Democrats, liberal media pivot from unpopular Biden ahead of midterms as ‘reality’ sets in

Prominent Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media are moving away from President Biden as the once-prominent narrative that he’s right for the job has increasingly faded. 

Biden was beloved by the liberal media throughout his campaign and largely through the first year of his presidency. Corporate news organizations downplayed his gaffes, ignored his scandals and fawned over anything positive he was able to accomplish. But lately, as Biden’s approval rating shrinks and Democrats panic about the looming midterm election, liberals have started to turn on the unpopular president. 

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DePauw University journalism professor Jeffrey McCall has taken notice and feels liberal pundits and reporters have to "move on from Biden" for practical purposes, not because they think he is wrong on policy or management matters.

"The establishment media ran for a long time with the narrative that Biden was the stable and seasoned president the nation needed.  That narrative broke down long ago in the minds of many Americans, including left-of-center people who voted for Biden," McCall told Fox News Digital. 

"The nation's economic and international problems have been looming for some time and American citizens have known that.  The media was late to the party and is just now figuring out that the narrative they've been pushing looks pretty hollow to regular Americans who perceive the frail President is not up to the challenges the nation faces," McCall continued. "The liberal media is now having to face the reality of a struggling Biden presidency, not because they think he is ineffective on policy matters, but only because they fear potential bad results in the midterm elections."

NBC News’ Chuck Todd led a panel on Sunday’s "Meet the Press" that focused on economic woes turning off younger Biden voters after a CNBC poll showed that only 35% approve of the economy. 

"It’s not great," PBS’ Amna Nawaz said. "You're talking about one of the key groups that not only help Democrats win back control of Congress, propel Biden into the White House, but are also going to be in play in larger numbers than ever before in the upcoming midterms and the economy if front and center."

Todd then showed Democrats polling poorly in Nevada and admitted it’s an issue for the party at large. 

"This is a problem and Nevada may be the most acute," Todd said. 

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Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon Jr. wrote a Tuesday piece, "Bidenism is failing. The question is how badly," which put a harsh spotlight on a dismal approval rating of 42 percent that was recently determined by FiveThirtyEight’s polling average. 

"When presidents become more unpopular, the media covers them more negatively, and other politicians, particularly politicians from their own party, feel freer to criticize them — which tends to make them even more unpopular. Presidential unpopularity creates a self-reinforcing cycle," Bacon wrote. "But while it’s clear Bidenism is failing, it’s not clear exactly why." 

Bacon then explained that just about every type of Democrat has a specific issue with Biden. 

"More centrist Democrats argue that the president, particularly early in his term, swung too far to the left. More liberal Democrats argue that Biden is not progressive enough. Others cite the Democratic infighting this past year over Biden’s agenda, the traditional backlash against first-term presidents, COVID and, most often, inflation," he wrote. 

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Bacon isn’t the only columnist from a prominent liberal newspaper to point out Biden’s struggles in a scathing piece. 

New York Times columnist Charles Blow penned a Monday column headlined, "A Biden Blood Bath?" Blow noted that he was "shocked" by a recent Quinnipiac University indicating Biden’s approval rating had sunk to just 33 percent.

"You might argue that this was just one poll, but Biden’s approval is down in multiple surveys," Blow pointed out. "As CNN’s Harry Enten pointed out Friday, there were four major national polls released last week, and in three of them — including Quinnipiac — Biden had the lowest showing of his presidency. In the fourth, he was ‘one point off the lowest.’"

Indeed, as Blow informed Washington Post readers, CNN’s polling guru also sounded the alarm on Biden’s troubling poll numbers. 

"When you have three or four pollsters showing the lowest numbers for the President of the United States, that is indicative of a president who is in a lot of trouble, at least to where he is standing historically," Enten said last week. "This is a really, really, really bad number."

Blow went on to break down why he feels many Americans have turned on Biden, declaring that poor messaging is an issue but "the messenger" might be the larger problem for Democrats. 

"I think the problem is more on ground level, a gut level: How do people feel? They feel stuck and angry, they’re tired and overwhelmed, and that energy is being directed at Biden," Blow wrote, adding that Biden is a "decent man" and many voted for him because he was the opposite of former President Trump. 

"But America has changed its mind and its mood. It wants a show and a showman to distract from its misery. Biden is not that. And he is being punished for not being a huckster," Blow wrote. 

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Blow detailed how Biden’s presidency "has been stymied on some big promises that he made during the campaign on issues like voting rights and police reform," "has moved from the macro to the micro, taking steps that will indeed benefit many Americans but are too narrowly focused to transform our society or fix the core problems that plague it" and has seen crime and the economy go in the wrong directions. 

"But all this taken together — in addition to voter suppression and racial and political gerrymandering — may prove hugely problematic for Democrats and for the administration, unless they can turn things around before Election Day. If not, we could well be looking forward to a Biden blood bath," Blow wrote. 

Far-left New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones, who is responsible for the controversial 1619 Project, declared Biden failed to do anything voters put him in office to accomplish when scolding a different reporter who called Biden’s "collapse" with young voters "kind of mysterious."

"You can’t just fail to do anything they put you in office to do and say save democracy when you won’t take basic steps to save democracy yourself," Hannah-Jones wrote. 

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CNN’s John Harwood, who is typically in lockstep with the Biden administration, admitted the president has been "stuck in the avalanche-warning zone for months" and faces the "likelihood of a substantial" thumping in November. 

Biden pollster John Anzalone even told Politico the situation is "sour" for Democrats. 

"No one’s going to sit there as a Democratic consultant and try to bulls--- you that this is anything but a really sour environment for Democrats," Anzalone said. 

Meanwhile, high-profile Democrats have also voiced concerns about Biden over issues including immigration restrictions. 

With just over a month to go until the Biden administration rescinds a Trump-era pandemic restriction known as Title 42, which allowed officials to rapidly expel asylum seekers that crossed U.S.-Mexico border, a growing number of Democratic Senate incumbents and candidates running in the midterm elections have expressed serious concerns over the move.

"Right now we have a crisis on our southern border," Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona said last week after meeting with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials at the Douglas Port of Entry along the U.S.-Mexico border. ""Title 42 was put in place because of a public health emergency. It shouldn’t be around forever, but right now this administration does not have a plan. I warned them about this months ago." 

Kelly added that administration’s reaction has so far been "unacceptable."

Two other first-term senators from key swing states that also face tough re-elections in November – Sens. Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada – have also come out against Biden's plan to lift Title 42. So have a pair of lieutenant governors who are the front-runners in Senate Democratic primaries in two battleground states – John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Mandela Barnes of Wisconsin. 

Fetterman told Politico this past weekend that "we should not end Title 42 until we have a detailed plan in place." And Barnes told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week that he opposes lifting the restrictions "simply because there's not a detailed plan in place so that we can keep asylum seekers and people in the country safe."

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Several other Democrats and media analysts expressed concern that the midterms could be a huge loss for the party without specifically blaming Biden. 

An MSNBC columnist said Saturday that the midterms would be a "bloodbath" for Democrats but said that they should still continue to pass their agenda, Rev. Al Sharpton slammed "limousine liberals" recently for not being aware of rising crime rates in cities across America and said that they don't live in the real world and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wrote in a column for the New York Times that Democrats need to pass stalled agenda items in the next few months, otherwise they are "headed toward big losses in the midterms."

Fox News’ Hanna Panreck and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.