Steve McGookinAs Joe Biden himself said, this coming week will define his presidency.
Such a statement might seem an unnecessary hostage to fortune at what’s still a relatively early stage of his tenure, but as he travels to Europe this weekend for the G20 meeting in Rome and then the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, the President finds himself beset by connected challenges, global and local.
Amid the worst approval ratings of his tenure, the president’s authority appears fragile, with much more at home and abroad riding on the coming days than he would prefer.
November 7th will mark a year since Biden – eventually – won the election, despite what the defeated candidate continues to assert. It’s still also unclear whether there will be real accountability for any of the alleged key players in the January 6th insurrection which sought to overturn that outcome, with the attendant implications for the Department of Justice and – more importantly – the rule of law and future elections.
But like it or not, those divisive issues will still be around beyond the immediate challenges of this weekend and the next few days.
For Biden – only the second Catholic US president, and the first in half a century – his meeting with the Pope on Friday will surely have bolstered his faith, but right now, is faith alone enough? Biden is optimistic that progressive and moderate Democrats can come together to pass his multi-trillion dollar “Build Back Better” legislation, but until it reaches his desk, it’s still in the realm of promises rather than political reality.
That reality means he goes into COP26 without a firm commitment on climate change mitigation measures that would have allowed him to claim US leadership at a time when there doesn’t seem to be much global consensus around what’s necessary – and what’s achievable – on practical next steps.
And a failure of messaging – for example by allowing the Build Back Better bill to be defined by its ever-declining price tag rather than what it contains – has inevitably led to a narrative that Biden’s agenda has stalled, hampering the Democrats’ brand at a crucial political moment.
People are understandably tired after an extraordinary year, and a lack of results when compared with Biden’s campaign promises has prompted a degree of demoralization among Democratic voters, who have watched signature elements of his election platform like voting rights, police reform, paid family leave and free community college get frustrated partly by a highly-efficient strategy of running out the clock by congressional Republicans, but also by infighting within their own caucus.
The simple fact is that they badly need infrastructure legislation passed to give them something to run on.
Virginia Playin’
Usually, the incumbent party will be at a disadvantage when it comes to off-year elections. Democrats are now facing some crucial “off-off-year” elections that will set the stage for 2022’s midterms. None is more important than the Governor’s race in Virginia, a state Biden won handily in last year’s presidential contest.
In a race that wlll come down to base turnout, veteran Democrat politician Terry McAuliffe is currently neck and neck with GOP candidate Glenn Youngkin, an investment banker who has tried to balance both distancing and embracing Donald Trump supporters. The former president is set to hold a”tele-rally” for Youngkin – or, really, for himself – on Monday’s election-eve.
While early voting has been in operation for the past few weeks, the poll trend shows Youngkin gaining last-minute momentum and the fact that both Biden and former president Obama felt they had to campaign for McAuliffe in recent days is significant.
As the US political cycle telescopes inwards from here, Tuesday’s elections will have important implications for congressional control in next year’s midterm elections, in turn laying the groundwork for the 2024 presidential contest, which will pose challenges for Democrats even without the redistricting process currently under way, which could tip the balance towards the Republicans in a number of key states.
And the GOP is poised to become even “Trumpier”, if such a thing is possible, with the House already losing one ‘reality-based’ Republican in Illinois Rep Adam Kinzinger, who announced he won’t be running again.
“My disappointment in the leaders that don’t lead is huge,” Kinzinger said in his statement. “We must unplug from the mistruths we’ve been fed.”
The failure to advance voting rights legislation which could mitigate the worst excesses of local vote restrictions is one more thing that might come back to haunt Biden’s party.
Transform this…
The administration’s early achievement with the urgently-passed American Rescue Plan are now in the political rear-view mirror, and even recent successes in the battle against Covid-19 are being diminished by continuing high-profile resistance to vaccine mandates.
New York City’s Monday deadline has prompted protest and pushback from some first responders and their unions, while prominent local politicians continue to publicly use the issue for political point-scoring. Sadly, such provocative rhetoric won’t be going away before the midterms.
The oft-repeated buzzword among Democratic supporters of the president about the pending legislation is “Transformative”. And certainly, it includes some historic levels of spending, particularly on climate, as the president will be arguing this weekend. But the climate clock is ticking, and talk is cheap.
For sure, it’s possible things could turn Biden’s way – he could get this signature legislation through congress, which even in a truncated form would give him and his party cause for celebration; while holding onto key Governorships would buy the party some much-needed strategic time to get its collective head together electorally for next year.
But for now, uncertainty reigns.
There may be an acceptance that it’s “when, rather than if” the legislation passes, but the damage may have already been done.
Just as Democrats saw the 2017 off-year presage a ‘Blue Wave’, at the back of their minds will surely be the outcome of the 2010 midterms, when their party famously took a “shellacking” after the Obama administration’s success in passing the Affordable Care Act.
Virginia may give them an unpleasant post-Halloween scare on Tuesday, but when they get home to check what’s in their sacks they only have to look in the mirror at their own masks to understand why.
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Also published on Medium.
