In my opinion, it hinges on the economy.
If the economy turns out to be as great as some people are banking on, it could definitely help Joe Biden and the Democrats. This is far from a sure thing though. The economy seemed to be roaring and lifting Trump until last March. We don’t know what the economy will be like a year from now. We also shouldn’t assume that Joe Biden will get credit for any economic improvement.
There are storm clouds on the horizon for Joe – the six issues which I have already been spotlighting, immigration, crime, civil liberties, censorship, wokeness and trans – plus the creeping threat of inflation. Things really are becoming noticeably more expensive like gas and food. COVID is also fading and immigration is rising in importance which is bad news for Democrats.
“The good news for Democrats who watched Joe Biden unveil a historically ambitious agenda last night is that newly elected presidents have almost always passed some version of their core economic plan—particularly when their party controls both congressional chambers, as Biden’s does now.
The bad news: Voters have almost always punished the president’s party in the next midterm election anyway. The last two times Democrats had unified control—with Bill Clinton in 1993–94 and Barack Obama in 2009–10—they endured especially resounding repudiations in the midterms, which cost Clinton his majority in both chambers and Obama the loss of the House.
The scale of the agenda Biden laid out last night underscores Democrats’ conviction that their best chance to avoid that fate again in 2022 is to go big with their proposals. Counting the coronavirus stimulus plan approved earlier this year, Biden has now proposed more than $5 trillion in new spending initiatives over the next decade—far more than Clinton or Obama ever offered—to be partially paid for by tax increases on corporations and affluent families. On cultural and social issues, Democrats are likewise pursuing a much more ambitious lineup than Clinton or Obama did; Biden is endorsing measures related to a panoramic array of liberal priorities, including election reform; police accountability; citizenship for young undocumented immigrants; statehood for Washington, D.C.; LGBTQ rights; and gun control. …
Republicans see a conventional midterm dynamic developing. “I can already tell you GOP intensity and turnout will be through the roof in 2022,” McInturff, the veteran GOP pollster, tweeted this week. In the latest national NBC News poll, which McInturff’s firm conducts with a Democratic partner, the share of Republicans who strongly disapprove of Biden’s performance now roughly equals the share of Democrats who strongly disapproved of Trump in 2017, ahead of the 2018 Democratic wave (about three-fourths in each case). …”
Ronald Brownstein says that Joe’s plan is to go big or go home. It is that last part about the cultural and social issues that is the problem. Independent voters don’t like this “go big or go home” talk on issues like packing the Supreme Court or climate change and especially immigration.
“In the most recent Winning the Issues survey (April 7-11, 1,000 registered voters), however, we looked beyond top-line measurements, asking a series of questions to better understand voter attitudes toward current and past policies. That generated some interesting results, not what Biden and his team have been arguing.
Biden carried independents by 13 points in 2020. Today, 41 percent of them approve of his job performance, well under the 54 percent that voted for him. That’s a significant drop.
He’s at 53 percent favorable to 40 percent unfavorable overall, but again, he’s underwater with independents at 39 percent favorable and 42 percent unfavorable.
Forty-six percent overall disapprove of Biden’s handling of the border crisis; 34 percent approve.
Forty-three percent of voters said the improving economy was the result of previous policies like the CARES Act and Operation Warp Speed, while only 34 percent gave Biden’s policies the credit.
Forty-four percent said they don’t believe the March COVID-19 bill, passed by the Democratic Congress, “saved the economy.” Only 31 percent said they do. The measure was seen as “a government spending bill with too many unrelated special interest priorities” by 45 percent of voters, while 42 percent saw it as “relief dealing with the pandemic and aid for businesses and individuals.”
Who do they blame for rising gas prices? Forty-seven percent put the onus on Biden’s new environmental policies, like the Keystone decision and halting new oil and gas leasing on federal lands. Thirty-four percent blame rising demand.
Looking forward:
Twenty-five percent of voters said the economy/jobs was their top concern. Climate change, Biden’s focus, was a distant fourth at 8 percent.
Biden’s crushing tax increase proposals? Voters, by a 41 percent to 34 percent margin, believe that any tax increase “will slow economic growth and undermine the competitiveness of American businesses.”
Fifty-five percent don’t believe the statement “Because of what has happened with Covid, I am willing to pay more in taxes.” Twenty-four percent do.
Forty-one percent don’t believe the president’s claim that if you make less than $400,000 a year, you will not see one single penny in additional federal tax. Thirty-nine percent do. …”
Joe is getting in trouble in Indie land.
Trump won Independents in 2016 and lost them in 2020. COVID was the primary reason that Trump lost Indies, but COVID is now fading as an issue and our politics are reverting back to the way they used to be. If immigration and crime become top tier issues, it will be devastating for Democrats.
I hate Brownstein with all my heart. I hope he dies a love painful death.
It’s certainly all downhill for Gropey Joe. I’m not sure he makes it to 2022.
Gas went from $1.48 a gallon, to $2.55 a gallon. Which makes driving to work even more expensive. This happens every time a Democrat ascends to the White House.
I’d hate to see what the Democrats would do if they weren’t the champions of working folks.
Every time they soak the rich, the working folks drown.
@James Owen…
I told my wife last October that, if Biden won election, we’d soon be looking at gasoline prices between $3 and $4, per gallon, not to mention the increased energy costs heating and cooling your home.
While, as an environmentalist, I agree with President Biden on the issue of fracking and offshore drilling, I cannot, for the life of me, understand why he, as a lifetime Democrat, cannot see how seriously much higher prices will affeckt working families, particularly in light of the already high debt to asset ratio of my folks’ finances.
Hell, I remember how bitterly folks complained in 1974, when gas shot up from 35 cent a gallon to 65, and all that ridiculous stuff about not heating your house above 65 degrees or not driving over 55mph.
Folks forget how much all that doo-gooder stuff of Jimmy Carter just made life more miserable.
How hard is this for them to figure out, for the umpteenth billion time? :- oil and natural gas need to be plentiful and cheap!
Democrats want to make it prohibitively expensive for people to live in rural areas and commute into cities. Urbanization helps them electorally, so they are trying to force it by raising gas prices. Same thing they want to do with meat. Instead of outright banning it, they want to use government pressure to drive up the prices making it so expensive that lower class people can never afford to eat it.
Their urbanization strategy is at odds with their plan of allowing blacks to commit as much violent crime as they want, though. They’re driving people out of cities by allowing violent criminals to run wild.
Gas always goes up in the Spring. But food is going up a lot. Inflation is kicking in. President Hairass will have trouble in 2022 over that, if USSA still exists at that point (it is circling the drain).