Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
A batch of new polls from the New York Times, Siena College and the Philadelphia Inquirer has very bad news for President Biden: He's losing. Among registered voters, he's significantly behind in five of the six battleground states that are most likely to decide the election. He does slightly better among likely voters but remains behind in five key states.
It's a snapshot, but it's consistent with the overall trend of this campaign -- which is, again, he's losing.
Biden and many of his supporters seem to think the solution is to get right with the issues -- the economy, the Israel-Hamas war, student loans, pot legalization, the threat to democracy and so on. If he can just find the sweet spot on policy, they believe, voters will come home.
That might be true to some extent. But I think focusing on the issues misses Biden's real weakness: vibes.
"Vibes" is just a trendy word for "mood" or "feelings." Whatever you call them, the relationship between attitudes and issues is not always as rational as some think.
People who care passionately about issues think issues are really important. On one level, this is a fairly ridiculous tautology. But what I mean is that people who are really engaged in politics -- activists, journalists, donors -- believe issues drive everyone else's engagement with politics.
Politicians take popular positions on issues based on the understandable assumption that they will be popular as a result. Obviously, it often works this way. But sometimes the causality goes in the other direction. Some people start as rabid partisans or super-fans of a politician, and that drives their views of the issues.
In 2012, for instance, when Barack Obama endorsed gay marriage, millions of Democrats suddenly switched from opposition to support. In 2017, when Donald Trump made protectionism a centerpiece of his agenda, many Republicans changed their positions. (They also changed their position on "character," but that's another story.) I suspect that at least some of Biden's low approval ratings on many issues have less to do with people's policy preferences than with their starting assumption that he's wrong.
The Biden campaign wants to leverage the issue of abortion. That's smart. After the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, abortion really is an issue that can overpower vibes. But consider that a constitutional referendum to legalize abortion has 61% support in Florida, while Biden is polling around 37% in the state. When abortion rights out-poll a Democratic candidate nearly 2 to 1, vibes are an issue.
The best analogy is to 1992. While some partisans and ideologues convinced themselves that they hated George H.W. Bush, the truth is most people were just exhausted with him, Republicans or the status quo.
The Bush economy wasn't great, but the relatively mild recession of 1990-91 was far from the depression portrayed by many in the media, the Democratic Party and the electorate. But Bush, who hated campaigning, often helped his detractors paint him as "out of touch." It's difficult to describe the reaction to the moment the president looked at his watch during a debate question about the recession, allegedly signifying his aloofness, or seemed impressed by a new supermarket checkout scanner, supposedly revealing that he didn't understand how normal people live. In any case, many voters agreed with the worst interpretations.
The mainstream media isn't remotely as hostile to Biden, but that's not the advantage it seems to be. In a populist age, elite media support feels like establishment wagon-circling, not just to the Trump-friendly but also to disillusioned young and progressive voters. Even when the press thinks it's helping Biden, it perpetuates the out-of-touch vibe.
Voters resent the idea, pushed by many pundits, that they should wake up to the fact that the economy is actually doing much better than they think. Biden is exacerbating the problem by constantly boasting about the economy rather than emulating Bush's successful opponent and emphasizing his empathy for what people are experiencing.
The economy really is better than vibes suggest, although inflation and high interest rates tend to overwhelm all other indicators. The other problem is that, as political scientist Seth Masket notes, "Presidential approval is largely untethered from economic growth these days." That's vibes.
Obviously, it would help if Biden could fix inflation and interest rates. But he can't. Moreover, his vibe problem extends beyond the economy.
His desperation to fix his problems with poll-driven policy and rhetoric underscores the sense that he's flailing and can't keep up with the demands of the job. This both fuels and is fueled by his age problem. Biden seems exhausted, and people are exhausted with him.
First posted May 14, 2024. (C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Americans across the political spectrum have continued to ask about the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s connections among the political elite. (Angela Weiss/AFP)
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.