Do you miss me yet?
Words uttered to open his CPAC address in February, Donald Trump wouldn’t have netted a majority of Americans responding yes at the time. That’s changed. While Joe Biden enjoyed a customary honeymoon phase new president’s often do entering office, that’s changed. And so has the answer to Trump’s February question. While Trump’s own approval ratings were low at this stage of his presidency after having taken a post-Charlottesville hit, Joe Biden is now lower. Among all polls and all samples, his average approval rating is 45% approval to 51% disapproval. Not good, but for Biden.
By the time you isolate likely voters, his approval rating falls five additional points to 40%. A total that’s 3-points worse than Trump’s at the same stage of his presidency. All of this is to say that if you ask the average man on the street, they disprove of President Biden. The more informed and engaged they are politically, the more likely they are to disapprove of his performance. Which given the Afghan crisis, border crisis, inflation crisis, and his get vaccinated or get fired COVID-19 policy, makes sense. Biden’s going to need more than a booster shot in the arm to fix these crises which are wrecking our country while they’re wrecking his presidency. When Biden gets what he wants we have new crises, meaning the less he gets the better we’re off.
Moving the goalpost. Remember when 70% COVID vaccination rates equaled herd immunity? After all, that was the purpose of the original goal of 70% by Independence Day. Yesterday, when President Biden participated in the “gun show” for the purpose of boosting boosters as he received his third dose of the Pfizer vaccine, he said, “one thing’s for certain a quarter of the country can’t go unvaccinated mumble, mumble, problem”. After spending the first six months of this year saying 70% is herd immunity and a return to normalcy, he’s now saying 75% isn’t even close to being good enough. What is? He suggested 97%-98%! Now he did mention he’s not a scientist, which was helpful because he’s easily otherwise confused for being one but...say what?!
So, he perhaps accidentally let the cat out of the bag regarding what’s behind his vax or die. The question is, did actual scientists, like his top medical advisor Dr. Fauci, put those numbers in his head, or is he just throwing around absurdly high specific numbers for the heck of it? And is it his intent to fire Americans starting with our front-line healthcare workers until we reach this new 97%ish threshold? To borrow a phrase from Biden, one thing’s for certain, he said 70% was normalcy and now 75% isn’t even close to being acceptable
It’s only going to get better from here.
That’s probably true of a lot of things jobs, the weather but I’m specifically talking about the pandemic. Using data from the Mayo Clinic’s highly accurate 14-day COVID-19 projection tool, new cases will continue to drop by double-digit percentages under even the worst-case scenario over the next two weeks in our state. Turning the corner once and for all on the pandemic will make a lot of things that were already better about Florida great again. And yes, to Trump, I miss you and I daresay even some of the uncouth Tweet people do too.