Joe Biden Timeline Shows Key Turning Points in Presidency

President Joe Biden has had a rough couple of weeks.

His debate performance last month has put his reelection campaign into crisis. Some of his allies have abandoned him, prominent Democrats are publicly calling for him to step down, and he’s had to issue several defiant statements pushing back on the idea that he’ll withdraw from the race.

But Biden’s downfall did not begin on the debate stage in Atlanta. The president’s approval rating has long been an issue for his campaign. But it did not start this way.

Four years ago, Biden’s political future was filled with promise. He had just won a landslide victory in South Carolina’s 2020 primary, which breathed new life into his campaign. He would go on to win the presidential nomination and later the White House. He took office with a vow to unify a politically divided country.

But now, four months until Election Day, he is staring down a revolt within his own party, insisting he has what it takes to defeat Donald Trump. As political consultant Jay Townsend told Newsweek, “The damage is done. It is permanent. It is beyond salvage.”

So where did things change? Here are the key turning points that turned Biden’s reelection campaign from hopeful to probably unsalvageable.

August 2021: U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan

Things first took a turn for the worse six months into Biden’s presidency when the president pushed up the full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan to August 31, 2021.

The decision forced an abrupt exit that erupted into chaos as images from Afghanistan showed military helicopters evacuating diplomats from a dire scene at the Hamid Karzai International Airport. Four days before the last U.S. military planes left Afghanistan, a suicide bombing at the airport in Kabul killed 13 American service members.

While troops rushed to meet Biden’s deadline for leaving Afghanistan, the president’s approval rating fell enormously. Up until that point, Biden had benefited from fairly high approval ratings. But the withdrawal pushed his numbers underwater, and by November 2021 most Americans disapproved of Biden’s job as president. Despite a 50 percent approval rating at the beginning of August, Biden’s disapproval rating quickly overtook his approval rating by the end of the month.

“Clearly, Afghanistan was where things really changed,” Michigan-based pollster Steve Mitchell told Newsweek. “He was very popular up to that point.”

“When I saw CNN‘s Anderson Cooper and MSNBC‘s Rachel Maddow both criticize President Biden, I thought: Wow, this is going to be a watershed moment in this administration,” Mitchell said. “He’s never recovered.”

Biden’s approval rating would never bounce back. Almost a year later, his approval had dropped to a new low, with only a third of Americans approving of his presidency. That trend continued over the next two years as Biden struggled to see an approval rate higher than 43 percent. As of Thursday, only 37 percent of Americans approve of his handling of the job.

“What [Afghanistan] did is sort of take away the luster of [Biden] trying to be a president who works with both sides of the aisle,” Mitchell said.

June 2022: The Economy

Then, a year and a half into his presidency, Biden’s administration became plagued by economic concerns.

In June 2022, inflation reached a 40-year high, peaking at 9.1 percent and surpassing May 2022’s 8.8 percent, “the largest 12-month increase since the period ending December 1981,” according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At the same time, gas prices were surging, reaching $5.01 per gallon nationwide, the highest average recorded by AAA since it began collecting pricing data in 2000.

Gas prices have since come down, and the Federal Reserve has managed to reduce inflation and keep the nation’s unemployment rate low. But even with the catchy name “Bidenomics,” his administration has failed to convince Americans that the economy is good.

“Despite strong economic numbers, people don’t have confidence in the economy, in part because of inflation, although today’s numbers are good,” Michael Gordon, a Democratic strategist and principal at Group Gordon, told Newsweek. “Despite the administration’s efforts to tout strong numbers, people can’t hear it.”

Only 22 percent of Americans described current U.S. economic conditions as “excellent” or “good” in May, according to a Gallup poll. The pollsters found that since early 2022, Americans have consistently described the economy as “poor.”

“When you add a president who doesn’t present confidently to the underlying malaise, it’s hard to win,” Gordon said.

October 2022: Surprisingly Good Midterms

The Democrats were able to stave off a red wave in the 2022 midterms, while Republicans suffered disappointing election results.

Although the GOP did take back the House, it was by only a razor-thin majority. Endorsements from Biden’s nemesis, Trump, fell flat, leading to a series of Republican losses in races in Georgia, Arizona and New Hampshire.

“[Biden] had a good midterm for a first-term president, so you have to pin his decline to what’s happened since,” Gordon said.

October 2023: Israel-Hamas War

Biden’s response to the Israel-Hamas war, which began after Hamas militants launched a surprise attack against Israel on October 7 last year, presented yet another challenge for a president already facing an uphill reelection effort.

Mitchell said Biden’s pro-Israel stance has “no doubt” put the president in a problematic position with several key Democratic constituencies, including progressives, young Americans and voters of color. Mitchell said while foreign policy is not high up on the list of voter concerns, it’s become an increasingly important issue in a race that will be decided on the margins.

A Politico/Morning Consult poll released in April showed that 33 percent of Democratic voters felt the president was “not tough enough on Israel,” while just 8 percent said he was being “too tough.”

June 2024: Presidential Debate

But the biggest catalyst to Biden’s downward political spiral is the presidential debate in June.

The presumptive Democratic nominee came face-to-face with Trump for the first time since 2020 . But while many Democrats were hoping to see a confident leader silence criticisms about his age, the 81-year-old president put on a troubling performance, looking lost, sounding hoarse and, at times, failing to finish his sentences.

Townsend said there has been one thing that has unified Democrats over the past eight years: “nominating a candidate who can defeat Trump.”

“Until the debate, there was general consensus that Biden was their best bet,” Townsend said. “The debate proved otherwise. To many, it was also a revelation—a hard truth—about President Biden’s declining state.”

The Democratic Party broke into an internal panic after the debate. Some of the party’s most prominent members, and even known Biden allies, have begun casting doubts about his ability to serve a second term. Congressional Democrats in both the House and Senate have begun publicly calling for him to step aside as the party’s nominee.

“The issue is that Biden’s debate performance punctuated Americans’ fears about his ability to lead,” Gordon said. “The issue was brimming under the surface but came to light brightly in the debate.”

Mitchell said that the debate had an “enormous” impact.

Without the debate, he continued, no one in the Democratic Party would be questioning Biden’s candidacy “at all.” Even as it became more obvious that Trump would be the Republican nominee, “Democrats really rallied around [Biden] under all circumstances.”

“Clearly, that debate opened the eyes of America, and certainly to the people who knew him,” Mitchell said. “Those who were aware of his cognitive issues beforehand now had to acknowledge that there were some serious problems with him.”

Townsend said, “Donors are closing their checkbooks. Democrats sharing the ballot with Biden this year are staring into the abyss. The election is no longer a referendum on Trump’s fitness for office. Rather, it’s a referendum on Biden’s cognitive ability. To those who care about preserving democratic rule, it is an untenable situation.”