Biden and the American public: What do they want to tell us after the midterm elections?” he told Urbina, a longtime friend of Biden
Some of the doubts about Biden may be assuaged by Democrats’ surprisingly strong performance in the midterm elections. As of early Friday afternoon, Democrats still have a slim chance of keeping their House majority and a much better chance of holding onto their Senate majority.
The most basic acts of governing, such as raising the debt ceiling or passing a budget, could possibly be subject to legislative interruption in the new Congress. Judicial confirmations could come to a halt if the GOP takes control of the Senate.
He said he was ready to work with his Republican colleagues after the election. “The American people have made clear, I think, that they expect Republicans to be prepared to work with me as well.”
The opposite party can make an appeal to a certain group of people on the other team in order to get them help, he said.
“Of course, they should always talk about things that would tangibly improve people’s lives and secure their rights, but it’s really hard to see where that’s real,” said Mari Urbina, managing director with the progressive organization Indivisible.
But he wasn’t clear about what those areas of consensus could be. The president’s agenda has included cancer, mental health, and veterans issues, which could potentially result in common ground with Republicans and Democrats.
Biden also recently expressed hopes for a continued bipartisan approach to Russia’s war in Ukraine, though in recent months, some Republicans have begun voicing concerns over the large sums of money being given to the Ukrainian government.
Biden was more explicit about areas where he will not compromise. He said he will veto any attempts to create a federal abortion ban, or to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act — the signature climate and healthcare bill Democrats passed this summer. He has also said he won’t accept major cuts or changes to Social Security or Medicare, a proposal put forth by Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee.
With the government split, “his conversation with the american public gets a lot easier in some way, politically” said a long-time advisor to him. “You can say, ‘This is what I want to do. I would like to pass this agenda. And I got Republicans here in the House standing in my way.’”
In other words, the contrast becomes easier than it’s been these last two years when Democrats controlled the House and the Senate, but fought about policy amongst themselves.
The president is likely to use executive actions to advance his domestic policy if legislation is not passed.
Late Thursday, Biden left for a series of summits overseas, featuring a face-to-face meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G-20 in Bali. Navigating competition with China and managing the war in Ukraine are two key diplomatic priorities for this White House that will continue to be pressing issues after the midterms.
Republican plans to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act are largely symbolic, given Biden’s veto powers. The president can be squeezed on their priorities by not raising the debt ceiling unless they agree to some of their initiatives.
“When a Congress is kicked out, it’s easy for a new majority to think that it’s because people just didn’t like the way the other party was doing.” Buck said that it was not a validation of the new party.
In the next election, voters could be opposed to going too far. “That’s what we saw in 2010 into 2012,” Buck explained. In the 2010 midterms, Republicans gained a whopping 63 seats in the House, only to see then-President Barack Obama win reelection two years later.
The Republicans could become a thorn in the side of the Biden administration using their oversight powers even with a lean majority in the House. As NPR’s Susan Davis has outlined, the GOP plans investigations on topic ranging from the Afghanistan withdrawal to the origins of COVID-19. Hunter Biden is the president’s son and some Republicans want to know more about his business dealings.
“It’s payback,” said Bill Galston, a former domestic policy adviser in the Clinton White House who now serves a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “They are very angry about the investigations to which they believe they’ve been subjected.”
Biden has brushed off the threat of investigations, including threats of impeachment. I think the American people will look at all of that for what it is. It’s just almost comedy,” he said this week.
Biden has faced questions about whether he should run for a second term because of his age and his low approval ratings. Democrats are half hearted about a Biden campaign, according to polls.
“This is going to diminish whatever pressure there might have been from within the Democratic party for President Biden to stand down in favor of a fresh face,” said Galston.
There would have been more behind-the-scenes pressure that would have arisen if there had been a lot of wins. I don’t think that’s going to happen now,” he said.
Joe Biden: The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First History of the Presidential Success and Loss of a Presidential Candidate
Zelizer is a professor at Princeton University and a CNN political analyst. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including, “The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment.” Follow him on social media. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
President Joe Biden has been underestimated before. Biden walked away with better than any other President in his first midterm since Bush in 2002, when Democrats performed well by historical standards. The president said that it was a good day for democracy.
Michigan and Pennsylvania were two states where Democrats did well. Many of the election deniers running for secretary of state or governor lost. Even in states where Democrats were walloped, such as in New York, there were bright spots, including Gov. Kathy Hochul’s victory over the Trump-endorsed Republican Lee Zeldin.
The outcome was a surprise to both parties. The party of the president has lost more seats in the House than it gained during the first two years of an administration. Under former President Donald Trump, Republicans lost 40 seats in the House in 2018. Democrats lost more than 50 in the House in 1994 and 2010, under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Biden defeated younger and more interesting candidates in the Democratic primaries in 2020 and then defeated Donald Trump in the general election. This was more than a small accomplishment. The presidents that have won reelection are usually from World War II. Despite Trump having increased his total votes and expanded his base, he was unable to stave off Biden, who campaigned on a combination of protecting American values, relying on science in the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and promising to returning government to normalcy –issues that worked like a charm after the chaos of the Trump administration.
Democrats will be in better position on Capitol Hill than predicted, and Trump was dealt a blow when he decided to run for president. The damage that Trump and his candidates inflicted on the GOP will create significant concern about his being at the top of the ticket once again. Losing is one thing that GOP power brokers have in common. More Republicans will be thinking about who to back in the next presidential election, after Gov. Ron DeSantis’s success in Florida. The former president was dealt a big blow by the mid-terms.
A brief glimpse into the president’s high-stakes theory of the case was provided at the moment, one that appeared exceedingly aspirational given the president’s party’s narrow congressional majorities. But even as this year began, Biden and his team were grasping to break free of a series of crises and the cornerstone of his agenda – a sweeping bill that included numerous administration priorities – appeared in shambles.
Joe Biden and the Family: The End of Obama’s Second Term in the White House? Anita Duncan Worst of the Thanksgiving Dinner with His Family
Nor is Trump anywhere close to done. He can be very effective when he uses his anger and rage in his own campaign. He still commands a lot of support within the party, and he still has a strong sense of what is happening in the media world. Meanwhile, DeSantis comes out of this week looking a bit like George W. Bush in 1998, when he won his gubernatorial reelection bid in a landslide two years before securing the presidency in 2000. Given his ability to appeal to the core of the Republican Party and potentially expand into new constituencies such as Latinos, he could pose a serious threat to Democrats in his ability to pull off a more polished version of Trumpism.
But “watch me” alone isn’t going to assuage voters’ doubts, which primarily center on Biden’s age. After two years of watching Biden in office, many voters don’t think he should run again. So there’s that.
President Biden is spending Thanksgiving with family in Nantucket. He’s going to talk to his family over the holidays to decide if he should run again in 2024.
Lots of families had some big conversations over the dinner table at Thanksgiving last night – some easy, some hard, some involving major life decisions, such as whether to run for a second term as president. We’re also joined by NPR correspondent, who is reporting on President Biden’s deliberations about running for reelection in four years.
A top White House official, as well as one of Joe Biden’s closest advisers, was asked about the issue recently by a publication.
Anita Duncan is from the area. His decision to run in 2020 came after a family meeting that was actually, as he posed it, called by his grandchildren. Pop’s got to have this conversation. The family will be deeply involved in the decision he makes because of who he is.
KEITH: As Biden’s press secretary said repeatedly this week, these are private conversations. It’s not like a formal announcement would come immediately if there was a decision this week or over Christmas. When President Obama made his announcement, I think about it. In the 2012 election he did not announce his reelection until April of 2011. And that was even though there was really no question about whether he would run. In that Axios interview, Dunn said preparations are already underway, though.
DUNN: We are engaged in some planning for the simple reason that if we weren’t engaged in planning in November of this year, we should be in the political malpractice hall of fame.
MARTÍNEZ: When Donald Trump announced that he was going to run in 2024, I think everyone did a collective look toward D.C. to see exactly what President Biden was planning on doing.
The Midyear NPR Race: A Political Puzzle for the Biden-Trump Conjecture and the Perceptions of the Democratic Presidential Candidate
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. The availability may be different. NPR programming is recorded in the audio record.
Voters are pining for a break from the past even as President Joe Biden and Donald Trump move towards a rerun of the most turbulent White House race in modern history.
A new CNN/SSRS poll shows that 6 in 10 Republicans and GOP-leaning independents want their party to nominate someone other than Trump in 2024. The other side hopes for a different nominee than Biden.
Of course, it’s early. In a volatile, partisan age, polls, history, logic, and pre-race predictions often don’t count for much.
The race is going on, even if voters don’t want it. Early perceptions of the contenders’ strengths are important since they shape the decisions of potential rivals and donors in the early money chase. Biden is giving all the signs that he plans to run for president, even though he’s already a declared candidate, and he might let the country know in the new year.
The results of the midyear elections, when Democrats hold the Senate and Republicans take the House, help explain the findings. Voters hoping for a return to the normality Biden had promised after generational public health and inflation challenges weren’t exactly enthused with the president, whose low approval numbers largely kept him off the campaign trail in battleground states. They weren’t willing to trust a GOP still largely under Trump to fix things.
There is a poll that suggests one of the emerging paradoxes in the race. Even though they are the most powerful figures in their parties, both Biden and Trump seem oddly vulnerable at the start of the two-year campaign, and could face complications from a shifting political environment, outside factors or age.
The president ends the year in better shape than Trump, and he seems to have regained his footing after a rough year. 25% of Democrat-aligned voters wanted him to be their nominee this summer. Now that figure is 40%. The advantage a sitting president usually has against a primary challenger is further strengthened by the fact that 70% of those who want someone else don’t have a single particular in mind.
Republican politics could be shifting at a moment of transition. How things shake out in the next few months will be critical to Trump’s prospects. On the one hand, more and more Republicans – prompted by the failure of many of the ex-president’s hand-picked candidates in the midterms – are saying it’s time to move on.
The dinner Trump had with extremists with a record of antisemitism like White supremacist Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago is corroborating their arguments that his general election viability is damaged beyond repair. Trump’s so-far lackluster campaign, which looks like it was declared to make it easier for him to portray criminal probes into his conduct as persecution, isn’t convincing anyone so far.
Bringing Back the Gingrich Envelope: The Case of Kevin J. Taylor Greene and the 2018 U.S. Senate Republican Caucus
With the emergence of Rep. MarjorieTaylorGreene as a significant voice in the House Republican caucus, anything will happen in 2023. Democrats who lived through the battles of the 1990s will remember Republicans helping to buoy Bill Clinton’s standing, as his approval ratings skyrocketed. That’s because Americans felt that the House GOP, under the direction of Speaker Newt Gingrich, was too radical and extreme to govern. The current House Republican caucus makes the Gingrich era GOP leaders look like statesmen.
Another campaign will test whether there’s been any erosion in Trump’s base. Even if his mythical connection to those voters isn’t enough to get him the presidency, he could still carry it to his third straight nomination. Even though the majority of Republican lawmakers want to repudiate Trump over his recent call to break the Constitution, they seem unwilling to do so. The same can be said for House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who has found ways not to condemn Trump’s recent associations with extremists in his desperate bid to win the speaker’s gavel next month.
GOP hopefuls will see the lowest point of three CNN polls this year as an opening for an anti-Trump candidate. But another big field could splinter opposition to the ex-president among untested potential foes.
If Biden faces Trump, the question of his age will probably not be important. But the current commander in chief might be vulnerable to a youthful Republican challenger like DeSantis, for instance, who is in his 40s.
The February 6 Insurrection and the American Dream: Predicting Biden on his upcoming trip to the Virgin Islands with his family
He was met with polite appreciation from his foreign counterparts. But the deep skepticism served only to underscore his commitment to a belief that sat at the heart of a pledge that was often pilloried during the campaign as naïve. The only real reassurance, Biden would note, was delivering on what he’d promised.
It is a moment which vindicates and exonerates core elements of a campaign and presidency which were underestimated or even ridiculed at one point or another.
Biden found a group of allies to be shaken by the events that led to the January 6 insurrection during those meetings in England and Belgium. But the president tried to reassure them that the visceral divides that culminated in the violence that day would heal and the bleak moment in US politics would pass.
“That’s why it’s so important that I succeed in my agenda, whether it’s dealing with the vaccine, the economy, infrastructure,” Biden told reporters in Brussels shortly before he boarded Air Force One for a flight to Switzerland and a sit down with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It’s important that we demonstrate we can make progress and continue to make progress. And I think we’re going to be able to do that.”
Instead, as he weighs running for reelection at age 80, he enters the final two years of this term with much of his agenda now law. Bipartisan consensus was used to drive core elements of that agenda. Even Biden’s final bipartisan achievement of the year – the $1.7 trillion spending package – includes an initial $500 million to seed the technology and innovation hubs created by the CHIPS and Science Act in parts of the country outside of traditional tech sectors.
Biden’s closest and longest-serving advisers told CNN that one of his hallmarks is that he does what he says he’s going to do.
A campaign promise or commitment can tip internal debates on policy decisions more than once, according to a White House official.
Biden’s closest confidants also stress that it’s a perspective that is instructive as the White House prepares for the dramatically reshaped Washington that will confront him upon his return from his family vacation to the US Virgin Islands.
“The whole idea of showing people government can work – we were mocked for that in some corners,” a Biden adviser said. “That’s literally what’s happening now.”
There are still clear challenges ahead. Inflation remains high even though it appears to be decreasing. Biden advisers expect the economic growth to slow in the quarters to come, though they are optimistic a recession can be avoided.
The outlines of the State of the Union address will come early next year, thanks to Biden’s overarching approach, which guided the early-stage planning for the legislative and political implications of a new House Republican majority.
It’s also a defining element of the structure and message planning of a nascent campaign that has taken shape over the last several months and accelerated. The senior team of Biden has become more confident in his reelection chances over the coming weeks.
The White House believes the political salience of his agenda is an underappreciated aspect of their ability to defy expectations of sweeping Republican gains in the upcoming mid-terms. The agenda that is now in the implementation phase is not affected by the prospect of divided government or a narrow legislative pathway.
“It forms the foundation for even stronger achievements as the nation heads into the New Year,” Mike Donilon, the White House senior adviser and long-standing member of Biden’s inner circle, wrote in a political memo circulated to allies this month.
Biden, advisers said, has laid down strict directives to senior aides and Cabinet officials about the necessity of efficient implementation in the months ahead.
A senior administration official explained that the message was from the top. “We have to get it right and in the moments we don’t, we damn well be ready to explain it – and fix it.”
“A lot of people told him that this wouldn’t resonate, or that it wasn’t the message, or that it’s outdated,” Stef Feldman, the longtime Biden aide who served as the 2020 campaign policy director before following him to the White House, told CNN.
Biden viewed his infrastructure proposal, in particular, as a central policy plank of his campaign as Democratic primary opponents raced to outdo one another with transformational progressive proposals – none of which included a viable way to pass a bitterly divided Congress.
Biden and his economic advisers zeroed in on an intensive manufacturing and supply chain agenda that grew more aggressive and transformational as a once-in-a-century pandemic gripped the country. They believed that it was the key to reverse the atmosphere that allowed Donald Trump to reach the Oval Office.
The Foundations of a Successful 2020 Presidential Campaign: From Biden’s Legacy to His Life, and Beyond, to the Strategies of Donald J. Biden
“This was the right moment for his theory of the case,” Feldman said. The principles that have guided him throughout his career could be applied by him.
Those principles have largely stayed with Biden through his time as a senator and vice president and were refined during the critical two years spent out of office as he weighed yet another run for the presidency.
“Ever since I’ve talked to the president about the economy, he’s distinguished between the short-term and the long-term, between consumption and investment,” said Jared Bernstein, Biden’s chief economist as vice president who now sits on the Council of Economic Advisers. “These have always been foundational to his economic thinking.”
The animating principles of Biden’s 2020 campaign hardly diverged from the key themes outlined by Donilon, Biden’s in-house mind-meld, in the 22-page memo he drafted in early 2015 as the then-vice president weighed jumping into the 2016 race.
In his speeches as president, the same can be said of the anecdotes from that period, whether they were about his father speaking of breathing room or about a Chinese leader.
Ricchetti, who as counselor to the president helped lead the White House legislative effort, pointed to a clear “through-line” from Biden’s days as a senator, through his time as vice president and during the first two years of Trump’s presidency.
Biden wrote a book detailing his decision not to run for president as he dealt with the pain of his son Beau’s fight with, and eventual death from, brain cancer. That process and the book tour that followed are viewed by Biden’s inner circle as an essential experience in the eventual decision to run in 2020.
If the effort to turn that foundation into a coherent policy agenda was accelerated and expanded in the final months of the campaign, it was turbocharged during a transition that saw Democrats take control of the Senate majority.
The infrastructure, manufacturing, research and development, climate and equity proposals were designed to work in tandem, even if they were reduced during the legislative process.
“At the core of this strategy was that the power of it is that these things work together,” National Economic Council Chairman Brian Deese, one of the architects of the package, said in an interview.
To be clear, subscribing to the term “industrial policy” still isn’t universally embraced. Deese prefers the term “Modern American Industrial Strategy.” Deese said crowd in private investment would be the idea if you do public investment in a thoughtful way.
A resurgence in research and development funding. Critical areas of national and economic security are the focus of public investments. The elevation of labor unions and a focus on creating the conditions to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/28/politics/joe-biden-2022/index.html
The Rise of China, and How to Make Sense of it: Late Biden’s First Foreign Trip to South Korea with a Chip Factory
These issues are popular with the public and not limited to Biden. They’re also exceedingly difficult to turn into policy. At least until the pandemic.
That was true for semiconductors – the tiny chips essential for everything from cars and washing machines to advanced weapons systems – that drove the bipartisan urgency behind the $280 billion CHIPS and Science law. Sen. Todd Young, an Indiana Republican up for reelection in 2022, drove the effort on Capitol Hill – something that underscored the salience of an issue that scrambled traditional political dynamics.
For Young, who had pressed for legislation tied to the issue in the year before Biden entered the White House, it was less about embracing a broader shift in economic policy and more about addressing the fact China had pursued exactly that for a decade or longer. The Senate voted to advance the law that has led to new private sector investment and commitments in the last several months.
The disease. The rise of China as key feature of policy making in both parties. A president animated by the idea of long-term economic incentives crafted to connect workers and communities left behind for decades.
“There’s a confidence that comes from knowing what you’re doing,” said Kaufman, the former Delaware senator, longtime Biden Senate chief of staff and one of the president’s closest friends. “This is a guy who is so incredibly well qualified to be president because of experience.”
In a way it is acknowledging the unprecedented factors that have created an opening to the presidency for Biden. Another incumbent, or another moment, and advisers note that it wouldn’t be a question of if Biden would win. He wouldn’t have run.
Voters reject a lot of the far-right voices that are used in the 2020 election, particularly those for governor and secretary of state.
In the months leading up to the elections, Biden was constantly describing his first foreign trip to his counterparts in order to underscore the stakes.
In the weeks that followed, after his travel to Indonesia for the G-20 Summit, he was ready to provide an updated version as he stood against the backdrop of a new factory in Arizona to celebrate the announcement by a Taiwanese chip maker of what would mark one of the largest foreign investments in US history.
“What was clear in those meetings is the United States is better positioned than any other nation to lead the world economy in the years ahead if we keep our focus,” Biden said.
Twenty-two political questions: How much will they determine in 2023? The first 10 questions that will determine what happens in Washington, DC and beyond
These days, even off-cycle years in American politics can be quite significant in shaping the future of the country. The 10 most important political questions that will determine what happens in Washington, DC and beyond are set to be answered in the year 2023.
It is possible that having control of the lower chamber could be positive for the Democrats. Although Republicans will be able to stifle new initiatives from the White House, investigating people like Hunter Biden or bolloxing up the routine processes of governance, such as raising the debt ceiling, could help Democrats make the case that their opponents can’t handle the responsibilities of power.
Donald Trump will be running for President in the year 2024. He has started to roll out the same kind of anti-establishment vitriol, centered on the war against the world message that he deployed successfully in 2016 against a crowded field of Republican challengers. But this time may be more difficult for him because he comes to the campaign trail with more baggage than the first time around. He faces criminal charges that the Department of Justice could move forward with if there is any more investigations against him. (Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has diminished the investigations as politically motivated, calling them a “witch hunt.”)
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/28/opinions/10-questions-2023-politics-zelizer/index.html
The 2016 Russian-Ukraine Pandemic: How We Are Getting There and What Will We Do Next-Generation Elections?
The Supreme Court decision to overturn the ban on abortions played a big part in the Democrats’ success. Many Democratic voters were energized to elect officials who would support the right of women to determine their own reproductive decisions. The Supreme Court is currently considering a number of issues, including how it will rule on the radical legal doctrine of independent state legislative theory, which would give state legislative bodies power to overturn the results of an election. These and other decisions have the capacity to deeply impact the state of the election process, as well as the motivation of voters from both parties going into November 2024.
The United States has been directly affected by the war between Russia and Ukraine. Cost of losing Russia’s oil supplies has been a significant factor in inflation. While policymakers at the Department of Defense watch Russia to see if it wants to launch a NATO country attack, there are emerging partisan tensions over how much support to give to Ukraine. There could be more than Ukrainians to consider. In international policy, we are never sure what is going to happen. A major crisis can flare up at any time to fundamentally reshape our national conversation.
Public health crises can lead to politics collapsing within a few days. The litmus test for our elected officials would be defined by new issues that were pushed to the top of the agenda. Currently, because of the successful vaccine program, the recent impact of Covid-19 largely has been curtailed even though the virus continues to cause sickness and death. And as we now see with the triple combination of Covid-19, the flu and RSV, we will not be out of the danger zone for a while. There is always the possibility that another pandemic will bring challenges into the political realm.
The elections posed a blow to the election deniers running for offices, but election denialism is still a force in the GOP. And in certain states, there are individuals still ready to challenge results that don’t go their way. Red states are also continuing to insist on voting restrictions. The January 6 committee report exposed just how vulnerable our democracy remains. Anti-democratic forces can use a number of ways, even with the passage of the Electoral Count Reform Act. The results will be influenced by the democratic system’s ability to endure these attacks.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/28/opinions/10-questions-2023-politics-zelizer/index.html
What are we waiting for? What will we learn in 2023 from a year after the big bang, and what will we need in 2025?
Unexpected questions await us, of course. Any good list about what is to come must account for all the things that aren’t even being imagined right now. Few predictive pieces in December 2019, after all, would have included a global pandemic.
The next president of the United States will be determined by political terms, which will be clarified in the big political rollercoaster that is 2023.