Strange but true: Despite his abysmal polling across the board lately, Biden hasn’t yet matched Trump’s all-time low in the RCP average. He got preciously close a few days ago but has since ticked back up in the average thanks to one outlier that has him at a quasi-respectable 44 percent.

Even stranger, that outlier is Republican-friendly Rasmussen. Only twice this month has Biden been north of 40 percent in any job approval survey, and in one of those two cases he was stuck at 41. Only Rasmussen has him well above the political Mendoza line.

Which is another way of saying that he’s probably just one bad Rasmussen poll away from sinking below even the worst average of Trump’s presidency. Quite a feat.

Watch this clip and reflect on two points. One: Inflation is a political problem unlike any other. I can’t think of anything a president could do short of ordering an extremely unpopular war (cough) or committing high treason in public to make his numbers much worse than Biden’s. Two: Between this and that horrific NYT survey a few days ago, the idea of him running for another term seems more laughable by the day. Trump at least had a strong economy to run on in 2020. What would Joe run on in 2024?

Inflation is taking a serious toll on President Biden’s economic approval rating. That's one of the biggest takeaways from the latest @CNBC All America Economic Survey. @steveliesman joins with more: pic.twitter.com/vUuHYaDTtz

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) July 14, 2022

Obama took office during the Great Recession and Trump presided over an unprecedented national shutdown due to COVID — and each of their numbers on the economy at their lowest moments were still comfortably better than Biden’s are right now.

At some point, the stink of failure just won’t wash off. Especially since Biden’s age makes it easy for voters to conclude that he’s not so much a prisoner of unlucky global events as too slow-footed to get out in front of them.

He does have one bit of very good news working for him lately but even that needs to be kept in perspective. Gas prices have declined for 30 straight days, a godsend for a politician who’s desperate for voters to see tangible proof that things are getting better. Nothing’s more tangible than the prices posted at the nearest gas station. But given how high prices were when they started to decline, celebrating the fact that they’re falling feels a bit like celebrating that COVID deaths had peaked during America’s previous two winter waves. The trends may be good but the daily numbers remain gruesome and stratospheric:

The average price today is slightly less than twice what it was when Biden was sworn in. A generic Republican would stand a decent chance of beating him in a national election if he did nothing more than pay for advertising that showcased the graph above.

Even the good news comes with an ominous caveat: The reason demand for gas is falling is because the Fed’s rate hikes have businesses increasingly convinced that a recession is inevitable. Back in May, economist Noah Smith wrote that he could see a scenario in which interest rates are ultimately raised all the way to *eight percent* to try the douse the inferno of inflation. Two things would have to happen to bring that about, he claimed: “First, inflation would have to fail to go away on its own. And second, modest rate hikes would have to prove insufficient to stem the inflationary tide.” Yesterday he revisited that analysis and observed that, although there are some promising signs of disinflation in the price of certain commodities like wheat and oil, other forms of inflation remain stubborn. The eight-percent scenario is still in play.

That’s the real disaster of yesterday’s ugly inflation numbers. Until the cancer begins to recede the Fed will continue applying chemo, which will bring about its own terrible side effects. As bad as they are at the moment, things are likely to get worse for Biden before they get better. If they ever get better.