President-elect Trump will be sworn in to replace Biden in the White House, bringing to a close Monday a half-century-long political career.
Biden, a longtime Democratic senator from Delaware who served two terms as vice president and one term as president, can claim numerous congressional victories and other accomplishments during his four years in the White House. leaves office as one of America’s most unpopular presidents. National history.
And although Mr. Biden promised a shake-up of his predecessor and succeeded in defeating Mr. Trump in the 2020 election, he faces a legacy tainted by his failure to prevent Mr. Trump from returning to office. .
Biden appeared to admit in an open letter to the American people on Wednesday that he failed to deliver on key promises from his 2020 campaign.
What the latest FOX News poll says about President Biden
President Joe Biden speaks about foreign policy during a speech at the State Department in Washington, Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
“I ran for president because I believe the soul of America is at stake. Our very nature is at stake,” Biden wrote.
However, he lamented, “It’s still like that.”
Veteran political scientist Wayne L’Esperance said, “President Biden ran on the platform of normalization in 2020 and was elected.It seems that voters wanted that in principle, but history will remember Biden as failing to fulfill his promises.” Probably.” the president of the University of New England told Fox News.
New survey shows Biden leaves office with approval ratings still at rock bottom
In his farewell address to the nation last week, Biden praised his leadership as a president who promoted political stability at home while strengthening U.S. leadership abroad, and his leadership in guiding the nation through the coronavirus pandemic. He aimed to solidify his achievements as a person. We made historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy, revitalizing the economy, delivering historic gains in job creation, and lowering prescription drug prices for millions of Americans.
President Joe Biden delivers his farewell address in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, speaking from the Oval Office at the White House. (Pool via Mandel Gun/AP) (Pool via Mandel Gun/AP)
But he also used the speech to “warn the nation” that “an oligarchy is forming in America with extreme wealth, power, and influence that is literally destroying our entire democracy.” It threatens our fundamental rights, our freedoms, and a fair chance for advancement for all.” ”
Biden will end his first term in the White House with approval ratings still low.
The latest Fox News national poll, conducted Jan. 10-13 and released Thursday, gave him an approval rating of 42% and a disapproval rating of 57%.
According to the latest CNN poll, only 36% of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing in the White House, which is higher than the president in cable news network polls during Biden’s tenure in the White House. This matched the lowest score recorded in the past.
Is history kind or unkind to President Biden?
And in a national poll by USA Today/Suffolk University and Marist College, Biden’s approval rating is 43%, slightly higher but still in negative territory. All polls were conducted in early and mid-January.
Biden’s approval rating hovered in the low to mid-50s during his first six months in the White House. But Biden was widely criticized for his handling of the chaos surrounding the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and in the summer of that year, there was a surge in coronavirus cases, mainly among unvaccinated people. As a result, the president’s numbers began to decline from August 2021.
The president’s plummeting approval ratings have been compounded by soaring inflation (which began spiking in the summer of 2021 and remains a major economic concern for Americans to this day) and the number of people trying to enter the United States along the southern border. It was also fueled by a surge in immigration.
Biden’s approval rating plummeted in the fall of 2021 and never returned to positive territory.
The latest polls also show that many Americans believe Biden’s presidency has been a failure.
US President Joe Biden delivers his farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on January 15, 2025 (Photo by Mandel NGAN/Pool/AFP) (Photo by Mandel NGAN/Pool/AFP) (via AFP) Getty Images) ((Pool via Mandel Gunn/AP)
Overall, 61% of adults questioned in a CNN poll said they view Biden’s presidency as a failure, while 38% see it as a success.
According to the USA Today/Suffolk University poll, 44% of registered voters said history would judge Biden as a failed president, and 27% said Biden would be judged as a fair president. Of those asked, 21% said history would view Biden as a good president, but just 5% said Biden would be viewed as a great president.
For the latest FOX News poll results, go here
Just over a third of adults nationwide asked in the Marist poll said Biden will be remembered as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history, while 19% said he was considered a below-average president. I answered yes.
Twenty-eight percent of participants said Biden’s performance was considered average, while 19% said he was considered above average or one of the best presidents in U.S. history.
“Ironically, I spent too much time on policy and not enough time on politics,” Biden told MSNBC in one of his final interviews in office, acknowledging his regrets. .
Biden’s legacy of ill-fated re-election also weighs heavily.
In April 2023, Biden, then 80 years old, announced that he would seek reelection. Fourteen months later, 2024 election polls show Mr. Biden performing disastrously against the former president in debates, falling behind Mr. Trump and showing that Mr. Biden’s physical and cognitive abilities are just four years away from the White House. It has reignited deep concerns among voters about whether it will survive the year.
President Joe Biden (right) and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump participate in the only presidential debate at CNN studios in Atlanta, Georgia on June 27, 2024. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Less than a month later, following backlash from Democrats, Biden announced he was ending his campaign and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s standard bearer in 2024.
Two and a half months after Trump’s convincing victory over Harris, Biden still faces much of the blame for Democrats’ setbacks in November’s election.
“Joe Biden’s story is one of the great tragedies in American politics, and I really think it is. He’s a brilliant, well-deserved man,” James Carville, a longtime Democratic strategist, told Fox News. He should have a highly regarded retirement, but that’s not the case.”
Carville, who was the political mastermind behind former President Bill Clinton’s historic White House victory in 1992, also argued that “it’s hard to blame anyone but him.”
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But Biden’s friends and supporters feel negative perceptions of the soon-to-be former president will change over time.
John McNeil, a longtime Democratic consultant and Biden supporter, told Fox News that “Biden is going to be in pretty good shape because he was able to forcefully pass some bills.” . “Some of Mr. Biden’s accomplishments will become clearer in the coming years.”
But McNeil, founding director of Unite the Country, a super PAC that backed the then-former vice president in the 2020 Democratic primary, also said Biden was “just a stopgap between President Trump and Trump.” “It may be considered as such.” Historians will tell you about that. ”
Paul Steinhauser is a political reporter based in New Hampshire.
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