Voters are blaming Biden for Washington gridlock

President Joe Biden, joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, after delivering remarks on the CDC’s updated guidance on mask wearing for vaccinated individuals Thursday, May 13, 2021, in the Rose Garden of the White House. (Official White House photo by Adam Schultz)

Voters are blaming President Biden and his Democrats for Washington’s gridlock, according to a new report in the Washington Examiner.

“Expectations have been raised that a lot was going to get done, and now the reality seems to be contrary to that belief, and we see a drop in Biden’s overall approval ratings,” explained Spencer Kimball, Emerson College Polling’s director.

“While Biden and his Capitol Hill allies complain their legislative priorities are being impeded by Republicans and Senate rules in the 50-50 chamber, some voters are oblivious to the finer details. Polls show they simply blame Democrats for Washington’s latest gridlock,” the report explained.

It got started when Georgia’s two Senate seats were won by Democrats in a January election. That gave the party 50 seats – to the GOP’s 50 seats – in the Senate. But of course Democrats actually “control” the vote because of Kamala Harris’ tie-breaker as vice president.

Kimball said the perception was that the Democrats were running the show even though they were far, far short of the 60 votes needed to defeat the Senate’s long-standing filibuster rule that requires that number to advance legislation.

Kimball said, according to the report, the two victories in Georgia eventually would “hurt” Biden because of the new perception “in the court of public opinion that the Democrats had control” of the White House and Congress.

The report noted David Paleologos, director of Suffolk University’s Political Research center, said Biden’s popularity decline is a warning sign before the 2022 elections.

During midterms, the party in the White House generally loses significantly in congressional races, and with Democrats having only the smallest of majorities in the U.S. House – a handful of votes – the GOP is poised to be voted into the majority just a little over a year from now.

Biden’s popularity, which was as high as 55% earlier, now is barely above half, at 52%. But significantly, his disapproval rating has surged from 34% to 42%.

Paleologos told the Examiner, “Voters don’t care about the filibuster rule and may view it as D.C. excuse-making. When a party is in control, voters expect them to get things done, and, if their leadership and bipartisanship is strong enough, they will successfully make the case to the minority party. If they are unable to, they will be penalized.”

Joining the warning was Patrick Murray, the chief of Monmouth University Polling Institute, who said, “When 2022 rolls around, voters will ask ‘What have you done for me?’ not ‘Did you try to be bipartisan in passing policy?’ Also, even if they agree that Republicans stymied the process, many will still blame the Dems if nothing gets done because the Dems are, nominally at least, in charge.”

Biden has failed, so far, to reach success with the far-left For the People Act, which would federalize elections across the nation. Nor has he succeeded in a long-promised infrastructure bill despite it being a nonpartisan issue.

His biggest accomplishments have been a series of executive orders that essentially reversed the progress made by President Trump on immigration, and created for Biden the crisis of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens entering the nation across the southern border.

His agenda also has been filled to pro-transgender moves that have outraged conservatives nearly unanimously.

The administration’s failures have even prompted Biden to flip on the filibuster, a procedure he long had supported. Now he said it should be modified.

Even there, however, Biden has been unsuccessful in bringing all of his own party to his opinion. Democrat Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have opposed changing it.

When the GOP was in the majority, virtually all Democrat senators opposed changing the filibuster, which they regularly used to delay or slow President Trump’s plans.

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This article was originally published by the WND News Center.

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