We’ve listened to weeks of explanations from Jen Psaki (when she’s not circling back) about what’s going on at the southern border. We are repeatedly assured that the situation there is not a “crisis” and even if it is, the new administration is busy trying to clean up “the mess” left behind by Donald Trump. While even CNN and MSNBC have begun to call those assertions into question, there has still been a tendency for many (but not all) in the mainstream media to give Biden a pass. So how is all of this sitting with the public? The latest polling from Rasmussen Reports may be demonstrating that people simply aren’t buying the hype anymore. A significant majority (67%) would describe the situation as a crisis. Even more to the point, blaming Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be working very well.
The White House has spent weeks denying that the surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border should be called a “crisis,” but two-thirds of voters say it is a crisis.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 67% of Likely U.S. Voters say the current situation with migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border is a crisis. Twenty-three percent (23%) say it’s not a crisis and 10% are not sure.
I’d call this a pleasant surprise if the situation wasn’t so serious. We’ve been covering this story long enough by this point that most of our readers already know what the deal is. We know there’s a crisis at the border and we know what/who caused it. No amount of verbal jujitsu from Jen Psaki is going to change the facts. The bigger question, at least for me, is how effective the mainstream media has been in providing cover for Joe Biden. At this point, it certainly doesn’t seem like it’s working. 67% is a significant majority. The 23% who are denying that a crisis exists probably only represents the furthest-left fringe of the Democratic Party who will never admit to anything being amiss when there’s a Democrat in charge.
As to people not thinking that the Biden administration should be blaming the Bad Orange Man, that’s not terribly surprising either, assuming they’ve been paying any attention at all. This doesn’t mean that there are suddenly vast numbers of previously NeverTrump people suddenly pining for the days when he was in charge. But at the same time, most people certainly recognize that the captain is the one to shoulder the blame when the ship hits an iceberg. Joe Biden took a situation at the border that was relatively calm and overhauled our immigration policies in a single day. The result is what you’re seeing now, with pleading immigrants streaming over the border wearing t-shirts asking Joe Biden to “let us in.”
This lack of message control in the White House is likely also a driver of a second poll that Rasmussen Reports released at the same time. How many people believe that the country is headed in the right direction today? Would you be shocked if I told you that it’s a meager 41%?
To borrow a phrase from the current president… c’mon, man. This was supposed to be the era of Joe Biden leading the nation on a path toward unity and normalcy, wasn’t it? Scoring 41% on the right track, wrong track question puts Biden dangerously close to Trump-level numbers. And that’s pretty remarkable when you consider that Trump slugged through all of 2020 while battling a literal plague with no assured resolution in sight. Biden inherited a country where two vaccines were already in production with a third on the way. He should have been able to parlay that into some pretty good approval numbers, shouldn’t he?
The Biden administration is off to a rocky start. And Status Quo Joe isn’t getting quite as much of the kid gloves treatment from the media that he’s used to. Perhaps there’s hope for some national reality checks coming down the line after all.
