In the face of a worsening political situation, President Joe Biden is pressuring his attendees to get a more convincing message and a clearer strategy as he confronts how they have tried to stifle the person who simply speaks for a long time. one of its most powerful assets.
Biden is plagued by a drop in approval and is seeking to regain the confidence of voters who can offer the secure leadership he promised during the campaign, say people close to the president.
Crises have piled up in ways that have sometimes made Biden’s White House look blatant: record inflation, high gasoline prices, rising Covid cases, and now a Texas school massacre that is a reminder more horrible than it has been. unable to get Congress to pass legislation to curb armed violence. Democratic leaders do not know how to revive their prospects in November, when the midterm elections could cost their party control of Congress.
“I don’t know what is required here,” said DSC MP James Clyburn, whose support for the 2020 Democratic primary helped rescue Biden’s troubled candidacy. “But I know the survey numbers have stayed where they are for too long.”
A change from the west wing?
It is speculated that Biden could shake the west wing staff, although this is not about to happen immediately. Several people close to the White House have said they have heard that Chief of Staff Ron Klain will be leaving at some point after the mid-term, and one has heard him talk about leaving.
If Klain leaves, a possible successor is Anita Dunn, a White House adviser and Biden confidant whom she often turns to when her fortune seems devastating. Dunn began working in the White House at the beginning of his term, then left and returned in early May at Biden’s specific request. No woman or person of color has ever been a White House chief of staff since the post was created after World War II.
Other possible replacements include Steve Ricchetti, a longtime Biden aide who is the president’s adviser, and Susan Rice, the head of domestic policy. After losing his career as governor of Virginia last year, Terry McAuliffe spoke at the White House about taking on a leading role as adviser to the president, cabinet secretary or chief of staff, people familiar with the matter said.
The White House did not make Klain or Dunn available for comment. Remi Yamamoto, a senior White House communications adviser, said, “As Ron has publicly said, he hasn’t set a time period, and that’s not a discussion in anyone’s mind here.”
This article is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former administration officials, lawmakers, congressional aides, and other Democrats close to the White House who spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss private talks. president.
Any evaluation of Biden’s performance must take into account the epic challenges it faced from the beginning.
“They came up with the most daunting set of challenges from Franklin D. Roosevelt, only to be hit by a perfect crisis storm, from Ukraine to inflation, to the supply chain and the infant formula,” he said. say Chris Whipple, the author of a book on White House chiefs of staff who is now writing a book on the presidency of Biden. “What happens next? Lobsters?”
Biden wonders the same.
“I’ve heard him say recently that he used to say about President Obama’s term that everything fell on his desk except the locusts, and now he understands how that feels,” a White House official said.
Management breakdowns
Amidst a continuous series of calamities, Biden’s feeling lately is that he can’t rest. “Biden is frustrated. If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” said a person close to the president.
One hypothesis built into Biden’s candidacy was that he would chair a smooth administration thanks to his decades of experience in public office. Still, there are indications of managerial breakdowns that have angered both him and his party.
Biden is upset that he was not alerted before the shortage of baby formula and that he received his first briefing last month, even though the crisis had been going on for some time. (The White House did not specify when Biden received its first briefing on formula shortages.) His Food and Drug Administration candidate, Dr. Robert Califf, told Congress last week that the agency was slow and that it had made “suboptimal decisions,” as parents were looking for formula on empty store shelves.
Beyond politics, Biden is not happy with a pattern that has developed in the west wing. He makes a clear and concise statement, just so that the helpers are quick to explain that he really meant something else. The so-called clean-up campaign, he told advisers, undermined him and stifled the authenticity that drove his rise. Worse, it feeds a Republican discussion point that is not entirely in command.
The problem culminated when Biden declared during a speech in Poland that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.” Within minutes, Biden’s aides tried to back off his comments, saying he had not called for Putin’s removal and that US policy had not changed. Biden was furious that his comments were considered unreliable, arguing that he speaks genuinely and reminding his staff that he is the president.
Asked about the staff’s practice of clarifying Biden’s comments, the official said, “We don’t say anything that the president doesn’t want us to say.”
Democrats are nervous
Biden’s anxiety is spreading through the party. Democratic lawmakers are fighting among themselves and blaming the White House for its lousy prospects in November.
Florida Democrat Stephanie Murphy says the White House has failed to present what it called an “intellectually honest” plan to fight inflation, a burden that ranks first among Americans’ economic concerns. , according to surveys. He said a bill passed by the House to crack down on the alleged rise in gas prices is not an answer.
“If I feel frustrated, it’s because I listen to my constituents,” Murphy said. “They’re fighting. This is not the time for political games. This is not the time to find bogeymen.”
A spokeswoman for her office said she had not spoken about politics with a senior White House official for six months. The White House official responded that Murphy has been in “very regular contact with our staff here.”
Biden’s frustrations
Biden has shown his assistants about not getting credit from the Americans or the media for actions he believes have helped the country, especially in the economy. Unemployment rates have fallen below 4 percent (pre-pandemic levels), but polls indicate that most Americans believe the economy is in a bad state. Biden believes Republicans do not take their share of the blame for the legislative stalemate in Congress, while he has been repeatedly criticized for failing to pass his agenda.
The president has also told his aides that he does not believe there are enough Democrats on television to defend him. A particular sore point is their dropped poll numbers; he is baffled that his degree of approval has dropped to a level close to that of his predecessor, Donald Trump, ranked by historians as one of the worst presidents in history.
“He’s inferior to Trump now, and he’s very twisted,” said another person close to the White House.
In a meeting with advisers about a month ago, Biden was surprised to see polls indicating he had fallen among suburban women, according to two people known to the meeting. One adviser said that Biden receives weekly briefings from surveys that delve into “key demographics” and that because he is kept regularly informed, he did not have that reaction. (At a press conference in September, Biden said bluntly, “I don’t look at polls, it’s not a joke.)
The White House official denied that Biden was frustrated. “What’s pressing is making a clearer case for everything we’ve achieved so far,” that person said.
A few weeks ago, Biden began using a midterm election tactic that has been an option for incumbent presidents: the opposition is evil. He has tried to tie Republicans to Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda. But Biden has relied on White House aides to present a message that reflects the hard choice of voters. Biden himself thought of the phrase “Ultra MAGIC”, which he and other Democrats have begun to use in hopes of making a clear contrast to the Trump movement.
The phrase proved well in White House-reviewed polls, but it also had the unintended effect of firing Trump supporters. Traders have found a hot market for “Ultra MAGA” t-shirts.
“He shares the view that we have not reached a winning message in the medium term,” a third person close to the White House said of the president. “And he’s putting a lot of pressure on people to figure out what that is.”
No prior compensation
One of Biden’s recipes for his political troubles at the start of the new year was to travel further out of Washington. As he has left the country, he has also received a hearing from Democrats about what his administration is doing or not doing.
“People are facing him,” said a major Democratic donor who has witnessed these conversations at fundraisers. “All you hear is ‘Why can’t you do anything?'”
No wonder. About three-quarters of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, according to a recent NBC News poll, only the fifth time in the last 34 years that so many Americans are unhappy with the nation’s leadership. .
No respite after half time. The season of the 2024 presidential election begins in earnest once the last races have been called. No incumbent president wants to be challenged for party nomination; Biden cannot count on a free trip.
“We’re on a track, a lost track,” Faiz Shakir, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders ’senior adviser, said about Democrats.