The White House knows President Biden has a problem, but it shows little sign of pivoting to more popular issues (e.g., addressing crime, anti-corruption measures). With his poll numbers stuck in the low 40s just 10 months ahead of the midterms, Democrats are fretful.
Let’s start with topics Biden would be well advised to avoid: ambitious bills that have failed or stalled. Unless some version of Build Back Better is passed, there is no upside to talking about the long list of items in a bill that does not have the votes to pass. Doing so only reinforces the sense of failure or would undercut whatever passes, if anything does. (Oh, just child care and investments to address climate change? What about the rest?)
Similarly, if voting rights legislation receives a vote and fails, as expected, Democrats should drop “filibuster” from their lexicon. A stronger message: Republicans don’t want your vote to count. With so much attention on Democratic infighting, Republicans have largely escaped blame. The public’s attention has been diverted from the real reason for the legislation — Republicans’ nationwide campaign to impede voting and to embed mechanisms for partisans to overturn election results they do not like.
By putting aside the topics that do no good for Biden and the Democrats, the president would be able to focus on what they have accomplished. Infrastructure must be front and center. Bringing former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, whom Biden has tapped to coordinate infrastructure spending, into the White House briefing on Tuesday was a good start.
Democrats must also go on the offensive. When a Republican such as Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin pledges to build roads and bridges, Democrats should respond: That’s money Biden’s infrastructure bill provided to states. Democrats would be smart to track projects, jobs and revenue generation resulting from the historic infrastructure plan Biden brokered.
In a similar vein, voters hardly remember the American Rescue Plan. They might forget that the package kept a whole lot of cops on the payroll. That’s something Republicans unanimously voted against. It also helped vaccinate more than 200 million Americans. Again, Republicans unanimously opposed it.
Likewise, as Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, announced last week, “To help schools implement these proven prevention measures, the Biden administration provided schools $130 billion in American Rescue Plan funding, with an additional $10 billion to support covid testing in schools. … More than 96 percent of K-through-12 schools are open for in-person learning. That’s up from just 46 percent a year ago.” Biden should be shouting this from the rooftops.
Touting one’s accomplishments and briskly moving on from ambitious but unsuccessful initiatives might seem rudimentary, but Democrats have the unique ability to talk about what they have not accomplished. They talk so much about failures that the public forgets about legislative wins and, more importantly, which party is responsible for those wins and what they mean for Americans’ lives.
If Americans are back to work, if their kids are back in school and if the fear of getting seriously ill or dying due to covid no longer looms over them, it will largely be because of legislation that Democrats passed that Republicans opposed. Once Democrats stop fretting about losses and cease taking shots at one another, voters might recognize which party is responsible for vast improvements in their lives over the past year. They might even reward Democrats and reelect them.