Whether you like it or not…
Dan Pfeiffer makes the case in his newsletter that despite Biden’s low approval ratings, Democrats should resist the temptation to run against him (“distance themselves”) in the upcoming campaign, as many strategists will no doubt advise. His reasoning:
Dems Need a Strong Biden: Presidential approval is highly correlated with midterm success. In other words, the more popular the president, the better his party will do in the midterm elections. Democrats should want nothing more than for Biden’s approval ratings to go back up to where they were last summer. As a party, we need to do everything we can to strengthen Biden. A midterm strategy based on criticizing the President and performative demonstrations of distance will have the opposite effect. These moments will weaken Biden and weakness makes our chances of winning reelection worse, not better.
The Map: Democrats can maintain the Senate and expand our majority without competing in a single state Donald Trump won in 2020. All of the key governor’s races are happening in Biden country. The House map is more complicated and we have some Democrats running in Trump districts, but as Dave Wasserman of the Cook Report pointed out, there are likely to be more seats that voted for Biden this cycle than voted prior to redistricting. There will, of course, be some Democrats running in Trumpy districts. Those candidates will need a slightly different strategy, but those instances should be the exception, not the rule
The Math: In 2022, our top strategic imperative is to reconstitute the coalition that came together to take the House in 2018 and the White House and Senate in 2020.
We can theoretically win the vast majority of these races without persuading a single person who pulled the lever for Trump. It’s hard to see how running away from or running down the Democratic President is a good way to accomplish that goal. This is not to say that it’s all about “turnout.” We know from Virginia and New Jersey that the Republicans are going to come out in droves. But our winning coalition consists of the Democratic base, people who got involved with politics because of Trump, and people who switched sides for the same reason. Persuading people to stay involved with politics or stick with the Democrats is not an easy feat, but treating the Democratic President as persona non-grata will make it impossible.It’s a Distraction: Democrats are at a massive messaging disadvantage in this election. The Republicans spend more money on ads. They have Fox and the MAGA media; and Facebook’s algorithm to push the message in front of every laptop, tablet, and phone. Democrats must work harder and smarter to get the message out. Every ounce of time and energy needs to be dedicated to making the case for Democrats and against Republicans. Why would we ever spend a single newscycle, tweet, or ad reinforcing the Republican case against the Democratic President?
It’s Impractical and Stupid: By seeking out distance from Biden, Democrats will get all of the downsides and none of the upsides of the President. Hypothetically, let’s say that some of the candidates following this terrible advice manage to appear on stage with Joe Biden for the whole campaign. What do these political “gurus” think will happen? Will the Republicans give up trying to tie them to Biden? Are these consultants aware that photoshop exists and that even if their candidate never appears in a photo with Biden the GOP can still put them together in a campaign ad?
While the President’s numbers are down with Democrats, he still has the approval of approximately 80 percent of Democrats in most polls. His approval rating among Republicans is in the single digits. Among Independents, it’s typically in the 30s. Democrats are unlikely to outperform Biden among Republicans. To win, they need to do better among Independents, but criticizing and weakening a President who eight in ten of our most reliable voters support is a terrible way to achieve our goal.
I think he’s right. There is no margin in running from the president. It won’t work anyway. People aren’t that stupid. And it may very well antagonize base voters.
They need to run against the Republicans, aka the Trump cult. This shouldn’t be hard.