Soaring gas prices, historic inflation, supply chain bottlenecks, lifting crime rates, a porous southern border, and increasing U.S. absences on the global diplomatic stage. President Joe Biden will reportedly address these issues – amongst many more – dogging his administration in an election year with the simple mantra: “It’s not my fault, blame the Republicans.”
According to an Associated Press (AP) report Friday, the president will seek to portray himself as a man of action stymied at every turn by the GOP in a spectacular attempt at electoral blame shifting in the run up to the midterm elections come November.
“I mean this sincerely — name me something the national Republican Party is for,” Biden reportedly said at a recent Democratic National Committee meeting.
Will the electorate might dwell on that for a moment, voters do know for certain things could be better and Biden is being increasingly viewed as a president who enthusiastically stumbles from one disappointment to the next.
As the AP report continues, “… with crime rates rising in some parts of the country and inflation at its highest levels since 1981, these don’t feel like boom times to many. Seventy percent of Americans call the nation’s economy poor. Further, just 33% say they approve and 66% say they disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy, with about a third of Democrats, along with almost all Republicans, disapproving.”
The report goes on to indicate “trying to blame the other side amid mounting problems can have its limitations.”
Democrat Terry McAuliffe attempted that switch in last year’s Virginia governor’s race. He sought to make it a referendum on the dangers of modern day GOP — even branding Republican opponent Glenn Youngkin “Trump in a sweater vest.”
McAuliffe lost in a state Biden had carried by 10 points barely a year earlier.
Even the White House’s fiercest allies say it’ll be up to Biden to energize voters ahead of November — regardless of what Republicans do, AP continues.
“He’s not an effective communicator,” said Wes Bellamy, founder of Our Black Party, which advocates for issues to strengthen African American communities.
The president “speaks in a tone that doesn’t really resonate with much of his base and I don’t think they do a good enough job of being active on the ground,” Bellamy told the outlet.
Biden is simply his own worst enemy when it comes to getting his message out.
For example, the president appeared clueless when asked about extending the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Title 42 measure on Thursday at the White House.
Instead of talking about Title 42, the president began talking about the ongoing legal appeal from the Justice Department challenging a judicial order overruling the CDC’s mask mandate on airplanes:
For all that, the AP report ends on a bleak but somewhat hopeful note for Biden.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki suggested Biden may help Democrats avoid a Republican midterm romp by evoking the phrase “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.”
That’s something Biden said frequently as vice president and while campaigning for the White House in 2020.
“Really, if you look at the other side, they have nothing in the cupboard. They have no plan,” Psaki said during a recent event for “Pod Save America.”
“We could be saying that more.”
U.S. President Joe Biden with the Easter Bunny in the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC on April 18, 2022. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty)
The 2022 United States elections will be held on Tuesday, November 8, 2022.
During this midterm election year, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate will be contested.
Thirty-nine state and territorial gubernatorial and numerous other state and local elections will also be contested. This will be the first election affected by the redistricting that will follow the 2020 census.