The Biden administration’s collapse has Democrat insiders freaking out. That’s the word from Politico after Joe Biden’s approval ratings bottomed out over the last several months, including hitting only 38% approval in a recent poll.

According to the report, a Democrat focus group held in Pennsylvania showed their displeasure with the president, with everyone giving him C- or lower grades.

In a focus group last week, Pennsylvania Democrats one after another articulated the issue vexing top White House aides, party operatives in Virginia and voters in Georgia: Why isn’t President Joe Biden’s diminished job rating rebounding?

All nine participants from Tuesday’s session gave Biden C- grades or lower. And their answers circled back to a similar point: The pandemic and the many ways it continues to hinder normal life is souring their views of Biden.

Yet, while these people are on the right track, they still managed to completely miss the point. Biden’s approval has not plummeted because of the coronavirus, though, that’s a convenient way to blame his woes on something out of his control. In fact, in most polls, Biden’s highest marks come regarding his handling of the pandemic.

Rather, it is other issues that are dragging Biden into the toilet. The article admits that by noting that participants cited supply chain and staffing issues as major concerns.

One woman said she wanted to buy a car but supply chain issues were delaying new shipments to the dealership. A man complained about understaffed restaurants.

“There is a malaise,” said Sarah Longwell, a moderate Republican strategist who became a vocal supporter of Biden in 2020, and led the focus group of Democratic voters. “People don’t feel like their lives have been improved. They did sort of feel that promises aren’t being kept.”

Those problems are self-inflicted, not a result of a virus that is out of the president’s hands. Joe Biden’s policies, specifically regarding rent assistance, food stamps, and extended unemployment have caused the labor shortage we are now stuck in. The supply chain issues, which include thousands of ships unable to dock and offload products, are directly traceable to that labor shortage as well as incompetence at the executive level in handling the issue. The lack of products to meet demand then pushes inflation higher.

For their part, Democrat strategists are still pushing the notion that this is all about responding to COVID-19. I don’t buy it.

In one widely circulated memo, Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg argued that Biden’s steep drop-off can only be explained by the public’s perception of his uneven handling of the pandemic and a belief he is not prioritizing it. Rosenberg, who has been in touch with White House and party committee officials, contends that the tens of millions of dollars being spent to sell Biden’s Build Back Better agenda is “reminding” voters that the president isn’t focused on the virus. Even passing both bills won’t be enough to significantly improve Biden’s standing without Democrats first establishing they are the party responsible for defeating Covid, he said.

“The president’s decline is alarming. It’s serious,” Rosenberg said. “But it also can be reversed. And it isn’t going to be reversed by passing these two bills alone. He has to get Covid under control.”

This is what living in a bubble looks like, where concern for coronavirus rules over all other issues. But outside of the beltway, Biden is not going to rebound by sounding more serious about COVID. Instead, he has crashed and burned because of his failures in Afghanistan, the economy, inflationary woes, the border crisis, and any number of other things that have shown him to be a terrible leader. There’s also the issue of his mental ability to do the job, which is becoming more of a mainstream issue as polls show his competence is being questioned.

Despite what Democrats want to believe, no easy fix for Biden exists here. This isn’t a messaging issue that can be rectified by some new PR campaign. Rather, it’s a results issue, and Americans are not pleased with the president’s myriad of failures. The 2022 election looms larger than ever.