President Joe Biden was having a reasonably good day Tuesday, signing a historic marriage equality act to guard same-sex and interracial unions, and reveling in economic numbers showing inflation easing greater than expected and gas prices dropping speedily. Meanwhile, basketball star Brittney Griner was tossing a ball around in Texas, recovering after the Biden administration negotiated her release from a penal colony in Russia, where she spent nearly a yr behind bars.
Oh, and his Energy Department announced some groundbreaking, government-funded recent scientific research that just might save the planet from the devastating environmental impact of climate change.
“Today’s day. Today, America takes an important step towards equality,” Biden said in a South Lawn ceremony attended by tons of of individuals and including musical performances from Cyndi Lauper and others. “The road to this moment has been long. But those that consider in equality and justice never gave up,” Biden added.
“Marriage is an easy proposition – whom do you like, and can you be loyal to that person you like? It is not more complicated than that,” Biden said. “Everyone must have the correct to reply that query for themselves without the federal government interference.”
Biden could be glad, but voters aren’t joining his bandwagon just yet. The president’s approval rankings – while inching up – remain underwater, meaning more people disapprove than approve of him as president just as Biden is mulling a run for reelection.
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A USA Today/Suffolk University survey released Tuesday showed that about half of voters disapprove of Biden, while 45.5% approve of him. That is one of the vital encouraging polls for Biden shortly: The common of polls on the positioning FiveThirtyEight has Biden about 10 percentage points underwater, with 42.2% of voters approving of the president, and 52.4% disapproving of him.
But that does not appear to daunt the president, who overcame early setbacks in his presidential campaign and later won approval for major laws that had appeared doomed in Congress, experts note.
“He’s a man who just thrives on low expectations,” says David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk poll. “He does well when people think he’s down and out.”
Biden had a poor showing in the primary three presidential nominating contests in 2020, failing to win Iowa, Recent Hampshire or Nevada, Paleologos notes. But after a solid win in South Carolina, Biden emerged strong, later securing the nomination and besting Trump in the final.
Biden enjoyed high approval rankings after defeating former President Donald Trump and winning some early legislative and policy victories, akin to the COVID-19 relief American Rescue Plan.
But after the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, Biden’s numbers began to tank. By summer of this yr, the president’s approval rating was nearly 20 percentage points below his approval rating, and Democrats were anxious that an already difficult midterm election yr would find yourself as a disaster for the party.
Since then, Biden has racked up some major legislative and electoral wins, signing into law essentially the most significant climate change and gun safety bills in a long time. Democrats actually expanded their numbers within the Senate after the autumn elections and limited losses within the House, so the incoming GOP majority can have a harder time keeping its fractured caucus in line.
Biden has done higher at messaging his accomplishments, says Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. The signing of the Respect for Marriage Act, for instance, was a full-on event, attended by bipartisan members of Congress, LGBTQ community members and including reference to then-controversial comments then-Vice President Biden made in a TV interview supporting same-sex marriage rights.
Biden was criticized for jumping the gun then but later got here to look ahead of the curve.
“That is the time to start out spiking the football,” Miringoff says.
Biden made his political points as well through the historic ceremony, noting the remarks Justice Clarence Thomas on the “extreme” Supreme Court had made in his concurring opinion undoing one other right – that of abortion access.
“Sadly, we must acknowledge one more reason we’re here. Congress is acting because an extreme Supreme Court has stripped the rights for tens of millions of Americans that existed for half a century,” Biden said, referring to the Dobbs decision reversing abortion rights and putting the correct to same-sex marriage, interracial marriage and contraception in play.
He said the law he was signing wasn’t enough – that Congress needed to pass the Equality Act to ban discrimination against LGBTQ people.
“This should not be about conservative or liberal, red or blue,” Biden said. But “a promise that we’re all created equal. We’re all entitled to what Abraham Lincoln called an open field and a good probability.”
After he signed the bill, Biden gave his pen to Vice President Kamala Harris, who performed a number of the nation’s first same-sex marriages in San Francisco in 2004.
