Biden's approval rating tanks amid inflation, omicron surge

Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman discusses the growing problems of the economy, as well as President Biden's declining approval rating.

Video transcript

EMILY MCCORMICK: Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman is here to discuss in this week's Bidenomics. Rick, break this down for us.

RICK NEWMAN: Well, as Joe Biden's first year basically comes to an end, he's about as low as he's been during his entire presidency so far. We got a new poll out this week showing his approval rating is 33%. That is absolutely dismal. Other polls have him higher than that. But he's-- he seems to be sinking below where Donald Trump was at his lowest point.

And there are some puzzling things happening in the Biden administration. So yes, consumers are bummed out about inflation. They should be. They're bummed out that we can't seem to get past COVID. They should be. Those things are not really Joe Biden's fault. He's just going to have to wait those things out.

But this week, Joe Biden gave a big speech about reforming the filibuster so that this voting rights bill can pass, but everybody in Washington knows that there aren't enough Democratic votes to reform the filibuster. And even after he gave that speech, a few Democratic senators came out and said, nah, that's a bad idea. So what is going on with Democrats here, and why is Biden spending time talking about something that's never going to happen when ordinary families are facing these very real problems?

So there's a messaging problem. There's an execution problem in the Biden administration. And there's a communication problem. So he-- you know, he could pull this together in his second year, but he's not ending the first year on a very strong footing.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Picking up on that, Rick, how do you pull it together? I mean, one of those senators actually delivered that speech before the president addressed his own party. And it seems as if, you know, a lot of self-inflicted wounds not only by the administration, but by the Democrats who, you know, have a circular firing squad.

RICK NEWMAN: They do. I mean, I'm glad you see it the same way I do, Adam. I-- I think to get this back-- you know, get back on track, stop the self-inflicted wounds. Stop the unforced errors. Does Biden get the problem here?

So there's a reason that he's-- he's doing these things. Now, he's putting some political capital into things like a voting rights bill that's never going to pass. He's trying to appease the Democrats' liberal wing. The question is, why in the world is he trying to do that? Most people looking at the rent going up and their food bill going up and they can't afford a car-- they're not saying, Congress really needs to pass this voting rights bill. It's important.

Those-- those issues are important. But that is not the thing that is-- that is on the minds of most voters and most families right now. So if Biden is going to recover, he just needs to start focusing on mainstream voters and what they care about and forget about-- he needs to forget about Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the progressives he seems to be obsessively catering to. I don't really know why he's doing that.