BIDEN 2024 FORMULA: MESS THINGS UP, BLAME TRUMP AND CONGRESS. The Biden campaign is using the widely read newsletter Politico Playbook to roll out the president’s plan to address the rising cost of housing. It is President Joe Biden‘s “personal preoccupation,” Politico says, his “secret policy obsession.”

Given the importance of housing in American lives, it seems strange that the president would keep his concern for the matter a “secret.” But there it is. Playbook tells a story from 50 years ago, when Biden was a young senator, and legendary Democratic Sen. Hubert Humphrey told Biden that to be effective, he would have to focus on a single issue and make it his own. Humphrey suggested Biden become “Mr. Housing,” leading an effort to provide “decent housing in America for middle-class and lower-middle-class people and the poor.”