This may be one of the more damning accusations against the White House made by fellow Democrats to date. With less than four months before the midterm elections, “White House aides, from their vantage point, do not appear to be in enough of a hurry,” even though “the calendar, increasingly, is not the president’s friend.”
What is it with these guys? If the aides reflect their boss’s attitude, it should scare marginal Democrats into running away from Biden — far away. When Biden appeared in Cleveland last week, there was an eyebrow-raising absence. Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan did not meet with the president due to “an unavoidable scheduling conflict,” according to his campaign. Funny, but that’s the same reason given by Democratic gubernatorial nominee Nan Whaley.
Joe who?
Down-ballot candidates not appearing with an unpopular president isn’t news. But why are Biden and his political team refusing to act like they’re behind when the entire party is screaming at him to simply act?
With the 2022 elections four months away, Democrats both inside and outside of the White House acknowledge there is no silver bullet to slay a host of political problems, including surging inflation, high gas prices, a series of stunning Supreme Court decisions and a sense of voter resignation that the party in power built up their expectations only to let them down. But whereas earlier in the year, there was hope that some of those problems would abate, there is diminishing confidence in that now.
White House aides, from their vantage point, do not appear to be in enough of a hurry. Rather than abruptly changing strategy, Biden’s team has doubled down on what it believes is an effective two-pronged approach: First, to make steady — if at times slow — progress on the challenges it faces, or at least demonstrate to voters the president is fighting an intractable problem; and second, to highlight contrasts with Republicans to paint them as a party beholden to its extremists and doing little to help struggling Americans.
Some Democrats think that Biden should start acting more like — dare they say it? — Trump.
But some Democrats fear that Biden remains trapped in a prior age of political decorum and unquestioning fealty to institutions and has been slow to recognize both the existential threat felt by some of his supporters.
And it isn’t just the left that is losing faith in Biden’s theory of the case — let alone whether he has enough time to realize it before the fall. Others from across the political spectrum who have embraced the sharper-elbowed brand of politics that has come to define the landscape view Biden’s reflex approach as insufficient in a “zero-sum” era. And they’ve questioned how disciplined he will be in consistently — and forcefully — making the case against Republicans.
“He’s the last of his kind. He served in the Senate for decades when it worked. He built personal relationships across the aisle when that still happened. He still believes the system works, or at least hopes it can,” said Mike Madrid, a veteran Republican strategist and fierce critic of former President Donald Trump. “But that time has passed.”
Indeed, it’s not any better today, just different. And those who realize and accept the new politics succeed.
Those who don’t are left behind.
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