The Democrats have a Joe Biden problem

The Democrats dare to hope that this week will be a study in contrasts. On their side stands President Joe Biden, the veteran statesman, using all his diplomatic experience to stop a third world war breaking out in the Middle East. On the other, in the dock in Manhattan, sits Donald Trump, facing 34 criminal counts in a case relating to porn stars, adultery and hush money.

As Biden urges Israel to ‘think carefully’ as it considers how to respond to Iran’s attack last weekend, Trump is, as ever, ranting away about himself. This speaks to Biden’s 2024 re-election pitch: it’s democracy (him) vs chaos (you know who).

The problem is that the public does not appear to be swallowing the message. Whenever Trump’s ‘legal woes’ make headlines, his popularity seems to go up. That’s because many voters find the Democratic penchant for attacking their political opponent through the justice system to be far more odious than anything Trump has or hasn’t done. And they find the presence of Biden in the White House to be anything but reassuring.

Most Americans do not like Trump. But poll after poll suggests that they regard the Biden administration as the bigger disaster.

On Saturday, three days before Trump’s Manhattan trial began, a New York Times-Siena survey showed that 42 per cent of respondents ‘generally remember the years that Donald Trump was president’ as ‘mostly good’. Just 25 per cent said the same of Biden’s time in office.

Democratic politicians find it baffling that the common folk cannot see their obvious moral and professional superiority. On the economy, Biden keeps hailing the latest record job numbers as proof that ‘America’s economy is the strongest in the world’. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen talks about the United States being the ‘key driver’ of global growth.