How will the Omicron variant affect Biden's approval rating?

[Mr.Phips]

If it all blows over in 2 weeks, he can declare victory and might actually get an approval bump.  If this gets to the point where CDC and state health departments ask people not to celebrate Christmas with anyone outside of their household, it obviously goes way down, probably to Bush 2008 levels. 

Probably 75%  of the population would ignore this anyway.

[Skill and Chance]

If it all blows over in 2 weeks, he can declare victory and might actually get an approval bump.  If this gets to the point where CDC and state health departments ask people not to celebrate Christmas with anyone outside of their household, it obviously goes way down, probably to Bush 2008 levels. 

Probably 75%  of the population would ignore this anyway.

At the family/neighborhood level, this is likely true, but 90%+ of gatherings that involve corporations or nonprofits with lawyers would canceled if that's what the CDC advised.

[SnowLabrador]

As long as Biden is too indifferent to both the country's safety and his own electoral prospects to impose a universal vaccine mandate, down

I'm not arguing against a vaccine mandate (given my own personal experience), but where would Biden derive the authority to impose such a mandate? The OSHA mandate is already being challenged in court.

Justice Roberts has made his ruling, now let him enforce it. SCOTUS holds no enforcement mechanism, and the GOP doesn't follow the few unfavorable SCOTUS rulings it gets, so why should we?

[MR DARK BRANDON]

If it all blows over in 2 weeks, he can declare victory and might actually get an approval bump.  If this gets to the point where CDC and state health departments ask people not to celebrate Christmas with anyone outside of their household, it obviously goes way down, probably to Bush 2008 levels. 

And the worst part about that is is that it wouldn’t be his fault. Ugh.

[Calthrina950]

As long as Biden is too indifferent to both the country's safety and his own electoral prospects to impose a universal vaccine mandate, down

I'm not arguing against a vaccine mandate (given my own personal experience), but where would Biden derive the authority to impose such a mandate? The OSHA mandate is already being challenged in court.

Justice Roberts has made his ruling, now let him enforce it. SCOTUS holds no enforcement mechanism, and the GOP doesn't follow the few unfavorable SCOTUS rulings it gets, so why should we?

I know who you are referencing, but Roberts hasn't made his ruling yet. And it is true that the Supreme Court cannot enforce its rulings, but I'm not sure if Biden is the kind of President who would try to test that.

[SnowLabrador]

As long as Biden is too indifferent to both the country's safety and his own electoral prospects to impose a universal vaccine mandate, down

I'm not arguing against a vaccine mandate (given my own personal experience), but where would Biden derive the authority to impose such a mandate? The OSHA mandate is already being challenged in court.

Justice Roberts has made his ruling, now let him enforce it. SCOTUS holds no enforcement mechanism, and the GOP doesn't follow the few unfavorable SCOTUS rulings it gets, so why should we?

I know who you are referencing, but Roberts hasn't made his ruling yet. And it is true that the Supreme Court cannot enforce its rulings, but I'm not sure if Biden is the kind of President who would try to test that.

Of course he isn't, because he's weak and feckless. He's giving Trump the next election on a silver platter.

[Skill and Chance]

The OSHA mandate is more likely to be upheld than not and even if it does get struck down, Roberts is likely to vote in favor of upholding it. 

[walleye26]

Probably not much change. People are just sick of covid, period. I got my vaccine and put my life on hold for the better part of two years now. We just need to move on with the fact covid will be here from now on. Some of this is getting to the point of ridiculousness. Last week, the WI Health Department told hunters they should wear masks because deer can get covid. I mean, seriously if I get covid from field dressing my deer after being fully vaccinated that would be something else.

[Calthrina950]

The OSHA mandate is more likely to be upheld than not and even if it does get struck down, Roberts is likely to vote in favor of upholding it. 

You're probably right. I do think Roberts will uphold it, and it will probably be upheld by the Court in general, by something like 6-3 or 7-2. The three liberal justices, along with Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and possibly Gorsuch, would comprise the majority. Alito and Thomas are the two justices who I see voting against it at this time.

[MT Treasurer]

The longer this drags on, the further downhill Democratic chances of avoiding a complete wipeout in 2022 go-

I’ve long had a suspicion that it is COVID more than any other issue that is fueling anger and resentment toward this administration/the current left and even driving traditionally Democratic-leaning voters away from the party. The one thing human beings are going to react more even more strongly to than divisive cultural issues in which one side in particular isn’t willing to compromise at all and has a monopoly on the public institutions/media/academia are restrictions and mandates imposed by the state that constrain them in their everyday lives (not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically). While the former will make people dislike an administration (strongly or less strongly), the latter will generate deep hatred and fear, two emotions that couldn’t be better turnout motivators for the party out of the White House. A state intervening in the lives of its citizens to the extent that we have seen and putting this kind of pressure on its citizens is quite a precedent that should never be turned into a norm, not even rhetorically. The more salient and 'felt' this issue is in 2022, the more it has the potential to break Democrats' necks.

With every new variant that (conveniently) keeps popping up whenever governments need a new excuse to ride roughshod over the basic rights and liberties of their citizens, the anger and hatred will grow more intense and visceral. Obviously the government's response is not as bad here as in, say, Austria (where the stigmatization of and media-/government-led campaign against the unvaccinated in the name of reason and science has reached truly frightening levels, especially given that country's history), but most people are just really sick and tired of the governmental aggression, nanny-state measures/attitude, and blatant fear-based propaganda. Ironically, the prevalent sentiment that will probably wipe out Democrats next year is precisely the one that cost Trump the election: People just want a return to normalcy and sanity.

[Skill and Chance]

The OSHA mandate is more likely to be upheld than not and even if it does get struck down, Roberts is likely to vote in favor of upholding it. 

You're probably right. I do think Roberts will uphold it, and it will probably be upheld by the Court in general, by something like 6-3 or 7-2. The three liberal justices, along with Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and possibly Gorsuch, would comprise the majority. Alito and Thomas are the two justices who I see voting against it at this time.

Hmmm... I see Gorsuch as the surest no vote, and Thomas as a nearly sure no as well.  Alito is more comfortable with coercive measures in general, but I'm almost sure he votes with the "right wing" position in a case this politically charged.  

But Barrett and Kavanaugh have so far been uninterested in any challenges to vaccination requirements and the one time they struck a COVID restriction down, it was a really strict one (no in-person church for months in certain counties in CA) and they did it very narrowly.   I would be surprised if the administration doesn't get at least one of them to uphold it, and the most likely outcome is they get both.

[ProudModerate2]

It depends on how bad it gets here. If it leads to more NPIs and mask mandates it'll hurt Biden.

This.
We just don't know yet. And I hear that the big pharma's are already in their initial phases of studying and hopefully developing a vaccine that will combat this new variant with more force than the current shots we have.

[ProudModerate2]

It is Democrats and their enablers in the MSM who browbeat the simpleton logic that Trump was responsible for literally every single American COVID death.  I will not lose any sleep when this same logic comes to fail Biden after he bet and lost that the Trump vaccines would completely erase the virus. 

Trump did absolutely nothing to protect people and encouraged all kinds of risky behavior that allowed the virus to spread while simultaneously handicapping any effort to rescue people afflicted with the virus.  Because of that, he is to blame for tons of excess deaths.

The simpleton logic is being incapable of distinguishing between "literally all COVID deaths are someone's fault" and "if someone had the power to prevent some COVID deaths, but didn't use that power, then those excess deaths are his fault."

No one takes you seriously when you call Operation Warp Speed "absolutely nothing" GenMac, lol

Trump's White House was who bought industry onboard with $11B in direct funding and liability protections to fast track the development of vaccines and advanced therapeutics.  Plans made for vaccine procurement and distribution when Trump was president are the same plans Biden now likes to take credit for, lol

Had Biden or another Democrat been president in 2020, there would have been no equivalent effort to unleash the power of American industry to outmaneuver the pandemic.  Biden proves how fundamentally broken his approach to the pandemic is with his own 13-member COVID task force - there wasn't a single representative of American industry appointed. 

Democrats have only proved able to think about the response to the pandemic as a set of constantly escalating and totalizing public health measures designed to compel our behavior and limit individual freedom, and those are the only voices for which Biden has given a seat at the table.

LOL.
I can't believe someone would actually waste time, trying to defend and shed somekind of (non-existent) good-light onto Mr. Inject-Disinfectant-Into-The-Lungs.
Hilarious.
trump is viewed as a complete failure regarding anything and everything surrounding Covid. Period.

[Calthrina950]

It depends on how bad it gets here. If it leads to more NPIs and mask mandates it'll hurt Biden.

This.
We just don't know yet. And I hear that the big pharma's are already in their initial phases of studying and hopefully developing a vaccine that will combat this new variant with more force than the current shots we have.

This would imply that we would need a fourth shot, or a "second booster" shot if you will. I'm pretty well convinced at this point that we will have annual vaccination shots for the coronavirus. But given that we still have a substantial slice of the population that is adamant in refusing to even get their first shot, what more can be done?

[Green Line]

It can’t realistically go much lower than it is now - too many solid Dem partisans, as evidenced in this thread.  The persuadable swing voters have already soured on Biden.  The omnomnomrom plague he is about to unleash on us is just icing on the cake.

[Calthrina950]

It can’t realistically go much lower than it is now - too many solid Dem partisans, as evidenced in this thread.  The persuadable swing voters have already soured on Biden.  The omnomnomrom plague he is about to unleash on us is just icing on the cake.

This is true. Most polls I've seen show Biden with an approval between 40-45%, with around 50-55% disapproving of him. Biden got 51% of the popular vote last year, so he's lost the support of independents and moderates who voted for him to get rid of Trump. Thus, next year's midterms won't see Republicans replicating their dramatic gains of 1994 and 2010, but they are favored, and will make the gains necessary to regain their congressional majorities.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Biden can't ever declare victory against COVID because you could always have another variant crop up and start killing people again and then everyone will make MISSION ACCOMPLISHED memes and it will be a political disaster for him.

Meanwhile the entire electorate has decided that COVID just didn't exist before Biden became president, so it's all his fault.  But since the American public is complete blithering idiots, they also all seem to think that COVID is a huge deal and Biden is a failure for not taking it seriously enough, but it's not a big enough deal to be worth getting vaccinated or wearing a mask or having school closures or capacity restrictions or other safety measures, and if Biden puts in any of those restrictions, then he's taking it too seriously.

At this point I don't know what Biden is supposed to do politically.  Every bad thing that happens with COVID is his fault and a huge f---ing deal.  But he's also not allowed to do anything to prevent COVID because it's not a big deal.

Fortunately for us, we elected a good man as president, and Biden is simply doing the right thing regardless of how it affects him politically.  This is in contrast to Trump whose only concern with COVID was how it would affect him politically -- thus the constant lying and downplaying of the virus and promotion of conspiracy theories about how it was a hoax or it was all manufactured by the media and the scientists.

[DaleCooper]

I'm going to try and be as detached as possible in communicating how I see this affecting Biden, so bear with me and forgive if I seem callous.

Basically, we (the people) are ready to be done with COVID in this country. Unless the virus mutates to the point of having a 3-5% fatality rate for healthy vaccinated people, there's no way that anyone will accept more regulations on the public at large. I don't know what to say (and again, I'm not trying to push my personal stance on this issue, this is just how I interpret the public opinion as I see it), but the American people simply aren't interested in lowering the unvaccinated death rates by a small percentage if it means wearing masks, socially distancing, depriving themselves and their kids of an education and social life, and skipping holidays for the rest of their lives. To put it simply, people are done.

If Biden wants to see his approval rating skyrocket (relative to polarization of course), then he should come out and say that we've made the vaccines available to everyone, boosters are available to everyone, and it's up to everyone to make the right decision on their own. Follow that up with a nice "Merry Christmas!" and never bring up pandemic mitigation efforts again unless it's to comment on the tragic deaths of unvaccinated people and to emphasize the need for vaccinations.

[Fuzzy Bear]

If it all blows over in 2 weeks, he can declare victory and might actually get an approval bump.  If this gets to the point where CDC and state health departments ask people not to celebrate Christmas with anyone outside of their household, it obviously goes way down, probably to Bush 2008 levels. 

And the worst part about that is is that it wouldn’t be his fault. Ugh.

It will be all his fault.

Joe Biden has opened up our Southern Border.  People are coming across our Southern Border are not checked or quarantined from diseases, and they are coming from all over the World, including the nations where this new variant is coming from.  This situation is entirely Biden's doing.

That being said, there is no need for hysteria.

[GeneralMacArthur]

If it all blows over in 2 weeks, he can declare victory and might actually get an approval bump.  If this gets to the point where CDC and state health departments ask people not to celebrate Christmas with anyone outside of their household, it obviously goes way down, probably to Bush 2008 levels. 

And the worst part about that is is that it wouldn’t be his fault. Ugh.

It will be all his fault.

Joe Biden has opened up our Southern Border.  People are coming across our Southern Border are not checked or quarantined from diseases, and they are coming from all over the World, including the nations where this new variant is coming from.  This situation is entirely Biden's doing.

That being said, there is no need for hysteria.

Yes, that's how Omicron will get here.  South Africans will fly to Guatemala and join the migrant caravans to travel up to the Mexican border and sneak through.

Wasn't there a bunch of concern trolling from Republicans a few weeks ago about how Biden was being too tough on the border?  Weren't you guys all drooling over the images of a bunch of migrants huddled under a bridge on the Mexican side of the border waiting to be processed?  Wasn't Chuck Grassley tweeting about the record numbers of migrants being stopped, detained and sent back at the border?

You guys don't even know what you want.  You have no policy.  All you want is for Biden to fail so your cult leader can take back over and do random things that you'll then convince yourselves are the best things ever.

[Fuzzy Bear]

If it all blows over in 2 weeks, he can declare victory and might actually get an approval bump.  If this gets to the point where CDC and state health departments ask people not to celebrate Christmas with anyone outside of their household, it obviously goes way down, probably to Bush 2008 levels. 

And the worst part about that is is that it wouldn’t be his fault. Ugh.

It will be all his fault.

Joe Biden has opened up our Southern Border.  People are coming across our Southern Border are not checked or quarantined from diseases, and they are coming from all over the World, including the nations where this new variant is coming from.  This situation is entirely Biden's doing.

That being said, there is no need for hysteria.

Yes, that's how Omicron will get here.  South Africans will fly to Guatemala and join the migrant caravans to travel up to the Mexican border and sneak through.

Wasn't there a bunch of concern trolling from Republicans a few weeks ago about how Biden was being too tough on the border?  Weren't you guys all drooling over the images of a bunch of migrants huddled under a bridge on the Mexican side of the border waiting to be processed?  Wasn't Chuck Grassley tweeting about the record numbers of migrants being stopped, detained and sent back at the border?

You guys don't even know what you want.  You have no policy.  All you want is for Biden to fail so your cult leader can take back over and do random things that you'll then convince yourselves are the best things ever.

I don't wish for Biden to fail.  What I wanted from Biden was to (A) be normal and (B) stop the chaos.  He's either incapable of this, or he chooses not to do what he was elected to do because the Far Left of his party that seems to hold sway beyond their numbers have infiltrated his Administration in all sorts of appointed positions.

[GeneralMacArthur]

If it all blows over in 2 weeks, he can declare victory and might actually get an approval bump.  If this gets to the point where CDC and state health departments ask people not to celebrate Christmas with anyone outside of their household, it obviously goes way down, probably to Bush 2008 levels. 

And the worst part about that is is that it wouldn’t be his fault. Ugh.

It will be all his fault.

Joe Biden has opened up our Southern Border.  People are coming across our Southern Border are not checked or quarantined from diseases, and they are coming from all over the World, including the nations where this new variant is coming from.  This situation is entirely Biden's doing.

That being said, there is no need for hysteria.

Yes, that's how Omicron will get here.  South Africans will fly to Guatemala and join the migrant caravans to travel up to the Mexican border and sneak through.

Wasn't there a bunch of concern trolling from Republicans a few weeks ago about how Biden was being too tough on the border?  Weren't you guys all drooling over the images of a bunch of migrants huddled under a bridge on the Mexican side of the border waiting to be processed?  Wasn't Chuck Grassley tweeting about the record numbers of migrants being stopped, detained and sent back at the border?

You guys don't even know what you want.  You have no policy.  All you want is for Biden to fail so your cult leader can take back over and do random things that you'll then convince yourselves are the best things ever.

I don't wish for Biden to fail.  What I wanted from Biden was to (A) be normal and (B) stop the chaos.  He's either incapable of this, or he chooses not to do what he was elected to do because the Far Left of his party that seems to hold sway beyond their numbers have infiltrated his Administration in all sorts of appointed positions.

Please point to the far-left chaos happening in this country.  Even Portland has simmered down.  There are no riots.  There are barely even any protests.  Antifa is a distant memory.  All the things you were afraid were going to happen, instead the opposite happened.  Meanwhile we have a competent administration that runs so smoothly you probably can't even name 5 people in it -- no more needing to know the Deputy AG or the Assistant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff or whoever's job it is this week to tell the president "no."

Nobody in the far left has any power.  Rashida Tlaib is the one getting all the attention this week for stupidly proposing that we abolish all prisons, and the most the White House had to say on the matter was "no we're not going to do that."  Warren and Sanders badger Biden every single day to cancel student debt and he isn't going to.  The best y'all can come up with is going after Saule Omarova for some papers she wrote decades ago.

Meanwhile Biden's actual legislation has been decidedly middle-of-the-road and chock-full of bipartisan proposals that are especially focused on rural areas and combatting poverty.  Are these far-left ideas?  Just face it, Biden isn't the extreme leftists you guys promised us he'd be.  Instead he's the sensible, pragmatic, mature liberal I promised y'all he would be.

[Thank you for being a friend...]

Everything's going down... never up.  The honeymoon is over.  The problem is for Democrats that Grandpa Joe is asleep all the time.  Dude, wake up already!

[Pericles]

Probably not much change. People are just sick of covid, period. I got my vaccine and put my life on hold for the better part of two years now. We just need to move on with the fact covid will be here from now on. Some of this is getting to the point of ridiculousness. Last week, the WI Health Department told hunters they should wear masks because deer can get covid. I mean, seriously if I get covid from field dressing my deer after being fully vaccinated that would be something else.

If the science has changed so that the vaccines don't work against the new variant, then as awful of a situation as it is, people should be reasonable and understand why more restrictions are necessary. If it just kills the unvaccinated faster, that's a relief but also makes it harder to justify any more restrictions.

[DaleCooper]

Probably not much change. People are just sick of covid, period. I got my vaccine and put my life on hold for the better part of two years now. We just need to move on with the fact covid will be here from now on. Some of this is getting to the point of ridiculousness. Last week, the WI Health Department told hunters they should wear masks because deer can get covid. I mean, seriously if I get covid from field dressing my deer after being fully vaccinated that would be something else.

If the science has changed so that the vaccines don't work against the new variant, then as awful of a situation as it is, people should be reasonable and understand why more restrictions are necessary. If it just kills the unvaccinated faster, that's a relief but also makes it harder to justify any more restrictions.

I hate to be so defeatist about this, but the lesson here is that if vaccines become useless five months after we get them (and we still have to follow the COVID measures even during those five months), then there's no point in letting COVID dictate our lives anymore. We've clearly lost the battle if that's the case. Don't you realize that if man can't vaccinate against this apparent super-virus, then we will just have to learn to live with it?

Again, I don't believe this is going to happen since we've been getting new variants to fear-monger over for nearly two years now, however, even if it is as you say, most voters will still oppose any more mitigation efforts. If Omicron is the justification for more lockdowns across the globe, then I think we can expect a lot more rioting across the globe.