| | John Cassidy | With the President’s economic approval rating standing at just forty per cent, it’s imperative for him to highlight some of his substantive achievements and talk about the future. ![The U.S. President Joe Biden at the State of the Union address in 2023. There is a green tinted overlay on the image.]()
On Thursday night,President Joe Biden will deliver his election-year State of the Union address. A spate of new opinion polls released over the weekend highlighted the serious challenges facing him as he seeks reëlection: concerns about his age, the southern border, the Israel-Hamas war, and the economy. The RealClearPolitics poll average currently shows him trailing Donald Trump by two points in a head-to-head contest, and by 2.8 points when third-party candidates are included. It’s particularly alarming for the President that, with many voters still focussed on the rising cost of living, he hasn’t received much credit for an economic record that, in many ways, is impressive. According to the poll average, just 40.2 per cent of Americans approve of his handling of the economy, and 57.4 per cent disapprove. To improve his electoral prospects, Biden badly needs to turn those figures around. The State of the Union presents a much needed opportunity for him to talk to the American people about his economic record. Here, with apologies for my lame efforts to capture his folksy syntax, is a suggestion for how he might go about it. | |
| More News & Politics | ![Joe Biden photographed at his desk in the Oval Office, by Thea Traff.]() ProfilesJoe Biden’s Last CampaignTrailing Trump in polls and facing doubts about his age, the President, in a rare Oval Office interview, voices defiant confidence in his prospects for reëlection. “I’d ask a rhetorical question,” Biden said. “If you thought you were best positioned to beat someone who, if they won, would change the nature of America, what would you do?” ByEvan Osnos |
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| | DispatchWatching Super Tuesday Returns at Mar-a-LagoHeading into the general election, the mood in Trump world is buoyant. ByAntonia Hitchens |
| The New Yorker InterviewJohn Kerry Thinks We’re at a Critical Moment on Climate ChangeAs he steps down from office, the first Presidential envoy on the climate says that we have made progress, but we’re not moving fast enough. ByBill McKibben |
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| | Benjamin Wallace-Wells | As the general election is set to begin, there is a new protagonist in American politics: not the man seeking to take back the White House as retribution but its current, outwardly placid occupant. ![President Joe Biden gives a speech near Valley Forge]()
Running for a second term,Joe Biden is an unusual incumbent, a seemingly reluctant political protagonist who needs to capture the attention of voters. “Since early in his Presidency, it has often seemed as if Biden is driving through a reputational sludge,” Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes. “Everything is harder for him.” Biden needs to jolt his supporters and win back those who say they are prepared to abandon him—and these next few weeks could be critical.Read more » | |
| ![From Washington: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos]() | The Washington Roundtable:New episodes featuring the staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos drop on Fridays.Listen and follow » |
| | Editor’s Picks | ![Gavel and Embryo]() Annals of MedicineThe Fight Over I.V.F. Is Only BeginningThe fertility treatment has wide support, even among Republican voters, but it is at odds with key elements in the pro-life movement. ByJessica Winter |
![The moon.]() Annals of TechnologyA New Era of Moon Exploration Is Upon UsThe wildly ambitious Artemis program aims to get us back to the moon for good. ByDavid W. Brown |
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| | ![A man and a woman sit at their desks. Outside it is raining. The man speaks.]() Cartoon by Adam Douglas Thompson “To be honest, nothing feels particularly super about this Tuesday.” | |
| P.S. Kyrsten Sinema,the Independent senator from Arizona, announced this week that she won’t be running for reëlection. Sinema left the Democratic Party in 2022, but even before she changed allegiances she had alienated many voters on the left with defiant and hard-to-figure maneuvers. A year earlier,Lizzie Widdicombe wrotethat “like the western Kremlinologists who followed Soviet politics during the Cold War by noting the removal of portraits or the rearranging of chairs, an anxious public, and increasingly apoplectic Arizona Democratic activists, have been forced to search Sinema’s outfits and body language for clues to how she’ll shape our collective future.” | |
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