David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s former political consultant, penned a New York Times op-ed this week admonishing President Joe Biden to appear humble during the State of the Union address on March 1.
“Polls show that the vast majority of Americans believe we are on the wrong track, and people will have little patience for lavish claims of progress that defy their lived experiences,” Axelrod advises:
Unsurprisingly, incidents of suicide, drug overdose deaths and violence in our homes and on the streets have grown dramatically. Frustrations with masks, mandates and shifting rules have deepened our political divides. Jobs have come roaring back, raising wages. But those wage increases have been eaten up by inflation, the likes of which we have not seen in four decades. And all the while, the rich have gotten richer.
Indeed, under Biden’s leadership, just like Obama’s leadership, the elites have grown more wealthy. Establishment media have noted that “combined, the 10 richest billionaires added $402.17 billion to their net worths in 2021” under Biden’s so-called economic recovery. Meanwhile, the average worker got a 2.4 percent pay decrease last year, according to the Department of Labor.
Axelrod warns Biden, whose average approval rating is in the 30s, that any high-stepping and showboating would appear disingenuous, “out of touch,” and “off key.”
“The state of the union is stressed,” Axelrod said of Biden’s America. “To claim otherwise — to highlight the progress we have made, without fully acknowledging the hard road we have traveled and the distance we need to go — would seem off-key and out of touch. You simply cannot jawbone Americans into believing that things are better than they feel.”
Axelrod’s advice comes as the Biden administration’s perhaps greatest advocate, MSNBC, has also scolded Biden for being out of touch with American workers heading into the 2022 midterms. MSNBC’s self-identified “elitist” and anchor Joe Scarborough told a panel this week that working class voters care little about elitist issues, such as global warming and transgenderism.
“Let’s just face it. It’s the elites, the wealthy, the people in the ivory towers. …We have the luxury of being philosophical when we go in to vote. The majority of Americans – they are [just] trying to get by,” Scarborough stated. “We the elites have the luxury of looking at it from 30 thousand feet.”
MSNBC is not the only outlet noting Biden’s estranged political position. The establishment media have reported two articles in two days warning Biden of huge losses in the midterms.
“The trend lines in rural America are very, very bad. … Now, the brand is so toxic that people who are Democrats, the ones left, aren’t fighting for the party,” former rural North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp told the Associated Press.