The beginning of Biden's downhill slide

  Aamer Madhani:

A Year After Afghan Miscalculations, Biden Admin Struggles To Find Footing

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It was a disquieting bookend to the 20-year American war: the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed, a grisly bombing killed 13 U.S. troops and 170 others, and thousands of desperate Afghans descended on Kabul’s airport in search of a way out before the final U.S. cargo planes departed over the Hindu Kush.

The disastrous drawdown was, at the time, the biggest crisis that the relatively new administration had faced. It left sharp questions about Biden and his team’s competence and experience — the twin pillars central to his campaign for the White House.

As the one-year anniversary of the end of the Afghan war nears, the episode — a turning point in Biden’s presidency — continues to resonate as he struggles to shake dismal polling numbers and lift American confidence in his administration ahead of November’s critical midterm elections.

“It was a pivotal moment that he hasn’t ever really recovered from,” said Christopher Borick, director of the Institute of Public Opinion at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania. “Things were going really well in terms of how voters viewed him in terms of bringing stability to the economy and how the government addressed the pandemic, issues that are higher priorities to the American electorate than the war in Afghanistan. But Afghanistan cracked that image of competency, and he hasn’t ever really been able to repair it.”

The Afghanistan debacle was just the start of a series of crises for Biden.
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Biden also was put on the defensive about the inflation caused by his big spending and huge deficits.  He also overpromised on Covid and the vaccines.  His war on energy angered voters every time they went to a gas station, And going to the grocery store was another reminder of inflation as prices exploded beyond the stated inflation rate on many items.