President Joe Biden‘s warning about the imminent demise of democracy is at odds with the rosy image he is simultaneously trying to portray about Democrats and his leadership before November’s midterm elections.
The contradictory message also could exacerbate perceptions of Biden being out of touch as middle-class families attempt to balance their household budgets amid consumer price increases.
BIDEN URGES VOTERS TO REJECT TRUMP AND MAGA REPUBLICANS TO DEFEND DEMOCRACY
Republican strategist Cesar Conda concedes gas prices, once averaging $5 a gallon in June, have decreased to $3.08 nationwide two months before the election cycle. But Democrats will be held responsible for economic dissatisfaction before August’s inflation data is published on Sep. 13 and the Federal Reserve decides whether to raise interest rates on Sep. 22, Conda contends. June to July inflation may have been steady, yet it spiked by 8.5% compared to the 12 months prior.
“Although gas prices have come down, here’s the problem for the Democrats: Core inflation remains high, and the Fed is going to sharply raise interest rates and slow the economy to combat it,” Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) former chief of staff told the Washington Examiner. “The Democrats’ happy talk about the economy is out of touch with the economic pain felt by American families.”
On average, fewer than a quarter of polling respondents consider the country to be on the “right track,” according to the RealClearPolitics survey aggregation. An average of almost 70% tell pollsters the country is headed in the wrong direction. More broadly, Biden’s job approval numbers have recovered to be better than ex-President Donald Trump’s at the same point in his presidency, but Biden continues to be in double-digit net negative territory.
For the Republican National Committee, Biden’s 25-minute prime-time address at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall revealed his political priorities, pitching the 2022 campaign season as a contrast between Democrats and MAGA Republicans instead of being about kitchen table issues. An NBC poll last week did find that threats to democracy were the top concern for 21% of respondents.
“A rant full of yelling and baseless smears of millions of Americans doesn’t change the reality of Biden’s failures,” RNC spokesman Tommy Pigott said. “He can’t distract from deaths in our streets and less money in our pockets.”
Aggressive Progressive podcast host and onetime Democratic consultant Christopher Hahn dismissed right track-wrong direction polling as a more accurate barometer of media sentiment rather than “the realities most Americans live with.”
“When you ask people how they’re doing personally, they tend to answer positively,” he said. “The election is shaping up to be a choice between MAGA extremists and 250 years of American traditions. The special election results the last few weeks point to Democrats doing much better than expected just a few months ago.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended Biden’s speech Friday as nonpolitical despite the president mentioning Trump three times and Republicans 16 times. She also could not cite any democracy-related policies the president was preparing to propose.
“What the president was trying to do at this moment, and we’ve seen this before, is give Americans a choice,” Jean-Pierre said. “How do we move forward in this inflection point? And one of the ways that we have seen time and time again in history is making sure people have their voices heard.”
Biden reassured reporters Friday that he did not perceive all Trump supporters as a threat to democracy, adamant there was a difference between voting for the 45th president and his philosophy and “for attacking the Capitol” or “overruling an election.”
“I do think anyone who calls for the use of violence, fails to condemn violence when it’s used, refuses to acknowledge an election has been won, insists upon changing the way in which we rule and count votes — that is a threat to democracy,” he said.
Biden told the crowd in Philadelphia the day before that “no matter how long the road, progress does come.” The rhetoric represented a continuation of his rally last week in Rockville, Maryland, where he starting making a positive case for Democrats.
“Today, COVID no longer controls our lives,” he said in Philadelphia on Thursday. “More Americans are working than ever. Businesses are growing. Our schools are open. Millions of Americans have been lifted out of poverty. Millions of veterans once exposed to toxic burn pits will now get what they deserve for their families and the compensation.”
“American manufacturing has come alive across the heartland, and the future will be made in America, no matter what the white supremacists and the extremists say,” the president added. “I made a bet on you, the American people, and that bet is paying off. Proving that from the darkness of Charlottesville, of COVID, of gun violence, of insurrection, we can see the light. Light is now visible.”
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Democrats have an average 0.1-percentage-point advantage on generic congressional ballot polling. While Democrats now have a 68% chance of holding on to the Senate, Republicans still have a 75% chance of flipping the House.
