Jill Biden was the first lady to be elected President Joe Biden’s wife in February 2021. She enjoyed a two-to-one favorable rating, she was lauded by the press as untouchable, and she was presented as a driving force in a supposed “return to normalcy” at the White House.
Of course, much of that notion of a needed shift was based on the grotesquely unfair treatment of outgoing First Lady Melania Trump, whose great sin was being almost completely non-political and having Christmas decorations the media elites didn’t like. Still, with Jill Biden’s entrance into the residence came a return of glowing magazine profiles and network news puff pieces.
Truly, the current First Lady could do no wrong…until she did. Jill Biden’s star is now dramatically fading, and the reasons why offer a lesson in how to burn one’s credibility with the American people.
Jill Biden raises money for Democrats amid gaffes and popularity drop https://t.co/TYXTpZc5fd
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 24, 2022
A CNN poll had already finished fielding as Jill Biden’s string of not-so-great news broke. The survey lasted a month and 34 percent of respondents rated the first lady positively, while 29 percent gave it a negative rating. 28 percent did not have an opinion about her, while 9 percent claimed they had never heard of her. Previous CNN polling showed significantly more Americans holding a favorable rather than unfavorable view of the first lady — by about 2 to 1 in January 2021, at the start of Biden’s presidency
So what’s going on?
It is rare for a first lady to experience a dip in her husband’s popularity. The news comes at an especially bad time for Democrats as well as the Biden government, which have depended on Jill Biden for their most powerful campaign surrogate. She is also uncontroversial light for the White House. She spoke at three fundraising events over five days last week. The final event was Monday the day after the CNN poll. Just four months remain before the midterm elections, which will decide whether President Biden has a Congress that supports or derails his agenda.
As the Post notes, the collapse of Jill Biden’s favorability is unusual. That’s because First Ladies typically don’t do much to cause such a decline, not because they are women, but because they hold no elected office. Most Americans don’t like to politicize things that aren’t inherently political.
Jill Biden treated her tenure differently. While even Michelle Obama stuck to topics that could realistically be perceived as non-political, the current First Lady has become a partisan warrior, from her continual pushing of the teachers’ unions to her involvement at the G7 to her stumping for “Build Back Better.” Even her recent fundraising turn has been punctuated with divisive language that leaves no doubt she’s in the political arena.
And once you are in the arena, everything becomes fair game, including the idiocy of calling Hispanics “breakfast tacos” and the grotesque spectacle of praising Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers and one of the chief reasons children are having learning loss crisis from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Then there’s the issue of Hunter Biden. Jill Biden entered the White House as a happy mother, with perfect children. This was partly due to the fact that the media covered the truth. That illusion has been shattered by the revelations surrounding Hunter Biden, and that’s because Jill Biden is being unfairly blamed for his issues, as even good parents can turn out bad kids. Rather, it’s because the elder Bidens have been exposed as enablers of their corrupt, crack-addled son. Jill Biden even shared an office with one of Hunter Biden’s Chinese business associates. In other words, there’s no separation there, and at least some in the public have taken notice.
When you combine all of that, what do you get? A First Lady who had everything she needed and was able to burn herself to the ground. Jill Biden is a nakedly ambitious, highly-partisan woman. Her handling of herself since the inauguration only confirms that view in many minds. Nobody gets to remain apolitical if they themselves don’t choose to be apolitical. Jill Biden may have wanted to have it both ways, but now she’s found out that’s not how any of this works.
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