He’s right about this.
The president thinks the Democrats should run against the batshit crazy Republicans. Imagine that:
Biden is frustrated that journalists aren’t calling out Republicans for, as he sees it, giving up their principles in pursuit of power, according to a dozen people familiar with the President and his inner circle. He’s eager to unleash on the GOP ahead of the midterm elections but worries that doing so could endanger his last remaining hopes for bipartisan legislative wins. He knows he’ll be blamed for the economic pain that people are feeling — but deliberately, the statement he put out on Thursday about the latest contraction in the US economy spent as much time attributing the situation to “technical factors” as hammering congressional Republicans for their proposal to raise taxes on the middle class.
A roadmap to the 2022 midterm electionsWith his approval rating as bad as the low 30s in some polls and nearly every Democratic strategist warning that the political environment is dire — and many in the party still complaining that the White House’s political operation lacks enough planning or urgency — the President is short on other options. But advisers and others who’ve spoken directly with the President tell CNN the polarized country gives him a chance to make a more effective contrast than in any prior midterm cycle, boosted by the material they’re counting on from expected primary wins by Trump loyalists and other far-right candidates in May and June — as well as the anticipated Republican opposition to Biden’s last attempt at a domestic policy push in the congressional reconciliation process underway.
Look, there is almost no chance that they will get anything else done now. Manchin and Sinema are still strutting around flexing their muscle pretending that they are open to legislation. They are supposedly working on bipartisan legislation on Immigration and climate change which Mitch will never let them get 60 votes for in an election year. (I would be thrilled to be wrong about that but I don’t think I am.)
The country is in a foul mood and they are looking to hold somebody responsible. The Democrats should point them in the right direction instead of just standing there like potted plants absorbing the blows. Biden seems to know this:
In private conversations, the President has lamented how much people have stopped focusing on how bad a state he believes the country was in under former President Donald Trump. And so his old line, “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative,” has become a midterm mantra around the West Wing.
“Voters can easily believe that the country isn’t where they hoped,” one Biden adviser argued, “but also believe that they don’t want to turn it over to Marjorie Taylor Greene in ’22 and Trump in ’24.””Part of the value of contrast in any midterms is to try to force voters to think about this as a choice, as opposed to making it a referendum,” said another Biden adviser. “That’s most effectively done from the top — it’s hard to send candidates around the country even if they’re all singing from the same hymnbook if you don’t have the President driving it.”
Yes. Run against Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Green! They are what awaits and people need to be reminded of it.
We’ll see if they are able to get off the dime on this. It’s clear that those who live and die by focus groups have been persuaded that Real Americans only care about gas prices when, in reality, people repeat back what they think they’re supposed to say and what they’re hearing is that “kitchen table issues” are the only thing that matters. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy.