For his own and Kamala Harris’s sakes, Joe Biden is hell-bent on utilizing the last days of his political career to dispel public doubt and defend his economic record.
Despite widespread skepticism due to the dramatic increase in prices that followed the pandemic, the president is launching a nationwide campaign to win over voters who have rejected his claims of significant economic progress.
His legacy depends on it. Harris can’t have one without it.
“These are monumental, game-changing, history-altering achievements — and instead, everyone is focusing on the cost of eggs,” remarked an anonymous White House advisor who spoke frankly about the difficulty Biden faces. “Everything is subjective. I feel deeply about every aspect of it.
Despite the fact that most people still claim they don’t feel it, Biden intends to portray the past four years as a watershed moment that changed the course of the United States and expanded benefits for a generation of voters in speeches given in swing states, at White House events, and through a social media effort.
In the next weeks, Biden will travel to multiple states for a variety of official and campaign events; he hopes to highlight the areas where his policies are having a tangible impact while also helping Harris with her own last push before the election in November.
Aiming to resolve the long-standing conundrum that has plagued the White House and diminished the president’s popularity, Biden has chosen to devote a significant portion of his last months on discussing his economic record: The working-class people who supported Biden’s platform the most have also been the most resistant to its merits.
Just a small percentage of Americans link Joe Biden with positive economic outcomes, even though he presided over a speedy economic recovery, increased employment and wages, and passed laws allocating billions of dollars to infrastructure, industrial, and climate programs. Voters are still very focused on the inflationary trend, which peaked two years ago and is still driving up the cost of necessities like food and accommodation. Although just 31% of Americans felt the economy was improving in a Gallup poll conducted in August, it was an improvement over the majority of the previous three years.
Part of the messaging effort involves scheduling time for Biden to meet one-on-one with beneficiaries of his initiatives; his staff will video the conversations and share the footage on social media and other platforms. This month, the president met publicly with four of these voters; going forward, aides anticipate more private meetings designed to highlight the growing influence of the administration on the ground.
White House digital strategist Christian Tom stated, “The most successful pieces have almost always been Joe Biden humanizing a piece of policy, talking to people one on one, hearing their stories.” That is, according to Tom.
Part of the motivation for the new initiative came from the fact that Biden can now point to tangible outcomes, over two years after approving historic legislation injecting billions into the economy. A new well being built on tribal territory and an urban design project that would link sections of Philadelphia’s Chinatown neighborhood that had been separated by a roadway for a long time were the primary topics of discussion during the president’s initial round of meetings. Supporters in the White House have collected mountains of such stories and are now sifting through them to find the most striking instances.
“We’re seeking stories that are filled with genuine characters and compelling plot points, where an audience can feel the impact,” Tom stated.
Gaining temporary political favor isn’t an issue that only Biden faces. Prior to Republicans’ attempt to dismantle Obamacare a year later, Barack Obama had been unsuccessful in gaining broad support for the plan. While in Michigan last week, Biden made a passing reference to a comparable problem, telling the crowd to look beyond the here and now and at the possibilities opened up by his investments.
It takes time to create such factories, Biden remarked, so we won’t see it for a short while. “However, those factories will employ millions of people, and you know what? Whole towns will spring up around them once that begins.
It doesn’t help that he’s in an uncommon position in modern politics, as a first-term president cast in the role of a supporting figure in a campaign that relies on persuading voters that his vice president would lead the nation in a new path. It’s been a tricky balancing act at times, with Biden praising his economic achievements and Harris focusing on the high costs and unresolved financial issues.
Concerned that the president’s fixation on praising his record would unintentionally bring down his selected successor, this dynamic has caused some Democrats to feel anxious. An anonymous Harris supporter who wished to remain anonymous offered the following piece of advice: “Let him do what he wants, and the campaign does what they want.”
A second Democrat with ties to the campaign privately expressed concern that Biden would promote the policies of his administration at a time when Harris is having the most difficulty in answering voters’ requests for more details about her intentions.
Democratic pollster Evan Roth Smith stated, “Harris came into the race with a ton of separation from Biden.” Blueprint is an initiative that tracks candidates’ movements. “I don’t believe it’s necessarily beneficial for Democrats to undermine that helpful and favorable voter instinct to draw a line between the two.”
Campaign and White House officials maintain that Biden is still useful, especially since Democratic voters’ opinion of the president has improved since he decided to step down in July. Aides pointed to Biden’s consistent strength with important base groups, such as union members, older Americans, and Black voters, and at least four separate polls have demonstrated a noticeable improvement in voters’ image of Biden since then.
According to sources familiar with the matter, Biden is still personally committed to staying involved. He is urging his staff to keep him busy and look for ways to show that his administration’s efforts are paying off. Last week, Biden made two trips to Wisconsin—one to Michigan and one to promote a rural electricity project that received funding from the Inflation Reduction Act—in an early example of the kind of targeted appearances that party officials think Biden can still use to rally the base in swing states.
Nevertheless, not even Biden’s most loyal supporters deny that the president’s last push needs to be in sync with the campaign, and that the entire success will be determined by whether Harris wins the election.
Harris, according to a former White House chief of staff named Ron Klain, “has to make the sale herself” because a presidential election is a personal decision. His support can help her economic message get off the ground. The message on her future plans, however, may and must be delivered by her.
Some voters can still look to Biden as a validator, according to Klain and other Biden confidants. Furthermore, it is critical to raise awareness of the present administration’s economic achievements, even if it’s just to support Harris’s platform, which is mainly based on expanding and building off those ambitions.
Advisors to Biden claim that the next two months are just as important as the following twenty years when it comes to establishing his economic record, drawing comparisons to his own version of Obamacare: This politically divisive but ultimately monumental undertaking has the potential to alter the course of the economy in ways that will be remembered long after Biden has vacated the White House.
“Joe Biden is the leading practitioner of the philosophy that government exists to improve the lives of working and middle-class people. If that means government’s intervention is necessary, then government’s intervention will be necessary,” the White House adviser said. This is his whole life, including his family. His entire life has been dedicated to this.