Rising gas prices and inflation are threatening the Democrats’ power and Joe Biden’s legacy. For many months now, Joe Biden has been dogged by a gorilla sticker campaign where people are putting stickers of Joe Biden saying “I did that” on gas pumps.
Understanding that Americans typically vote with their wallets, Democrats know they’re doomed in the upcoming midterm elections. So it’s no surprise they’ve been desperately trying to pin the blame on anyone besides Biden for the rise in gas prices.
It’s the classic “I know you are, but what am I?” defense that the left has a habit of using. For example, in 2020, when Biden’s embrace of the defund-the-police movement was proving to be a political liability for him, he hilariously tried to flip the script by claiming, “The only person calling to defund the police is Donald Trump.”
At first, the White House blamed seasonal fluctuations for the increase in gas prices. But as gas prices continued to climb, Biden then blamed OPEC, which was laughable because Biden literally inherited a country that was exporting more oil than it was importing.
And then he blamed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which was even more pathetic because gas prices had been rising steadily for over a year prior to that. Unfortunately for him, even his staunchest allies in the media weren’t buying that excuse and polls showed that Americans weren’t falling for it, either.
Then we saw another bogeyman emerge: Big Oil.
Sen. Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have introduced a new bill to stop alleged “price gouging” by Big Oil companies.
The Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act would launch an investigation into the price gouging that they claim is going on. Except we already know that the high prices at the pump have nothing to do with price gouging.
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And, of course, the liberal media is doing everything it can to perpetuate the myth that price gouging is actually happening.
“Republicans block bill to stop price gouging at the pump as gas hits new record high,” declared Raw Story in a headline. Did you see what they did there? Not only are they implying that price gouging is, in fact happening, but they are also blaming the Republican Party for not going along with the Democrats’ efforts to blame Big Oil and impose price controls. It must be because the GOP is protecting Big Oil and their profits! That’s why you’re paying more at the pump! That there’s no evidence of price gouging is irrelevant. Blame Big Oil and the GOP, not Joe Biden and the Democrats!
The 2022 midterms are less than six months away and Democrats already had history working against them. Adding high gas prices, inflation, and just general Biden administration incompetence on top of that means that a political bloodbath is almost inevitable.
The big question that remains is whether this new strategy will ultimately work. Biden’s allies in the media couldn’t quite bring themselves to give him cover on his “blame Putin” strategy because it was harder to deny that gas prices and inflation were big problems before the invasion of Ukraine. But blaming Big Oil and the GOP is familiar ground for both the Democrats and the media that love them, and so far the media seems to be willing to push this latest talking point.
