite harsh criticisms from progressives, but Biden has signaled he’s run out of options to handle the border crisis that has plagued his presidency.

The immigration issue has also set up a showdown between Biden and Trump, who are both visiting the border on Thursday. Biden is expected to meet with Border Patrol agents, law enforcement and local leaders in Brownsville while Trump delivers remarks just 300 miles away from Eagle Pass.

Special Counsel Robert Hur’s Report

This month also saw the release of Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents. Although the special counsel declined to prosecute the president, the report painted a picture of a forgetful commander-in-chef who has trouble recalling things like when he served as vice president and when his son Beau passed away. Hur also said part of the reason he did not bring charges against Biden was because the jury could be sympathetic to a “well-meaning, elderly man with poor memory.”

The report quickly earned the ire of the president, who slammed Hur for suggesting he could not remember important details of his life and who held a last-minute press conference to sharply criticize the report.

Biden’s response, however, was not enough to stop the damage that Hur’s report had on both voters and liberal media outlets from turning on him. An ABC poll conducted days after the report’s release found that an overwhelming 86 percent of Americans, and 73 percent of Democrats, think Biden is too old to serve another term. And in the week following the report, several publications that had previously supported Biden and been critical of Trump published articles and op-eds casting doubt on the president’s ability to serve another term.

As of Wednesday, only 39 percent of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing as president, nearly 10 points lower than Trump’s at the same point during his presidency. During the last week of February 2020, 47 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s job as president, Gallup data shows. The last time Biden faced such negative publicity was during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, which sent his approval ratings so low that they’ve never fully been able to recover.

“If the prospect of a second Trump term really poses a dangerous threat to American democracy, why is the Democratic Party depending on an incumbent president with an approval number lower than Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, or even Trump were facing at the equivalent moment before their failed reelection bids?” Damon Linker, a columnist for The Atlantic, asked.

Michigan Primary

Biden easily won the Democratic presidential primary in Michigan on Tuesday, but a protest vote sent his campaign a warning sign for November. The president won 81 percent of the Democratic vote in the battleground state, but a last-minute movement fueled by anger towards Biden’s response to the Isarel-Hamas war successfully persuaded more than 100,000 people, or 13 percent, in Michigan to vote “uncommitted” on the primary ballot.

“This defection on the left that Biden is facing, is analogist to the problems that President Lyndon Johnson faced in the midterm elections in 1966 when strong democratic opposition to the war in Vietnam, alt in a catastrophic election for Democrats, and ultimately led to President Johnson’s decision on March 31, 1968, not to seek reelection as president,” Mitchell, who is based in Michigan, said.

But Mitchell noted that this was an easy protest vote because it didn’t cost voters or Biden anything, or in other words, choosing to vote “uncommitted” didn’t equate to handing Trump the White House.

“In November, our American voters are going to have to decide whether or not they want to cast a vote for Trump, which is very unlikely, or cast a vote for Trump by not voting for Biden, which is the same thing as supporting President Trump,” he said.

RFK Jr.

American Values 2024, the outside group supporting Kennedy’s bid, also announced Tuesday that it had gathered enough signatures to qualify the independent candidate to appear on the ballot in Georgia and Arizona, two battleground states that were instrumental to Biden’s 2020 victory and that will likely be key to November’s election.

Although Kennedy’s longshot bid is unlikely to win him the presidency, some worry that his appearance on the ballot could take votes away from Biden and help Trump win a second term. A New York Times/Siena College poll from October showed Kennedy with 26 percent support among Arizona voters and 24 percent support among Georgia voters. Biden and Trump were tied at 33 percent each in Arizona, while Trump had 36 percent support in Georgia to Biden’s 29 percent.

Where Does Biden Go From Here?

“Biden has enough time to pull ahead,” Pitney said. “Two things need to change. First, he either has to make visible progress on border security, or at least convince voters that the Republicans are to blame for inaction. Second, attitudes on the economy have to shift. Unemployment is low and the inflation rate is coming down, but people are still sour on the economy. If they are still sour in November, Biden will have a big problem on Election Day.”

Although Biden’s February was far from ideal, Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross told Newsweek the president doesn’t exactly have to turn things around. Instead, he should tout the achievements he’s made over the last four years.

“Biden has a record to run on with sizeable gains in employment, reducing the cost of prescription drugs, student debt forgiveness for 150,000 borrowers and counting, a $1 trillion infrastructure package that has already begun over 4000 projects, not to mention the CHIPS Act, inflation reduction, and a post-COVID recovery that saved America from an economic depression,” Cross said.

The University of Georgia’s Audrey Haynes also told Newsweek that Biden’s campaign could lean into the messages that they’ve received this February.

“This is classic signaling from the party voters,” Haynes said. “With a competitive race, blocks of voters have more influence than usual. When the election is likely to be determined by 60,000 voters distributed across 5 or 6 states, even 10 percent uncommitted can have an impact. And it is done early enough that it could impact the nature of Biden’s election campaign as well as his actions as president.”

“They are putting electoral pressure on Biden,” she said.