Joe Biden’s presidency is not going well. That much has been apparent since at least the mid-summer. The incompetence shown during the withdrawal of Afghanistan, which left 13 Americans dead, seemed to be the turning point, though. Since then, Biden has been saddled with some of the lowest approval ratings for a first-term president in modern history.

As RedState reported, the president hit only 37 percent approval in a recent Civiqs survey. USA Today also found Biden at a middling 38 percent just days ago.

When asked for an explanation, the administration has stuck to two excuses. One, that the media are suppressing their record of greatness by not explaining things well. In other words, they just have a “messaging” problem. And two, that Americans are actually upset because Biden hasn’t gotten his agenda through, not because of the results of his policies. That claim extended to the Virginia governor’s race, where some asserted that Terry McAuliffe would have beaten Glenn Youngkin had the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed Congress prior to the election.

So do those excuses hold water? Well, on November, 5th, the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed with the help of some really politically braindead Republicans. What’s happened since then?

Waiting for the BIF bump… Infrastructure passed Friday (11/5). 2 of the 3 polls conducted fully post BIF show Biden's approval rating going DOWN. As of right now, he's back to his all-time low of 42.2%. https://t.co/Qq6Vf51qST pic.twitter.com/CkcaeG1oiN

— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) November 11, 2021

In short, Biden threw his approval Hail Mary, hoping to recapture some of that early-term magic, and it landed harmlessly in the endzone as the clock threw up all zeros. This was the president’s last, best shot to turn things around with the public, but they just do not care about payoffs to special interests and “climate” initiatives.

Rather, what they care about is inflation on groceries, high energy prices, and encroachments on their liberty. No amount of revamped “messaging” was ever going to fix that, and certainly, another boondoggle spending bill was not the right prescription for changing public perceptions of a president that is flailing about, completely unfit for the office he holds.

In the end, Biden could turn things around with some voters. Not with Republicans, of course, but with moderate Democrats (some of which make up that big disapproval number) and independents perhaps. Yet, that would require shunning his far-left base and doing things that actually help everyday Americans. Things like allowing more oil and gas leases, green-lighting Keystone XL, getting a handle on the spending, and reducing regulation so as to ease the supply chain crisis. That will never happen, though. To the extent that Biden is cognizant that he even is president, he’s a radical one, and I’ve never met a nearly 80-year-old man who changes who they are.