Alternate headline: The common sense of the American public prevails again … perhaps surprisingly so. Mainstream-media efforts to “both sides” a genocidal slaughter of Jews on a scale not seen since WWII have apparently not worked on their consumer base, at least not so far. Demonstrations in major cities and on college campuses intending to move the needle on the war certainly didn’t work, and may well have backfired in more ways than one.

Two major-media polls released yesterday show Americans strongly supporting Israel. When it comes to Joe Biden, on the other hand, not so much.

Let’s start with CNN’s poll, which has clearer divisions, perhaps a result of better crafting of the questions. Not only do a vast majority of Americans sympathize with the Israelis, half say a full ground war is fully justified, with another 20% saying it’s at least somewhat justified:

Half of Americans (50%) say that the Israeli government’s military response to the Hamas attacks is fully justified, another 20% say it’s partially justified and just 8% that it is not at all justified, with 21% unsure. Republicans are far more likely than independents or Democrats to say the response is fully justified (68% of Republicans say so compared with 45% of independents and 38% of Democrats), and older Americans are also much likelier than younger ones to say it is completely justified (81% of those age 65 or older see the response as fully justified, compared with 56% of 50-to-64-year-olds, 44% of 35-to-49-year-olds and 27% of 18-to-34-year-olds). Majorities across age and party, though, say the Israeli response is at least partially justified, with very few Americans of any age or party affiliation saying the response is not at all justified.

A sizable 71% of Americans say they feel a lot of sympathy for the Israeli people over the attacks by Hamas on October 7, with nearly all, 96%, expressing at least some sympathy for them. A broad majority also feel at least some sympathy for the Palestinian people (87%), but fewer feel a lot of sympathy for the Palestinians (41%). Nearly all Americans (84%) express at least some sympathy for both Israeli and Palestinian people as they face ongoing fighting.

This seems surprising, given the tenor of media coverage in the US during the past week. Over the first weekend, when the attacks were still continuing, the coverage in the US was more focused on what was actually happening — although CNN itself did have Aaron David Miller on that first day to proclaim that the “real problem” would be Israel’s response. That kind of commentary got more prevalent as the week wore on, as news outlets promoted stories about the hardships of Gaza civilians living in a war they started.

This poll didn’t get taken over that first weekend, though; the polling took place on Thursday and Friday. Several days of both-sidesism didn’t have much impact on American support for Israel, nor did the collective primal pro-terrorism screams coming from Academia and the cultural Marxists of Black Lives Matter and others of their ilk.

Joe Biden issued a strong statement on behalf of Israel, although he didn’t do so until three days into the conflict. Did that boost his standing?  Not in CNN’s poll, which found that very few respondents have trust in Biden to do anything right in the Middle East:

Few Americans express a great deal of trust in Biden to make the right decisions on the situation in Israel (16%), with about 3 in 10 saying they trust him moderately (31%), 26% saying they have not much trust and 28% none at all. There are broad partisan gaps, with 80% of Democrats saying they trust Biden a great deal or moderately, compared with 46% of independents and just 13% of Republicans.

This seems surprising, given that Biden did come down foursquare where Americans are on Israel. The fact that it took him three days to issue any kind of response at all likely killed whatever rally effect Biden might have received had he been seen to take charge immediately. It’s hard to rally around an empty chair, after all. This is also almost certainly an effect from the catastrophic Afghanistan retreat, an inflection point from which Biden’s standing with voters has never recovered.

The WaPo/ABC poll from Ipsos comes to similar conclusions, although somewhat more ambiguously worded. This poll has a sample size half of CNN’s and was conducted on Friday and Saturday, but the results parallel each other. Over three quarters of respondents feel the US is either supporting Israel sufficiently (49%) or not enough (28%), while fewer than one in five think the US is supporting Israel too much (18%). Those are more favorable numbers in support of Israel than in support of Ukraine, where a third of Americans believe the US is doing too much.

Biden scores a little better in this poll, but not by a lot:

Forty-one percent approve of President Biden’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas, and the same share approve of his handling of the Ukraine conflict.

For comparison, about one third or fewer Americans approve of Biden’s handling of domestic issues like crime (33%), gun violence (32%), inflation (29%), immigration and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border (26%).

This glosses over a couple of points. First, a clear majority (54%) of respondents disapprove of Biden’s handling of the conflict, so it’s not as though people are reluctant to make up their minds on the issue. Second, Ipsos skips over one of the other issues to compare — Iran. Readers have to go to the topline to find out that Biden scores 33/62 on Iran policy, apparently the first time in the WaPo/ABC series that Ipsos has bothered to ask the question despite it being an ongoing controversy in this administration.

Given the relation between Iran policy and the genocidal and barbaric acts of its proxy Hamas, that’s an important omission. The more that Iran’s connection to these attacks and others comes out, the worse it will make Biden’s appeasement policies toward Tehran look. If Biden can’t claw back that $6 billion at some point, the damage to his standing on Israel will get worse.

That prompts one final point. Other than Economist/YouGov, these two polling series are usually the friendliest to Biden and to progressives. The rest of the polling should tell an even tougher story for Hamas apologists as well as Biden. Jazz has a post coming up next, for instance, from Rasmussen that corroborates American solidarity with Israel as well as its rejection of the jihadi “decolonization.” Stay tuned.