The beat goes on for Joe Biden. The latest Monmouth University poll has him hitting a dismal new low approval rating of 34%.

Just 34% approve of Biden’s job performance, down from 54% at the start of his presidency nearly three years ago, according to the latest Monmouth University poll released Monday. More than two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of inflation and immigration. Democrats, who tend to approve of the president’s policies, are divided on border security…

“The Biden administration keeps touting their infrastructure investments and a host of positive economic indicators,” Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, said in a statement. “Those data points may be factual, but most Americans are still smarting from higher prices caused by post-pandemic inflation.”

Of course this trend hasn’t gone unnoticed by the White House. Today the Washington Post reports that Joe Biden has been increasingly frustrated by his recent polling. Biden apparently gave his team a talking to last month.

After pardoning a pair of turkeys, an annual White House tradition, Biden delivered some stern words for the small group assembled: His poll numbers were unacceptably low and he wanted to know what his team and his campaign were doing about it. He complained that his economic message had done little to move the ball, even as the economy was growing and unemployment was falling, according to people familiar with his comments, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private conversation.

For months, the president and first lady Jill Biden have told aides and friends they are frustrated by the president’s low approval rating and the polls that show him trailing former president Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination — and in recent weeks, they have grown upset that they are not making more progress.

…now Biden’s approval rating has tied his record low, standing at 38 percent with 58 percent disapproving, according to a Washington Post average of 17 polls in November and December. Voters, including a majority of Democrats, are particularly concerned about Biden’s age and consistently rank it as a bigger problem for the president, 81, than Trump, 77.

That last paragraph could be the key. Biden and his team are assuming that his fortunes should rise and fall with the state of the economy. But a lot of people still seem to think the economy isn’t so great despite some evidence to the contrary. This has led to an ongoing debate between those who believe an underlying poor economy just isn’t showing up in the usual economic numbers. Alternatively, some are arguing the negative views of the economy are irrational, the result of “vibes,” often a stand in for the idea that the right-wing media has been badmouthing the economy unfairly.

We assume the president will get credit for any good economic news even if it’s often hard to draw a clear line between presidential actions and those improvements. It’s not really a rational argument, just a kind of assumption people seem to make. If they are doing well, the top guy gets some credit. Maybe that will ultimately happen for Joe Biden if the economy continue to improve.

But right now it’s not happening. Instead of positive feelings about the economy lifting Biden’s approval rating, it looks more like negative feelings about Biden are influencing people’s feelings about the economy. That’s not how this usually works but then we’ve never had an 81 year old president before. Maybe a majority of Americans have decided Biden is just too old for the job and having decided that they are resistant to the idea that things are going well. 

Meanwhile, Biden just keeps telling reporters they are reading the wrong polls.

Three times now in a little over a month, Biden has dismissed polls that show him trailing Trump or other potential GOP rivals and insisted that reporters aren’t getting the full picture.

On Sunday as he was leaving his campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., Biden responded to a shouted question from a reporter about why he’s losing to Trump in the polls.

“You’re reading the wrong polls,” Biden said.

It’s still a long way to the election but at this early stage it looks like Biden is having trouble climbing out of this approval rating hole not because the economy is bad but because he’s too old for the job. No matter what the economy does, a lot of Americans will continue to think he’s too old. It’s a problem that only gets worse over time.