Biden’s White House faces bleaker future after midterm elections
According to administration insiders, the White House has tempered its early confidence regarding the midterm elections and is now concerned that Democrats may lose control of both chambers of Congress.
According to recent polls, Republicans are now likely to win Senate elections that were previously considered toss-ups between the two parties due to the persistence of high inflation. This is despite Democrats once comfortably leading in some of these races.
According to polling analysts like FiveThirtyEight, the House of Representatives, which Biden and several of his allies and advisers anticipated the Democrats would win earlier this year, is dramatically moving in favour of the Republicans.
The next two years of Joe Biden’s presidency will be significantly impacted if Republicans gain control of one or both of the Houses of Congress. They are predicted to obstruct legislation on issues like family leave, abortion, policing, and other Biden priorities while pushing for new regulations on immigration and spending while using the debt ceiling as leverage.
Republicans intend to look into Democratic spending, the president’s son Hunter’s business dealings, and his personal life. Some legislators claim they want to impeach Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden, or members of his administration.
According to a person familiar with White House thinking, Democrats’ odds of maintaining control of the Senate were viewed at 50/50.
Even while Biden admitted last week that the battle had tightened, he had projected in May that his fellow Democrats will win seats in both the House and the Senate. Biden noted that the polls were “all over the place” and that he believed they would swing in favour of Democrats one more time before the elections on November 8: “It’s been back and forth with them ahead, us ahead, them ahead.”
Although realistic, the White House has maintained that theme of hope in public.
One Biden adviser responded to Reuters’ reporting by saying, “The president and his advisers feel that we have a strong shot at keeping both chambers and are focused on doing everything they can to capitalise on how much Republicans are playing into our hands.” This includes saying that their top priority is to worsen inflation with a tax giveaway to the wealthy.
Biden’s White House faces bleaker future after midterm elections
Former and present advisers claim that the White House is getting ready for any upcoming investigations and obstruction.
According to Eric Schultz, a Democratic strategist with strong ties to the White House, “the White House is clear-eyed regarding what Republican dominance could look like.” It’s obvious where Republicans will go with this if they get the chance to vote.
In order to prepare for any investigations, the White House earlier this year appointed white collar defence attorney Richard Sauber as special counsel. However, according to the person familiar with the situation, any additional hires and staff changes will have to wait until the election results are known. These MPs might find it difficult to decide what to focus on due to internal conflicts in the Republican Party, the insider continued.
CRIME, INFLATION, AND ABORTION
The persistence of inflation concerns among important voting constituencies and the difficulty in countering the Republican narrative that Democrats’ support for criminal justice and policing reforms indicates a softer stance toward crime were the driving forces behind the recent rethink, according to administration officials.
Democrats believed that voters were rejecting Republican policy agendas as a result of legislative victories from June and a vote in Kansas in August that rejected attempts to remove abortion rights from the state’s constitution.
However, a higher-than-anticipated inflation rate earlier this month and other polls indicating that inflation is still voters’ top issue shattered some hopes.
Officials from the White House and Democratic strategists Reuters acknowledged the general decline in midterm optimism, but said it was still not ready to lose up.
They point out that historically, the midterm elections benefit the party that is not in power, and that close contests in the House and Senate could turn in favour of Democrats on just a handful of votes.
One White House official rejected the notion that Democrats were overly optimistic about the effect the Supreme Court’s repeal of abortion rights would have on Democratic candidates. “We have been talking about the economy, inflation, abortion, our legislative victories and how that will help Americans for months now,” the official said.
The official stated, “There has been a spike in the number of women registering to vote in a number of battleground states, and we think it is incredibly crucial to get these newly motivated people to the polls in November.”
According to a second White House official, abortion is “playing a critical role” in at least 12 tight Senate races. “It’s also having an effect on swing districts for the House, which are on the right.”
Biden’s warning against the extreme “MAGA” side of the Republican Party, which has vowed to try to restrict abortion rights and other popular freedoms like contraception, has been undermined by inflation data and Republican messaging on crime.
Ipsos research this month found that U.S. voters favour Republicans over Democrats for addressing crime issues, despite some analysis showing that states headed by Republicans have as high or higher murder rates as those led by Democrats.
PRODUCTIVE BUT UNCOMMON
Democratic strategists in competitive states claim that the White House has failed to convert a string of legislative victories on infrastructure, social welfare, and the environment into greater favorability ratings for Biden.
According to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the president has discussed abortion, the economy, infrastructure, and student loan relief repeatedly in the run-up to the midterm elections. “Almost every day, you have seen the President speaking directly to that: what is at risk,” she remarked in front of the American people.
Democrats claim they wanted to see Biden travel more and discuss how these laws have affected local voters. The White House was forced to drastically reduce its intended presence in competitive areas around the country in the weeks coming up to the election as a result of candidates in several major races similarly opting to campaign without Biden, an official said.
In recent weeks, Biden has increased his travel, alternating between events with a political theme and those that are more concerned with specific legislative victories.
While former President Barack Obama will begin a campaign trip this week, his West Coast swing in mid-October did not include any stops in Nevada or Arizona, the states hosting two crucial Senate contests.
