If President Joe Biden was a financial investment, he would be the hottest stock on Wall Street.  Investment advisors would be advocating that you buy shares in Biden America long!

Yesterday’s Quinnipiac Poll reported that Americans give President Biden a negative 40 – 52 percent job approval rating compared to the negative 31 – 60 percent job approval rating he received in July.  This is an increase of 9 points.

The Biden resurgence was first reported last week in the Gallup Poll.  It reported an increase in Biden’s approval rating of six points from 38 to 44 percent, but the underlying Gallup news regarding independent voters was even more favorable to Biden and the Democrats.  Among independent voters, Biden’s approval rating has risen nine points from 31 per cent to the current 40.

The Gallup findings are corroborated by the observations of the renowned conservative journalist Ben Shapiro.  Based on his research, independent voters are now breaking 4-1 for the Democrats.

Now in order to understand the impact of “independent voters” on the New Jersey 7th District Congressional race between incumbent Democrat Congressman Tom Malinowski and his Republican challenger Tom Kean, Jr., one must first attempt to gauge the number of NJ7th District voters who are truly independent, not just “unaffiliated.”

To understand this distinction, one should read the 2009 article, “Understanding Unaffiliated Voters, authored by Patrick Murray, Director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.

Murray points out that there are many New Jersey voters who identify with one of the two major parties, but do not bother to register with that party because of New Jersey’s open primary law.  This statute allows a voter to delay registering with his or her identified party until the day of the primary election.  If such voters do not see any compelling reason to vote in the primary, they will remain identified in the registration rolls as unaffiliated, although they are not truly independent.

Still, in my view, the larger the number of registered unaffiliated voters, the greater the number of truly independent voters that will be included in the unaffiliated total.  The 7th District is one of only four New Jersey Congressional Districts where the number of registered unaffiliated voters exceeds that of the registered voters of each of the two major political parties.  So within the approximately 211,000 registered unaffiliated voters of the 7th Congressional District, the number of independent voters is certainly large enough to determine the outcome of a close race.  This is especially true, given the fact that the numbers of registered Republicans and Democrats in the 7th district are roughly equal.

There is every reason to believe that the independent voters in the NJ7th Congressional District will follow the same overwhelming Democratic trend that independent voters are following nationwide.  And that augurs well for a Democratic victory of Tom Malinowski and a Republican debacle for Tom Kean, Jr.

The loss of Republican Congressional candidate support nationwide from Independent voters has been so deep and widespread that the Cook Report, the gold standard of forecasting House races stated yesterday that Republican control of the House is no longer a “foregone conclusion.”

And doubtless, Tom Kean, Jr.  will be a quintessential example in forthcoming polls of a Republican challenger who has experienced a massive decline in independent voter support.

When the election was originally defined as a mandate on Biden’s handling of the inflation issue, independent voters displayed a strong Republican trend.   As shown by recent national polls, however, Biden and the Democrats have succeeded beyond all expectations in redefining the election as one whose prime issues are abortion and the threat to democracy. And recent polling shows that these two constellations of issues are moving independent voters wholesale to the Democrats.

As a result of the successful Democratic campaign redefinition, Tom Kean, Jr. may be the most vulnerable of all the highly touted GOP midterm Congressional challengers.

His vote against the New Jersey Freedom of Reproductive Choice Act, which codified in statutory law the reproductive choice rights extinguished by the reversal of Roe v. Wade, is extremely out of sync with independent voters nationwide and certain to significantly decrease his support from both men and women pro-choice voters.

Kean’s vulnerability on the threat to democracy issue will be magnified by the vastly increased effectiveness of Joe Biden’s long delayed campaign against the Trumpist Maga Movement.  The President’s speech last night decrying the Maga dire threat to democracy was, in my view, the most effective of Biden’s career.

The core of the Maga movement and Maga reactionary culture is Trumpist authoritarianism, fascism, attacks against democracy and democratic institutions, racism, and delusional conspiratorial theories.  While Kean, Jr. himself does not appear to be a Maga politician, he does have an appalling record in acquiescing in the Maga movement, due to his pure political cravenness.

Examples of such Kean, Jr. acquiescence in the Maga threat to democracy abound – and I have authored columns on nearly all of them.  My columns have focused on the refusal of Kean, Jr.  to repudiate Maga Congressional extremists, such as his failure to repudiate Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul A. Gosar of Arizona, leading lights of the neo-fascist wing of the GOP,   his heralding of himself as an avatar of the Trump agenda during this year’s primary, and his silence on the Republican National Committee resolution which defined individuals engaged in the seditious conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election as participants in “legitimate political discourse.”

Kean, Jr. is clearly one of the prime losers in the successful Biden/Democratic effort to redefine the 2022 Congressional Midterm elections.  In contrast to Biden’s 2022 Campaign efforts, if the Tom Kean, Jr. 2022 campaign was a stock on the New York Stock Exchange, it would be a huge subject of short sales.  Clearly, there is reason for the renewed optimism in the Malinowski campaign camp.

Alan J. Steinberg served as regional administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as executive director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.