Six months in, and American optimism has tanked.
In the most recent ABC News/Ipsos Poll, a majority of Americans now say they are pessimistic about the direction of the country. That's a 53 percent increase over the response from the same poll in early May.
The number of people who say they feel optimistic about the way things are going dropped by nearly a third. Notably, the down numbers are about the same for Republicans and Democrats.
Perhaps that's the predictable result of a political strategy that sought to defeat hyperbolic balderdash by employing equal but opposing hyperbole.
For instance, during his campaign Joe Biden blamed every single covid death on Donald Trump. "If the president had done his job, had done his job from the beginning, all the people would still be alive," candidate Biden told a CNN town-hall audience in September 2020. "All the people. I'm not making this up."