The numbers are in for Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday evening, and they aren’t good.
According to CNN’s post-speech poll, Biden’s divisive, dishonest spectacle scored the lowest ratings of any State of the Union since 1998, with just 34 percent saying they had a “very positive” reaction.
The press, including CNN, did their best to spin the numbers in Biden’s favor, choosing to focus on the topline number showing 72 percent had a positive reaction. Context is everything, though, and the context of that number is that it’s actually very low compared to other modern presidents, including Donald Trump.
Audiences traditionally have a largely positive reaction to State of the Union addresses regardless of who is giving them. That’s because they are usually written to deliver a unifying tone and are used as a victory lap, absconding from all the negative policies an administration may be responsible for. That means comparing one president to another is the only way to get an accurate gauge of just how well a State of the Union went over.
Ironically, given the visceral hatred of Trump by the press, Biden’s latest speech not only scores lower than any given by his predecessor, but you have to go all the way back to the year Bill Clinton was impeached to find a lower rating in public polling. That’s not something you heard on CNN in the immediate aftermath of Tuesday night, and it’s surprising given how unpopular George W. Bush was in his final years.
But I guess that’s just a testament to how disastrous Joe Biden’s tenure has been. Contrary to the happy talk from his media allies, the president is not popular. This is just another data point proving it.