President Joe Biden took office at a particularly polarized time in American history, so it’s not surprising that citizens are divided on his performance at the one-year mark.
A Georgia history teacher who voted for Biden would give him a “C” grade, faulting the president for not pushing earlier to end the filibuster in the Senate but supportive of his Build Back Better plan.
A retired nurse in Iowa who supported Pete Buttigieg in the Democratic primary says she’s been impressed by the way Biden has upheld the dignity of the office.
A registered independent in Arizona who voted for former President Donald Trump says Biden’s first year has been “pretty bad,” citing the shutdown of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal.
Here’s what else Americans have to say about the job Biden has done so far:
THE TRUMP-TO-BIDEN VOTER
Craig Prichard believes Donald Trump should be in jail. But he’s far from your typical anti-Trumper: He voted for him in 2016.
But not in 2020. “No, sir,” says the 65-year-old self-described independent from Des Moines, Iowa.
Prichard is still angry at Trump over the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, saying he believes the former president caused it. But it was Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic that led Prichard to vote for Biden in 2020.
“Trump wanted to make it look like COVID was going away,” Prichard says. “That wasn’t the way to take care of it.”
Prichard, who for 40 years built farm machinery, worked construction and eventually retired after a stint at a meatpacking plant last year, says Biden is “handling COVID as well as he can” while juggling a number of other issues.
“Biden, you can tell he’s trying to handle the pandemic, food prices, gas prices, Russia, all at the same time, and he doesn’t seem to care how he looks,” Prichard says. “Because it’s not real good right now for him, even though there’s less people dying than if Trump were there.”
“Trump, turns out, only cared about how he looked,” Prichard says.
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THE TEACHER WHO GIVES BIDEN A ‘C’ GRADE
Kai Uchimura, a high school history teacher who lives in Decatur, Georgia, voted for Biden in 2020. He’d give him a “C” grade so far.
Uchimura, 26, describes himself as leaning left on most issues, though he is not a registered Democrat. He says he supports Biden’s social policy bill that remains stalled in Congress, but thinks Democrats have done a poor job of explaining its benefits.
“That Build Back Better plan, it seemed like no one knew what was in the bill except for the cost,” he says.
He also faults Biden for not pushing earlier to end the filibuster in the Senate that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation. Last week, for the first time, Biden directly advocated eliminating the filibuster in order to debate and vote on election and voting rights legislation.
“I know that when he was coming into office, he had this message of trying to unite the country and…
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