With basically one year to go before the midterm elections, a new poll from Suffolk University and USA Today suggests that if the Democrats don’t find a way to turn things around, they could be looking at potential losses that would dwarf previous midterm drubbings suffered by the party in power. Most of the blame is landing in the lap of President Joe Biden, even in a poll that has traditionally been a bit kinder to him than some of the other major polling outfits. Biden’s approval rating has tanked to 38%, with 59% disapproving and barely 3% being undecided. Sometimes a politician can ring up a bad approval rating but at least find some good news further down in the survey, but that isn’t the case here. Nearly every metric being measured looks bad not only for Biden but for his party as a whole.

A year before the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans hold a clear lead on the congressional ballot as President Joe Biden’s approval rating sinks to a new low of 38%.

A USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, taken Wednesday through Friday, found that Biden’s support cratered among the independent voters who delivered his margin of victory over President Donald Trump one year ago.

Biden and his party are poised for a rebound, advocates argue, after the House passed a $1.2 trillion “hard” infrastructure bill late Friday, sending the signature measure to Biden’s desk for his signature.

If there’s any solace to be found for Uncle Joe, it might be the fact that he’s not the least popular person in his administration. Vice President Kamala Harris is doing even worse with an approval rating of just 27.8%. A slim majority disapprove of the veep, with roughly one in five (21%) apparently not knowing enough about her to have an opinion.

The follow-up questions specific to Joe Biden are little more than a hit parade of bad news. 46%, say Biden has done a worse job than they expected. 44% of independent voters feel that he’s underperformed while just 6% said he’s done better than expected. 64% said they don’t want Biden to run for a second term. (He’s actually now exceeded Donald Trump because 58% say they don’t want him to run again either.)

Of course, Joe Biden isn’t up for election in 2022, so the number more analysts are watching is the coattails effect that Biden is having on the generic ballot. The news for Democrats is no better on that front. When asked whether they would prefer to vote for a Republican congressional candidate next year or a Democrat, the GOP carried the field 46%-38%. That’s a nearly ten-point disparity when the Democrats were actually up by a few points one year ago. It’s worth remembering that the generic ballot rarely reflects how specific elections will turn out because many voters are okay with their own representative even if their feelings toward the party at large have soured. But it’s still a worrying trend for the Democrats.

Those who view the country as being on the wrong track outnumber those who are more optimistic by a 66 to 20 margin. There’s just no way to paint any lipstick on that pig. As usual, approval of the job Congress is doing is even worse, with only 12% giving them a thumbs up.

At least to me, the biggest number to watch here is the mood of the independent voters. Biden overperformed with independent voters in 2020 and it’s arguable that they were the ones who put him over the top. If they’ve soured on him now and he can’t find a way to turn that around, his time in the spotlight is probably drawing to a close. And from the look of things, he’ll probably take his party’s majority status in the House and Senate down with him.