Larry Kudlow: Americans have no confidence in President Biden

A slew of polls came out over the weekend, showing Donald Trump  in the driver seat for the Presidential election. Head-to-head with Joe Biden, Trump’s a likely winner. On the issues, Trump is a huge winner – across the board.  

The economy , inflation, border, crime, woke – nobody likes Joe Biden’s policies, and people remember how well off they were during Mr. Trump’s first term. In fact, on that point, in the New York Times-Sienna poll, 40% say Trump gave them a real pay increase – 40 to 18%, voters say Trump policies helped them personally. 43% say Biden’s policies hurt them personally and Trump has an enthusiasm advantage of 48-23%.  

Want to hear a shocker? Women are 20 percentage points more likely to say that Trump’s policies have helped them more than Mr. Biden’s have, according to the New York Times-Sienna poll. 

The Fox News poll shows Mr. Trump winning 48% of Hispanics, 43% of suburban women, 51% of voters under 30 and 28% of Blacks. In other words, Trump is cutting into the Biden Democratic vote, big time. Another important point: Mr. Trump has unified the Republican Party far more than Joe Biden has unified Democrats. 

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According to the New York Times-Sienna poll, of those who voted for Trump in 2020, 97% intend to support him this year. With Biden, of those who voted for him in 2020, only 83% are with him this year. Also, 10% of Biden’s voters intend to support Trump. 

So, all the talk about Trump’s problems with unifying the GOP is just a bunch of pundits yapping erroneously. Except for a tiny sliver of Romney, McCain and Nikki Haley sore-loser Republicans (who know how to lose, but not how to win) Mr. Trump has united the GOP like no one ever before and he is the kind of political street-fighter who has no intention of losing.  

If you step back for a minute and look at all these polls, what really jumps out is how totally unpopular Joe Biden is. It’s kind of like voters are saying: “Sorry, Mr. President, we’re just not that into you anymore.”  

They have no confidence in you. They gave you a shot – and you bungled it, almost from Day 1. You deliberately opened the borders to a wave of illegal migrant lawlessness and crime. 

You’ve created an affordability crisis that makes it impossible to live in your economy, especially on gasoline and groceries. You’ve created this so-called “woke” culture that is antithetical to traditional American middle-class values and you’ve ruined our reputation abroad, as countries are bombing each other relentlessly in hot spots around the world and I’ll step back even more from the unpopularity theme and suggest this: these polls are showing how much Americans are rejecting Joe Biden’s far-left progressive, big government socialism. 

 It’s an across-the-board failure. In direct contrast, Mr. Trump is saying we will drain the Washington, D.C. swamp of woke progressivism. We will restore freedom, democracy, economic growth, optimism and America’s standing in the world. He’s giving the great American middle class a much-needed dose of common sense. I know polls aren’t votes, but right now, you have got to say: advantage Trump. 

This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow’s opening commentary on the March 4, 2023, edition of “Kudlow.”