The clearest takeaway from President Biden’s State of the Union address last week was that he believes that Donald Trump poses a greater peril to the U.S. than Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Ali Khamenei, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis all rolled into one. The president came to the podium less focused on unifying America in the face of proliferating foreign threats than on launching his re-election campaign against the Orange Peril.
That was probably a mistake. Even if Mr. Biden is 100% correct about the danger Mr. Trump poses to American democracy, voter concerns about the competence of the Biden foreign policy may end up helping Mr. Trump return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Rather than telling voters, again, about Mr. Trump’s shortcomings, Mr. Biden needed to explain why the world situation has grown so dramatically worse on his watch and how he intends to stop the grim slide.
Having survived four years of Mr. Trump in the White House, many voters may be less worried about Trump 2.0 than what looks increasingly like a global drift toward World War III. Mr. Biden’s approach to foreign threats doesn’t inspire much confidence. A Feb. 21 Quinnipiac poll showed 60% of respondents disapproving of the president’s foreign policy, with 36% approving. The poll found 62% disapproved of his response to the Israel-Hamas war, and 63% disapproved of his handling of the situation at the Mexican border. An Associated Press/NORC poll conducted in late January found only 38% of voters approved of how Mr. Biden is handling “the U.S. relationship with China.” A February Harvard CAPS-Harris poll got similarly dismal results, with 61% calling Mr. Biden’s Iran policy “unsuccessful” and 71% wanting tougher policies on the southern border.
Worse for the incumbent, as the world crisis grows hotter, voters care more about foreign policy. AP/NORC pollsters found that the share of Democrats who named foreign-policy issues other than immigration as a major priority more than doubled (from 16% to 34%) from December 2022 to December 2023. The share of Republicans increased from 23% to 46%.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Ruth King
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, http://www.ruthfullyyours.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.