Joe Biden's Year in Review

President Joe Biden is wrapping up the third year of his presidency and entering 2024 on shaky ground.

Biden finished 2023 with an approval rating of 39 percent, which is a slight uptick from the 37 percent he saw in October and November, but the worst of any modern-day president heading into a tough re-election, data from Gallup shows. Biden, who will likely be the Democratic nominee for 2024, has the lowest support of the past seven presidents at this point in their first term. Barack Obama had an approval rating of 43 percent in 2011 and Donald Trump had an approval rating of 45 percent in 2019.

This year, Biden saw several challenges that have threatened his re-election campaign, including a primary challenge from Representative Dean Phillips and criticisms of his response to the Israel-Hamas war, which has driven away progressive voters. In 2023, House Republicans also launched a formal impeachment inquiry into Biden and his family, the Supreme Court struck down his student loan forgiveness plan and economic and immigration concerns continued to haunt his administration.

But the president also struck a deal with House Republicans to raise the debt limit, improved economic conditions in time for the holiday season and received endorsements from progressive lawmakers who hadn't always supported his White House ambitions.

Here's a look back at Biden's 2023:

Re-Election Campaign

Biden announced that he would seek a second term in April, asking voters to help him "finish the job" and re-elect the oldest president in U.S. history. Biden, who turned 81 last month, would be 86 at the end of a second term.

A 2024 run from Biden was widely expected, but faced criticisms from some Democrats who accused the party's broad support of Biden's re-election campaign of depriving voters of a younger candidate. After months of hinting at a primary challenge, Representative Dean Phillips, who will turn 55 next month, announced a longshot bid for the Democratic nomination in October.

Despite troubling approval ratings, Biden had managed to remain the frontrunner in the Democratic primaries. Nearly 7 in 10 Democrats support his re-election campaign, while Phillips and author Marianne Williamson, who is also running for the party nomination, have struggled to garner more than 15 percent support in any poll, according to FiveThirtyEight. This year also saw the rise and fall of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who posed the greatest threat to Biden in the primaries. Kennedy announced his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in March, before launching an independent run in October.

Although Biden is polling well among Democratic voters, the president's re-election chances are significantly lower in a general election, where he's neck-and-neck with Trump. In a hypothetical Biden-Trump rematch, the latest RealClearPolitics averages shows Trump ahead by 2 percentage points. Trump is also leading in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona and Michigan—all of which Biden carried in 2020.

Biden's chances are even lower against former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who leads 5 percentage points in a hypothetical matchup against Biden in the latest RealClearPolitics averages.

Still, Biden has managed to secure endorsements from progressive members of Congress, like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator John Fetterman, who both endorsed a more left-leaning presidential bid from Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 election. Ocasio-Cortez also supported Sanders' 2020 campaign. Their support for Biden's 2024 run has been seen as a strong sign of Democratic unity for the president's re-election efforts.

Republicans on Capitol Hill: Impeachment, Investigations

House Republicans have had their sights set on Biden since he won the 2020 election, and 2023 was the year they were finally able to go after the president. Despite a disappointing midterm election, Republicans won a razor-thin majority in the House that still gave them control of the chamber and the ability to pursue their priorities.

Republicans on the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees have spent much of the past year probing Biden's son Hunter's business dealings and claiming that their findings, which have not yet been released, have proved that Biden reaped personal benefits from his son's activities. They have not yet produced evidence that directly ties Biden to those dealings but were able to secure enough GOP votes to formalize an impeachment inquiry into the president earlier this month.

On Wednesday, committee chairs Representative Jim Jordan and James Comer informed the White House that they were investigating whether Biden engaged in "conspiracy to obstruct a proceeding of Congress" by having prior knowledge that his son would defy their congressional subpoena. Hunter Biden appeared on Capitol Hill two weeks earlier to refuse the requested closed-door deposition, offering instead to testify at a public hearing.

Hunter Biden, who was indicted twice this year, has also caused a headache for his father. The younger Biden is facing nine tax charges—three felonies and six misdemeanors—as well a separate gun charge for allegedly possessing a firearm in 2018 as a drug user. Shortly after his remarks on the Hill this month, former Biden White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said it was "not helpful" to Biden to have his son "out there" giving comments to reporters.

"Look, I think if you're sitting at the White House right now, you're like 'Please, Hunter Biden. We know your dad loves you. Please stop talking in public,'" Psaki said on "Meet the Press."

Despite the congressional attacks on Biden, the president has, for the most part, avoided a lot of the drama that unfolded on Capitol Hill this year, including the House Republicans' speakership fight and Senator Tommy Tuberville's military blockade. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's struggle to win the gavel, which Biden called "embarrassing" and "not my problem," as well as McCarthy's subsequent ousting gave Biden a chance to portray Republicans in disarray.

Biden also got to celebrate earlier this month after Tuberville announced he was lifting his 10-month blockade on most military promotions, despite any changes to the Pentagon's abortion policy that the Alabama Republican was protesting in the first place. Biden called the hold "politically motivated" and "pointless" and slammed Senate Republicans who he said "needlessly hurt hundreds of service members and military families and threatened our national security."

Immigration

The border crisis has been a problem for Biden since the early days of his presidency. The influx of migrants who have arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border since Biden took office has not subsided and Biden is now facing growing pressures from members of his own party to address the immigration party. Democrat-led cities like New York and Washington, D.C., have repeatedly called on the administration to help them with resources for asylum-seekers who are being sent to sanctuary cities by Republican governors who are trying to get Biden's attention.

It's been nearly three years since Biden was sworn in as president and the number of migrants has only grown. In the 2023 fiscal year, more than 2.5 million migrants crossed the southern border—a historic high that topped the record set in the year prior.

Despite promising to "restore humanity and American values to our immigration system" in 2021, Biden is now said to be weighing the return of Trump-era policies to address the border crisis. Those considerations include the revival of the pandemic-era Title 42 policy and an expansion of immigration enforcement inside the U.S.

Immigration remains one of the top two voting issues for Americans, tied with poor leadership, according to Gallup's end-of-year poll. A December survey from the Wall Street Journal found that voters disapproved of Biden's handling of the border by a more than two-to-one margin and only 24 percent said Biden would be better at handling the issue than Trump, compared to 54 percent who said Trump would be better.

Bidenomics

The other key voting issue that Biden faces is the economy. Though he's been able to improve confidence this year, most Americans continue to have a poor outlook on the economy.

The Biden administration has spent a lot of 2023 touting Bidenomics and pointing to key economic indicators that show good news. This year, gas prices have declined, the stock market neared record highs, unemployment remains low, inflation has fallen sharply and GDP growth hit 4.9 percent in the third quarter. Widespread predictions of a recession also failed to materialize and by late 2023 many economists were cheering the state of the economy.

"I'm excited... We got the juice in printing money. We've got the Fed slowing down. We've got the soft landing. We've got broadening of the S&P 500 and the S&P 500 and obviously the Russell 2000," businessman Kevin O'Leary told Fox News' Larry Kudlow last week. "This is a fantastic holiday season. Rudolph the reindeer has arrived into all equity stocks. I'm so happy!"

Still, 33 percent of U.S. adults rate the current economic conditions as "fair" and 45 percent as "poor," while only 3 percent said they were "excellent" and 19 percent said they were "good." Separately, 68 percent of Americans say the economy is getting worse. The latest reading of Gallup's Economic Confidence Index shows that attitudes have risen to -32 from last month's -40, but remain negative, as they have since June 2021.

The stagnant public opinion has frustrated Biden. When asked about this 2024 economic outlook, the president told reporters, "All good. Take a look. Start reporting it the right way."

Foreign Policy: Israel-Hamas war, China-U.S. Relations and Ukraine

Foreign policy has been a thorn in Biden's side throughout 2023. His support for Israel amid the Israel-Hamas war has cost him progressive voters who have vowed against re-electing him over his handling of the war.

Young, progressive voters have soured on Biden, accusing the president of committing "genocide" against the Palestinians and criticizing him for sending military aid to Israel. The voting bloc, which is credited with helping Biden win 2020, is now tipping toward Trump, polls show. Last week, a national survey from the New York Times/Siena College found Trump leading Biden 49 percent to 43 percent among voters under 30, the same group that went for Biden by 24 percentage points in the last election.

In a different war, Biden's State Department announced Wednesday that it would give Ukraine $250 million in military aid in its fight against Russia, the last such package that the U.S. will provide until Congress approves the president's funding requests. Although Biden was able to deliver more funds to Ukraine, he has failed to get congressional Republicans to approve the more than $60 million in aid he wants to send Ukraine.

Biden also met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2023, amid deteriorating relations between the U.S. and China. Tensions remain fraught between the two countries over the status of Taiwan and the nations have spent the last four years engaged in a trade war that pushed the U.S. to tighten existing restrictions of China's semiconductors. This year, a Chinese spy balloon also caused American outrage after it was seen floating across mainland USA until it was shot down off the coast of South Carolina in February.

Both Biden and Xi acknowledged the importance of last month's meeting, with Xi describing it as "the most important bilateral relationship in the world." Biden also appeared to come away hopeful, calling their exchange "among the most constructive and productive we've had."

2020 Promises

With less than a year until the next election, Biden still has to deliver on 65 of the promises he made in his 2020 campaign, according to a tracker from PolitiFact.

Thus far, he's kept 27 and compromised on 5 of the 99 campaign promises he's made. But 34 of those promises are still in the works and 31 of those remain stalled. Some of the promises that remain to be made include student loan debt forgiveness, broadband expansion to every American and the codification of Roe v. Wade, among others. He had sought to check off student loan debt forgiveness last year, but his plan was struck down by the Supreme Court's conservative majority.

This year, Biden delivered on three major promises: to increase refugee admissions to 125,000, to expand the Justice Department's power in addressing police misconduct and to improve Obamacare.