Why President Biden Needs To Pick The Right Political Fight
Hello Hackaroos!
Well, another week and more bad polling for President Biden – this time among the TikTok generation. What does President Biden need to do to Tweet them over? That’s where we begin before turning to the latest politics of Ukraine and our obsession with Pennsylvania continues in tidbits.
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Let’s begin…
Biden: Hey, You Kids! Please Get On My Lawn!
MANDEL NGAN / Contributor / Getty Images
MURPHY: I think we both noticed an interesting story in the Washington Post that shows, as we approach the midterms, one of President Biden's many political problems is an alarming drop in support among younger voters. He's doing well with cranky old guys (‘ahem), but that's where the Republican advantage usually is in the midterms. Democrats usually try to make that problem up with younger, more progressive voters. The biggest challenge the D’s have is getting those fickle youngsters to turnout in an off-year election because they tend to be Presidential year voters. But now, Biden has a new problem; wilting support among these youngsters who are hard enough to get to vote in the midterms when they already like you. Not good, to say the least. They are clearly irked with the POTUS’s balancing act between his party's vocal and swing state difficult Lefty Prog wing and his own brand of more moderate centrist Democratic politics. So Gibbsie, how does the White House get the kids back? Maybe jump on Tik Tok and start pumping out what the President prefers to call “talkies”? (I kid, I kid.) But seriously, this is a real problem. And as far as Tik Tok is concerned… that’s already happening?
GIBBS: Yeah, first of all, younger voters being disengaged in off year elections is neither new nor surprising. It doesn't surprise me at all that they're having trouble getting these voters excited. These are the voters that most want quick change on big things. This is the group that wants to see all the promises made in the 2020 campaign happen in just two years. This is the group that you're trying to explain, as I watched President Obama do when we traveled before the 2010 elections, the idea that change doesn't happen overnight. Change doesn't always happen from the top. If you remember the results in 2010, that message didn’t get through. So, I think this is a little bit symptomatic of their challenge. To your point, I definitely don't think they're a TikTok strategy away from winning this group, though more information about what has been done wouldn’t hurt. The White House still needs to get into a fight about something and a fight about something that a lot of these voters care about. Get into a fight about climate change. Get into a fight about making college more affordable. Get into a fight about cutting the cost of prescription drugs. Get into a fight about taxes on the wealthy. Do something that feels central to the reason why they were interested enough to vote in 2020. I tend to think all roads lead back to those fights.
The other big challenge is you're going to see the mood darken more and more for Dems as they see a cascade of alarming polls leading up to the midterms. This week, Quinnipiac posted Biden’s approval rating at 35, which, to be clear, is outside of the average of where most polls are, but is still an alarming outlier. Secondly, take the very swing state of Nevada. The Reno Gazette Journal just released polling done by Suffolk University that shows sitting US Senator Catherine Cortez Masto losing to her potential opponents between 1 and 3 percent. Worse yet, she’s only getting 39-40% of the vote right now. The sitting Democratic governor Steve Sisolak also barely beating two of his opponents and losing to two others. Similarly, he was getting just 37-41% of the vote. Those are very alarming numbers for anybody this close to an election. And Biden's approval was 35%, with 59% disapproving. I think there are a lot of alarm bells going off, so getting into that fight this election period is imperative.
MURPHY: I agree, if you're in Biden's deep political hole, you need a big fight to get out, not small tactical TikTok shovels and other small stuff. So the POTUS traveled to North Carolina yesterday to try to restart his message on the economy. It's never a bad idea to go on the offense on kitchen table economic issues. But is Biden picking the right fight? Or just reinforcing the same old, "here's the latest program I want for you" routine? Me thinks he needs something bigger and sharper to grab the domestic political spotlight. Am I wrong?
GIBBS: I agree. I think the days of the Biden legislative agenda are almost certainly behind us. Now, the only hope is legislation that has the chance of getting 70 votes in the Senate. There aren't many bills this close to an election that will meet that measure. The investment in microchips is one of them. As we talked about earlier, getting into a fight that's a contrast is probably what's needed politically because I don’t think this race is going to be won just by saying what you’ve done. It doesn't mean it's wrong in terms of governing, which is getting and protecting investment in our microchips and ensuring that we're not beholden to the rest of the world for further development. But I don't think it is a political panacea.
What’s the real end game in Ukraine?
GIBBS: I think if we watch the arc of both Biden's both policy activity and weapons contributions plus his rhetoric in Ukraine, I believe we're witnessing a President who's thinking about this issue fundamentally differently than he likely was just a few weeks ago. First, Biden labeled Putin a “war criminal” and then Biden in Warsaw said, “This man cannot remain in power.” And then on Tuesday, in an effort to fly to Iowa and talk about rising fuel prices, and what he's doing about it, throws out the word “genocide” to describe Putin. Voters will be forgiven for not catching the news that day about the ethanol announcement and fuel prices. To me this isn't a series of Biden gaffes. This is reality. It’s a President looking fundamentally differently at Ukraine than ever before and nudging the establishment figures inside of foreign policy land and in his own Administration into both thinking and acting differently. I think Biden may realize this historically could be the defining issue of his first term and somebody who has spent a lifetime in foreign policy, particularly Eurocentric foreign policy, makes this all more important.
MURPHY: He is clearly stepping up support and arms shipments, which I think is both good policy and good politics. And I like this idea to send a senior administration official to Kyiv to wave the flag a bit.
GIBBS: My hunch (and this isn’t based on any inside knowledge) is he sat there in the Situation Room at the very beginning and the generals and all the smart guys told him the same thing that everybody else thought – that Putin is going to win this fight in five days. So you don't put a lot of chips on the table if you know the outcome. It's now been a month and a half and I think he's now seeing not just a challenge, but a genuine opportunity. I think he's listening to the foreign policy meetings where they're telling him to be careful and go slow and mediate his language and then walking out and saying what he believes. I was struck by, after the Warsaw “gaffe” where the establishment said this is concerning, because it shows that the administration may not be thinking about the end game of how to negotiate peace with Putin and Russia. I'm not sure Biden is thinking about the end game of Russian negotiations either because it's hard to cut a deal with somebody who you say has committed genocide. He’s calling it like he sees it. It’s the same way a lot of the world is seeing it too.
MURPHY: I agree. The situation has changed dramatically. Putin is in a militarily far worse position than he expected to be - or frankly, worse - than the Biden administration, as you say, probably initially expected. That’s due to the Ukrainians being, as one Ukrainian put it to me on MSNBC, “the John Wick of countries.” Second, Putin's atrocities are spiraling him down into to the abyss of being a world pariah – a well-deserved situation for this awful dictator. So that changes the situation a bit for Biden and makes it easier for him to push some bigger chips on the table and try for the big win. By the way, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg has now jumped into the fight! They’ve announced they too are shipping arms to Ukraine! So there you go, Vladimir. #LuxemKaboom
TIDBITS
MURPHY: As part of our series of taking a look at key races around the country, we can't resist yet again, visiting the precincts of the Pennsylvania Senate race. Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican is retiring, creating a high-stakes open seat. And both primaries are fascinating. On the Republican side, as we talked about earlier this week, President Trump has weighed in, surprising some people but not cynics like me, by endorsing TV sawbones Dr. Oz, who moved to Pennsylvania to run for Senate as a true red Trumpy. PA’s regular Republicans prefer former Bush administration official and private equity bossman David McCormick. I'm all for McCormick, but it's been disheartening to see him try to put on an ill-fitting orange Trump outfit and fake his way through the primary, hoping to get the Sneering One’s endorsement. He even hired a phalanx of Trump yes people including Hope Hicks and Stephen Miller. But then comes the rub; like any good maniacal despot, Trump of course loves to torture his own factotums. So predictably, he just endorsed Doc Oz, making fools out of all of them. Now the question is: will Trump's endorsement trump the regular Republicans’ interest in the theoretically more electable McCormick? Ace Keystone State Republican consultant Christopher Nicholas just announced a poll showing McCormick with a thin but useful lead. But there's a big undecided group, and now including the Trump factor among primary voters. As Gibbs is now itching to tell you, this is nothing to sneeze at, particularly if the primary narrative becomes that McCormick is a wine-and-cheese-sipping, global elite loving imposter and the only true red Trump patriot is none other than the good TV Doctor. your take Gibbs?
GIBBS: Murphy do smell that in the background? That's the butter I'm melting for the popcorn that I’m about to eat! Because this situation is beyond delicious. I think the next few weeks will tell us whether the former President is crazy like a fox or, well, just plain crazy. I think one of two things is likely to happen. Either Trump's going to come out of this thing terribly because his candidate lost the primary or he's going to help nominate somebody who I think will be a far weaker general election candidate. It’s interesting that Mitch McConnell, at an event in Kentucky this week, said that it was the best political environment for Republicans in 30 years, but, make no mistake things could still screw this up. And I can assure you the image he had in his head as he said those words was a picture of Donald Trump. So, pass the salt and enjoy the movie! On the Democratic side, Fetterman had another huge fundraising quarter. And the question is whether or not somebody like Conor Lamb can actually make up the difference that most polls show giving Fetterman a fairly large lead inside the Democratic primary with far less money to spend? And so this one, as we suspected, is shaping up to be one we'll be talking about well into election night.
MURPHY: Yeah, there may be an upset, but it looks like Lamb has not put the money together to invade eastern Pennsylvania, re: expensive Philly television ads. He's a Pittsburgh guy and formidable there, but he hasn't been able to roll out statewide, while Fetterman has an advantage in name ID, money and liberal enthusiasm in the Democratic primary. Now the conventional wisdom is that Fetterman is a loser in the general. But he does have a quirky un-cola brand as an anti-politician. So who knows? Maybe he'll have more traction than people in CW land assumes? The big problem they all have is the big problem that every Democrat has and that’s the lousy Biden numbers at the top of the ticket. But… any smug Democrat who thinks that Dr. Oz will easily win the Republican primary go on to lose the general, I'd think again and learn how to pronounce Senator Oz, because there's no reason in an anti-Biden surge he still doesn’t potentially win as GOP nominee.
GIBBS: There may well be a lot of people come election night, Murphy, who it’s hard to comprehend they’re a Senator-elect. As we discussed earlier, the political environment is terrible for Democrats. Biden’s own pollster and my good friend John Anzalone said so today in Politico. People you didn’t expect were in deep trouble will lose on Election Night.
MURPHY: Kids today should get on that Google machine they love so much and listen to your elder Gibbs and elder Murphy and read about election night 1980 where a lot of Democrat Senators were shocked to lose and people who were written off were surprise winners. We're not there yet, but it could happen.
GIBBS: Just to be clear, Murphy I was nine on election night on 1980.
MURPHY: I was 18 and already voting three times in Chicago!
Have a great weekend everyone! Happy Easter and Passover. We’ll see you on Tuesday.
Murphy and Gibbs