Top Democrats in the nation’s capital are panicking about the upcoming midterm elections because they believe that Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration is effectively asleep at the wheel.
CNN interviewed three dozen top Democrats about the upcoming elections, many of whom are worried that the White House’s political operation is “unprepared and unresponsive even to basic requests for help or information.”
“Senior Democrats, including some White House aides, describe a West Wing lacking both a political strategy and the discipline to execute one. Focus groups are giving party operatives nightmares. Biden is coming across as old and absent, they say,” CNN reported. “Real and perceived fumbles play into deep fears that he’s not up to the job and that Democrats are incompetent. Few Americans can say what was in the massive bills he’s signed, though many have heard about Democratic infighting and failure in what he hasn’t signed.”
Some of the quotes that Democrats gave to CNN included:
- Senior elected official who wished to remain anonymous: “It’s hard for me to believe that the President knows how little his political shop is doing to support Democratic majorities in the Senate and the House. All of us believe that the President would be shocked to learn how little the White House political team is doing. We just know Joe Biden, and we know how much he cares about this stuff.”
- Operative: “What is the plan to fix that? They can’t tell us what they’re talking about next week.”
- Operative: “It doesn’t strike me as they’re dealing with the politics with the urgency of what’s currently at stake.”
- Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT): “We haven’t talked about our accomplishments near enough. The accomplishments by definition will delineate who’s for what, and who’s not for what. I point the finger at myself as much as everybody in the Senate, as much as everybody in the House, as much as everybody in the executive branch.”
- Democrat House member who wished to remain anonymous: “Who is in charge? Who is running the thing?”
- Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO): “People are really, really grumpy. I’m grumpy too. I’m not grumpy about the White House not being involved on the political side of things. I’m grumpy because we haven’t been able to pass legislation that I think would be good for the country, and that we should be able to tell people about so that we can hold off a beginning of a return to Donald Trump. He’d be a lot better off and we would be having him spend his time out in the country talking to people than stuck in Washington talking to people about legislating.”
The report comes as Biden’s approval rating in a left-of-center mainstream poll cratered to 33% last week as Americans grapple with skyrocketing inflation, supply chain issues, a pandemic that Biden has failed to stop, and numerous additional crises.
Biden’s approval rating from Democrats sank by double digits from 87% in November to 75% in the new poll. The percentage of Democrats who now disapprove of him doubled from 7% to 14%. Only 1 in 4 Independents approved of Biden’s job performance compared to only 2% (not a typo) of Republicans. Looking at the poll’s breakdown of racial demographics, the group that least approved of Biden was Hispanics with only 28% approving.
“Though most Democrats in power believe there’s still ample time for a turnaround, several top operatives are already talking triage. They’re fearful of discussing all of this publicly because they don’t want to create more problems. But privately, they are petrified that a Republican majority would end Biden’s agenda and swamp them with endless investigations and subpoenas, [and] promise impeachment…,” the report added. “All this comes as former President Donald Trump has begun assembling a stricter political operation from Mar-a-Lago, aiming to use a strong presence and win record in 2022 to potentially bulldoze his way through 2024.”