The Washington Post: The long slide - Inside Biden’s declining popularity as he struggles with multiple crises

The second week of August began as a time for vacation for President Biden and some of his team. Then Afghanistan imploded. The reports out of Kabul were harrowing: Images of desperate Afghan nationals clinging to U.S. military airplanes leaving the country and, days later, a suicide bombing at a gate to the airport that killed 13 U.S. troops.

Addressing the nation on Aug. 16, Biden defended his decision to leave Afghanistan but acknowledged that the Taliban takeover of the country “did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.” Administration officials and allies publicly argued there was no good way to exit a war that had been lost years ago, and privately said that within a few weeks, most Americans — who largely supported the decision to bring U.S. troops home from the 20-year conflict — would forget about the messy process.

But across the river in Arlington, aides working for Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s gubernatorial campaign in Virginia were picking up on troubling trends. Their race was tightening, amid what they would later describe in a memo as “a negative national climate” — collateral damage from the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, among other issues. The memo found that voters also viewed the coronavirus pandemic and the economy as two of their three most important issues.

In post-election briefings with Democrats after McAuliffe lost, campaign aides argued that the crises the Biden administration faced in August undercut the president and his party’s message of competence and a return to normalcy.

Biden presented himself as an antidote to his predecessor, offering the promise of what his own campaign ads called “strong, steady, stable leadership” after four years of bedlam under President Donald Trump. But the tumult surrounding the administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan offered an early glimpse of the cascade of crises that have badly eroded Biden’s image of restoring calm.

Biden on Thursday will mark the first full year of his presidency facing intraparty Democratic disarray, stalled legislation, supply chain issues, worrying inflation, rising tensions with Russia and another highly transmissible coronavirus variant called omicron — all of which have led to an approval ratings average stuck in the low 40s.

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