Joe Biden isn’t having a great presidency.

His approval ratings are poor: 43.4% of voters approve of the job he is doing, while 51.6% of them disapprove, according to FiveThirtyEight. The Afghanistan withdrawal was a disaster. Inflation is high. Businesses are having a hard time filling jobs. The coronavirus isn’t going away. Biden hasn’t been able to get many of his campaign promises done, including his "Build Back Better" agenda. And his administration has taken some divisive positions, such as support for repealing the Hyde Amendment that protects taxpayers from funding elective abortion.

So what can Biden do if he wants a win politically?

One place he should look at is the minimum wage — as eight states will do at the start of 2022. Raising the minimum wage is a political winner and something he could find 60 votes in the Senate to get done.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, but just 21 states abide by this wage. It hasn’t changed since 2009, which means it will go at least 13 years without an increase. Since inflation is a problem, this becomes an issue: Minimum wage workers lose purchasing power. The minimum wage reached $7.25 an hour in July 2009. Back then, $7.25 had the same purchasing power that $9.36 had in November 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Most voters want a minimum wage increase. A Pew Research poll earlier this year showed that 62% of people supported raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, while 38% opposed it. However, of the people who opposed raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, 71% supported some form of a federal minimum wage increase. That would mean that about 89% of the population supports raising the minimum wage.

There isn’t nearly enough support for a $15 an hour minimum wage in the Senate for it to pass. Eight Senate Democrats voted against it when it came up for a vote in March. That makes sense because a minimum wage that high would be a job-killer in some parts of the country. It’s estimated that a $15 an hour minimum wage would eliminate 1.4 million jobs despite boosting pay for 17 million people. Poorer parts of the country would disproportionately see those layoffs.

However, a $10 minimum wage would result in minimal job loss and boost pay for some workers. Some people want to index the minimum wage to inflation so that workers don’t lose purchasing power and there aren’t massive cost increases on businesses.

Several Republicans in the Senate expressed support this year for raising the minimum wage. That includes a proposal from Sens. Mitt Romney, Tom Cotton, Shelley Moore Capito, Susan Collins, and Rob Portman that would gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour, enact mandatory E-Verify to prevent illegal hiring, and index the minimum wage to inflation. Sen. Lindsey Graham also supports indexing the minimum wage to inflation, and Sen. Josh Hawley wants a $15 minimum wage at corporations worth more than $1 billion.

That’s seven Republican senators right there who support some form of an increase. If a proposal could get the support of at least three other Republicans, including Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a centrist Republican, a minimum wage increase could become a reality.

There is no way Biden will get exactly what he wants on the minimum wage, but his administration could get something done — and he could use the win.

Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance writer who has been published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.