Consumers are unhappy, no matter how much President Joe Biden tells them things are good. That’s because he continues causing energy poverty, most recently with the announcement of sweeping new EPA regulations on methane emissions from oil and gas operations.

A Wall Street Journal poll released Saturday shows Biden’s approval rating at 37%. It has former President Donald Trump winning a head-to-head race against Biden by 47% to 43%. Trump’s margin grows to six when accounting for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other independent candidates.

These numbers, like findings of other polls, aren’t about the personalities of Biden and Trump. Voters don’t much like either candidate’s demeanor. Biden cannot find his thoughts, words or his way off the stage. Trump lacks any semblance of the mature statesmanship Americans expect from the White House.

These two unlikable candidates could force a focus on policy above personality. That’s bad for Biden because his policies fail. The foreign press does not mince words about 2024.

“Trump predicted to win election as Biden’s approval rating hits new low,” says a Sunday headline in The Telegraph, of London.

The irresponsible aggression Biden directs toward domestic energy means trouble for him and down-ballot Democrats. Even if Biden gets the economy roaring before November, it won’t help him if it doesn’t help middle- and lower-income households.

“Energy expenditures are a significant portion of consumer spending,” explains economist Cullen Hendrix, a senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for Global Economics.

The doubling, tripling, or quadrupling of oil, gas, and electric costs poses irritation and inconvenience

— at most — to Colorado’s upper-class activists. At least for the moment.

For consumers living on the lower half of median incomes, the soaring costs force an immediate threat of eviction, foreclosure, and empty shelves — tragedies that harm families. For oil, gas, and coal workers it means upheaval of life as they know it.

The wealthy will feel it, too, as the consequences wick toward them. People who can’t stretch a tank of gas until payday don’t show up for work to generate wealth. They make and buy less of the goods and services that nourish upper- and upper-middle-class incomes and investments.

Typical voters don’t analyze energy policy, but they feel it. They know “drill baby, drill” and “all the above” made life easier than “zero emissions by 2050.”

Biden began his energy war during his inaugural address by blocking the Keystone XL pipeline. That alone cost up to 79,000 jobs which would help a lot of asylum seekers crossing Biden’s open border.

Under Biden, inflation has risen by 17.7% on average nationwide. That’s largely because every good, service, and commodity requires traditional energy — and that won’t end this century.

Rising oil and gas prices cause scarcity and directly increase the costs of food, shelter, clothing, and most other needs and wants.

Comfortable environmental activists (like Biden) expect average consumers to embrace the sacrifice — for the sake of controlling the climate — as China builds a new coal plant each week and undermines the goal.

Despite the increasing adversity caused by the left’s anti-energy agenda, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency recently released 1,690 pages of new rules regarding methane emissions from oil and gas operations. These will advantage foreign producers who need not comply. It will discourage domestic production and further raise the cost of everything.

It means more suffering for consumers. It means a growing dependence on cheap foreign energy produced without thought of climate change. It means more of the same that’s driving Biden’s numbers down.

“I want to live my life, not record it.” Jackie Kennedy, American first lady