Another day, another poll reminding us of who was right and who was wrong in that exchange on “The View” a few weeks ago. I don’t think Biden is prioritizing the issues correctly, said guest Gretchen Carlson, an independent. Why, you sound like a Republican, retorted liberal Sunny Hostin.

They were both right. Polling showed that independents nationally agreed with Carlson that Biden is focused on the wrong things. And Hostin was right that independents do sound more Republican nowadays.

I wonder if there could be a connection.

By Biden’s recent standards, today’s CNN poll almost counts as good news for him. The trendlines are in the wrong direction on (almost) everything but he’s still at 48 percent job approval and his party leads on the generic ballot. Yesterday’s Suffolk poll was, uh, different. Still, this is ominous for him in a number of ways due in part to the fact that he’s the first president we’ve had in awhile without a base of hardcore supporters. Obama had his cultists and Trump had his cultists but no one gets too excited about Sleepy Joe. Which means, when things go south, the share of the electorate that continues to “strongly approve” of him is destined to hit lower lows than his two predecessors did.

CNN’s seeing that today.

One year out from the 2022 midterm elections, 58% of Americans say President Joe Biden hasn’t paid enough attention to the nation’s most important problems, as a majority disapproves of the way he’s handling his job as President, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS…

All told, 48% of adults approve of the way Biden is handling the job while 52% disapprove. Intensity within those ratings breaks sharply against the President. The share saying they strongly approve of Biden’s performance has dropped to just 15%, down from 34% in April. Although CNN does not ask strength of approval in every poll, that number never dipped below 20% during the presidencies of either Barack Obama or Donald Trump.…

The nearly 6 in 10 who say Biden hasn’t had the right priorities is similar to the share who felt that way about Trump in September 2017 (59%) and who said the same about Obama in January 2010 (55%). Both presidents’ parties suffered significant losses in Congress in the midterm elections held during the second year of their time in office.

You would think that an electoral wipeout last week plus a poll showing six in 10 voters believe you’re focused on the wrong things would be an alarm bell that it’s time to change course, but what can Biden do realistically? If he gives up on the reconciliation bill now, the left will never forgive him. Because infrastructure negotiations have dragged on so much longer than his party anticipated, he’s trapped in a nightmare of his own making in which voters’ anxiety about inflation and the supply chain continue to rise and yet Democrats remain consumed with passing a raft of progressive social-welfare programs. That was Carlson’s point to Hostin. And now here’s the proof that she was right:

What priorities do voters wish Biden had? Behold:

It must be terrifying for Democrats to have spent many months on bills that would involve $3 trillion+ in new spending only to find that voters think they’re not sufficiently focused on the economy. That’s evidence that Americans don’t see the bipartisan roads-and-bridges bill or the reconciliation package as fundamentally “economic” despite Dems’ attempts to build support by selling them as legislation that’ll create jobs. The White House is hoping that passing the bipartisan bill and then a Build Back Better compromise will restore Biden’s political fortunes, but looking at this data I’m doubtful. If anything, it might deepen the perception that he’s focused on the wrong things.

Especially if the new spending exacerbates inflation. I wonder if the White House is mulling these ambivalent results for BBB in Suffolk’s poll yesterday:

USAToday/Suffolk poll, 11/3-5 (before BIB passage)

BIB
Support 60.7%
Oppose 31.5%

BBB
Support 47.3%
Oppose 43.5%https://t.co/aKhDnNwnx9 pic.twitter.com/YOhtSseM2l

— Bill Scher (@billscher) November 8, 2021

Equally scary for Dems is that their own base continues to prioritize COVID above the economy, unlike indies and Republicans. But what do Democratic voters want the White House to do about the pandemic that it hasn’t already done? Vaccines for kids are here. A federal vaccine mandate has been drafted and will take effect in January. Amazing new therapeutics from Pfizer and Merck are headed to the market soon. Most Americans are ready to turn the page on pandemic COVID and accept the new reality of endemic COVID, particularly if it means getting people back to work and getting the supply chain under control. Many Democrats are too, in fact: “The connection between perception of the top issue and views on whether Biden has had the right priorities is strong, and even among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, the share saying Biden has had the wrong priorities climbs to 42% among those who call the economy the top problem, compared with 17% among those who consider the coronavirus the top problem.”

Maybe the vaccine mandate is coming back to bite him. Inasmuch as non-Democratic voters now prioritize the economy over COVID, they might see the mandate as doing more harm than good by forcing unvaccinated people to be laid off. (Some analysts believe it’ll do more good than harm by coaxing unemployed workers who are nervous about infection back into the labor force.) But that means Biden’s stuck. If he adopts the priorities of independents and relaxes the mandate to boost the economy, he’ll alienate his own supporters. If he doesn’t, he’ll strengthen Republicans’ appeals to indies. He’s jammed here, just as he is on whether to proceed with or abandon reconciliation. He can give the left what it wants or be prudent to appeal to the center but not both, which makes a near-term political recovery hard to grok.

Longer-term, he’s in better shape. Maybe COVID will continue to recede as population immunity builds next year, people afraid of infection will gradually return to the labor force, and the supply chain will even out before next fall, producing an economic boom. But there’s not a lot Biden can do to facilitate that. His party’s midterm fate might be in the hands of a virus.

One curious quirk in CNN’s data worth noting: Despite Biden’s declining numbers, congressional Democrats increased their lead on the generic ballot from 45/44 in September to 49/44 now. I’m not sure how to explain that, and since it’s contradicted by the balance of recent generic-ballot polling tracked by RCP, it’s probably worth dismissing as a fluke.