Biden tries to preempt Republican attacks on crime ahead of midterm elections

President Joe Biden is hoping to counter Republican criticisms of spiking crime before the fall’s FBI data dump and November’s midterm elections.

Although the issue of crime may not energize Democrats like Republicans, Biden and congressional Democrats are seeking to appeal to swing voters and independents who, along with the Democratic base, may back the party’s gun reforms.

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Biden is promoting his Safer American Plan by addressing gun crime in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, his first midterm campaign trip after returning from his summer vacation. Berwood Yost, director of the Franklin & Marshall College Center for Opinion Research in Lancaster, contended the speech could puncture the Republican “narrative” that Democrats’ policies have failed.

“If the narrative is that the Biden administration and his colleagues in Washington, they have not been successful in the way that they’ve guided the country, I think you can fit a whole bunch of policies into that,” Yost told the Washington Examiner. “They can say things aren’t working, whether it’s the economy, whether it’s the safety of your local schools or your local community.”

For Yost, Wilkes-Barre is not the most obvious destination for Biden’s gun-focused trip, postponed from July after the president’s first COVID-19 diagnosis. But Biden did spend some of his childhood in nearby Scranton.

“In our last poll, only 6% mentioned crime-violence as the biggest problem facing the state,” he said. “I’d say at this point, the issue is well behind concerns about the economy.”

“People do generally support more gun regulations, just like they generally favor abortion rights,” Yost added. “So if you can talk about that in a way that’s moderated, that probably helps you with certain constituencies in this state, particularly suburban women voters.”

Yet the political environment is slightly different in Wisconsin, another 2022 and 2024 battleground state to which Biden is expected to travel next week, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center Director Barry Burden.

“In a survey I conducted of people who voted in the August primary in Wisconsin, crime and guns were the top issue among Democratic voters, ranking just above inflation,” he said. “The issue was much less important to Republicans and presumably was more about crime than gun safety.”

Republicans were criticizing Gov. Tony Evers and other Democrats over the violence that erupted in Kenosha after the 2020 shooting of Jacob Blake and the bail policies that permitted the release of the man who killed six people with his car during a Waukesha Christmas parade the following year, Burden explained.

“For their part, Democrats remain incensed that Kyle Rittenhouse was not found guilty for shooting and killing two people in Kenosha,” he said. “Gov. Evers called the state legislature into special session to write gun control legislation, but legislative leaders quickly rejected that effort.”

Republicans, including Republican National Committee spokeswoman Nicole Morales, have reiterated that families feel “less safe” because of “Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies and ‘defund the police’ rhetoric.” Biden has distanced himself from the “defund the police” message that emerged after George Floyd’s death in 2020. However, the RNC has scrutinized midterm rivals, such as Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman and his Wisconsin counterpart, Mandela Barnes, for their past endorsement of the slogan. Fetterman will not be attending Biden’s Tuesday event.

“While crime runs rampant across Democrat-run cities, Democrats like John Fetterman only want to make it worse,” Morales said. “From the economy to crime, Biden and Democrats are out of touch and failing the American people.”

Biden’s Wilkes-Barre trip comes days after two federal judges declined to block the president’s new ghost gun rules that require kits to be serialized and for licensed dealers to undertake background checks before selling them.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre previewed Biden’s remarks Monday, foreshadowing how he will underscore that his public safety policies are grounded in “funding the police.” She cited the American Rescue Plan Act, which provided local governments with $350 billion to “keep cops on the beat,” and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act as evidence. The latter closed the so-called boyfriend loophole and incentivized red-flag laws, in addition to creating novel federal gun trafficking and straw purchases crimes and necessitating enhanced background checks for people younger than 21.

“He’ll talk about how we have built on that momentum and how we must act on ban assault weapons,” she said of Biden. “He will say that you can’t propose defunding the FBI … and be pro-police,” she continued, alluding to the Republican response to the FBI’s search and seizure at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

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Biden’s average job approval-disapproval regarding crime is 37%-59%, according to RealClearPolitics. That is slightly weaker than his overall 42%-54% approval-disapproval but is an improvement on his 23%-71% right track-wrong direction polling.

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