Let’s start with the policy. Regardless of how it was accomplished, slightly over three out of every four respondents support pulling out of Afghanistan:

The new Post-ABC poll shows 77 percent of Americans saying they support the decision to withdraw all U.S. forces. Support crosses party lines, with 88 percent of Democrats, 74 percent of Republicans and 76 percent of independents aligned behind the decision.

This is why Biden keeps shifting the debate from execution to overall policy. He’s betting on the problems of the withdrawal fading and the benefits of the exit being the sole remaining concern of voters. On execution, however, there’s almost as much unanimity against Biden as there is on the policy question in his favor:

Roughly half of all adults (52 percent) say they support getting out of Afghanistan but nonetheless disapprove of how Biden handled it, while a quarter (26 percent) support both the withdrawal decision and Biden’s handling of it. Another 17 percent disapprove of the decision to end the war, while 6 percent express no opinion. A bare majority of Democrats support both the decision and Biden’s handling of it, while a bigger majority of Republicans support the withdrawal but not how Biden handled it.

Asked more generally whether they approve or disapprove of Biden’s overall handling of the situation in Afghanistan, 60 percent say they disapprove, compared with 30 percent who approve. A lukewarm majority of fellow Democrats (56 percent) endorse Biden’s handling of the situation, but just 7 percent of Republicans and 26 percent of independents give him positive marks on that measure.

We’ll get to more of the crosstabs momentarily, but overall this is a political disaster. This will be the most significant foreign-policy operation of Biden’s presidency, the one area of his greatest supposed expertise, and Biden turned it into a catastrophe. After more than two weeks of finger-pointing, victory-claiming, and fatalism, voters still reject all of Biden’s spin and pin this disaster directly onto his shoulders. Biden’s spin barely holds a majority of his own party.

That can’t help but drag down his overall job approval rating as Biden flounders in his supposed area of expertise. And indeed, Biden finds himself underwater for the first time in this series, well outside the margin of error. The trend has been most significant among independents:

The Afghanistan withdrawal has contributed to a drop in Biden’s overall approval rating, which for the first time in his presidency is net negative. The poll finds 44 percent saying they approve of how he is handling his job, while 51 percent disapprove. In late June, the numbers were almost reversed, with 50 percent supporting and 42 percent disapproving.

Biden has suffered significant erosion among independents in perceptions of how he is handling his job. The poll shows that 57 percent of independents now disapprove of his performance, compared with 43 percent in late June. His approval rating among Democrats also has dipped, from 94 percent in June to 86 percent now. Republicans remain overwhelmingly negative in their judgment of his performance as president (89 percent disapprove, nearly identical to June’s 88 percent).

Only 36% of independents approve of Biden’s overall performance, a very low figure that highlights the political risk not just for Biden but also for his party. Democrats have to go into the midterms defending Biden, as the first midterms in a presidency are almost always referendums on the president. Democrats will try to change the subject, and the Texas abortion law might be a good opportunity for them to do so. (The White House is already taking that up as a distraction, in fact.)

If Biden’s shameful and incompetent bug-out from Afghanistan fades in the eyes of voters, that might not be as much of a problem. However, thanks to Biden’s haste to get the military out, he left thousands of Americans in the hands of the Taliban — or worse. If hostaging begins in earnest (or again, worse), then the consequences of Biden’s incompetence and cravenness will remain front and center in the eyes of voters for a long time to come. This administration wants to pretend that the war is over, but it may just be beginning again for Americans stuck in Afghanistan. Even a friendly media can’t ignore that when families of these Americans stuck behind enemy lines go to members of Congress for assistance and those elected officials go to the media. It will be even worse if the Taliban and ISIS-K exploit their hostages for propaganda purposes.

This White House has no idea about the breadth and scope of the liabilities they have created for themselves. This poll does give them a pretty good look at the stakes involved.

The rest of the poll has more bad news for Biden. On the question of blame for the thirteen dead troops at the Kabul airport, respondents put most of it on Biden, 53/43, with 38% saying Biden gets a “great deal” of blame for it. Even 26% of Democrats give Biden the blame for those deaths, and among independents it’s 52/44.

And on the key question on the policy of withdrawal, only eight percent of respondents think it will make the US safer. Forty-four percent think it makes us less safe, which means that the overwhelming majorities supporting that decision look very soft indeed. They will almost certainly vanish if another terrorist attack in the US or on our interests abroad materializes, or if we get into a prolonged hostage crisis or worse with the Americans Biden abandoned.

That’s the bet Biden placed on his chaotic retreat from Afghanistan. His fellow Democrats will be the ones losing their shirts in the midterms if it turns up snake eyes, and all of Biden’s snake-oil spin hasn’t made any difference so far on that wager.