“The American people just trying to stay above water don’t understand this,” Biden said. “You tell them about the
American Rescue Plan, and they say, ‘What the hell are you talking about?'”
Biden’s candid remark offered a window into why Democrats, who already face economic and historical headwinds heading into November’s midterms, have struggled to coalesce around a message to make their case to keep their narrow House and Senate majorities.
Party leaders are frustrated by how little credit they receive for enacting a massive economic stimulus and an infrastructure package, overseeing the distribution of
coronavirus vaccines to hundreds of millions of people and fulfilling Biden’s promise to
nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court.
They argue that Democrats’ record in the first 14 months of Biden’s administration offers a strong contrast with Republicans, who have so far built their midterm message around opposition to Biden rather than a vision for what the GOP would do if it wins control of Congress in November. Republicans need a net of five seats to win back the House and one seat to retake the Senate this fall.
“Our task is to show people that in many ways, they got what they ordered, right?” Vice President
Kamala Harris said Saturday at the Democratic National Committee’s
winter meeting in Washington. “They said this is what they wanted. They stood in line. They took time from work. It was difficult. And a lot of what they demanded, they got.”
Stalled momentum
Any momentum from Biden’s early economic successes was siphoned away when the Democratic-led Congress spent months unsuccessfully trying to reach a compromise on Biden’s
Build Back Better plan that would have included much of his climate and social policy agenda. The White House has since dropped the Build Back Better branding — it was absent in Biden’s
State of the Union speech and nowhere to be found at the retreat in Philadelphia or the DNC gathering in Washington.
Democratic efforts in Congress to
pass voting rights legislation in response to a spate of restrictive new election laws passed in
GOP-controlled states have stalled amid disagreement over at least partially
eliminating the Senate filibuster.
And rising inflation and gas price hikes — issues that Biden has
blamed on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — have trumped other economic concerns for voters.
“The overall message of, yes, Biden has moved the country forward — shots in the arm, money in pockets, has improved unemployment numbers — all of that is true,” said Jane Kleeb, the Nebraska Democratic Party chair. “What’s also true is people like the concrete things that they can get their hands around at the national level as well as the local level.”
She pointed to the lapse in the
$300-a-month child tax credit and rising gas prices as more tangible to voters.
Kleeb said she has urged White House aides to take an “offensive message, not a defensive message” on gas prices, and particularly in defending Biden’s decision to
revoke the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, have used Biden’s move to argue that he is to blame for rising gas prices. Kleeb said Democrats need to make the case that Biden’s Keystone XL decision protected property rights and that its construction would not have changed gas prices.
“What’s on President Biden’s shoulders and the DNC is improving the overall brand of Democrats,” she said.
Other DNC members also pointed to rising gas prices as a major obstacle in selling the party’s economic achievements.
“We’ve got to clear up this assumption that President Biden is the reason gas is going…