Democrats may dump Joe Biden, but they still own his extreme policies

Democrats are about to fire President Biden. Are Republicans ready?

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius ignited a political firestorm recently by veering off script and writing that Joe Biden should retire — a rare chink in the media bulwark protecting the president. In a follow-up interview, the “Morning Joe” crew echoed concerns about Biden’s age. Others will surely follow; polls showing that Biden might lose to Donald Trump and other GOP 2024 candidates have finally brought Democrats to their senses.   

Republicans need to prepare for the very real possibility that Joe Biden is forced out of the 2024 race. What does that mean? It means that it’s time the GOP stop obsessing about Joe Biden’s age, and focus on his disastrous policies instead.

If Biden bows out, all the scrutiny of the president’s incoherence, his stiff gait, his moments of confusion and all the other signs of decline will no longer matter. None of that will be helpful in fending off a run by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for instance, or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

The president’s problem isn’t that he’s 80 years old, though that’s what liberals like Ignatius would like us to think. Even as he called for the president to step aside, Ignatius took pains to laud Joe Biden as a “successful and effective president.” 

Most of the country disagrees with Ignatius’s assessment — for good reason. Biden’s policies have hurt average Americans; under this president, the country has become poorer and less safe, while children have lost ground academically. He has richly earned the lowest approval ratings since Jimmy Carter. How does that constitute a successful presidency?

Gearing up for next year’s elections, Republicans should call out Biden’s inability to secure our borders, and his party’s complicity. They must focus on his mulish war on our oil industry, the explosion in the federal deficit and out-of-control spending, his administration’s damaging allegiance to teachers’ unions, the corruption that has rippled through our law enforcement agencies and the perversion of our justice system.  

Republicans must expose the damage done by these policies and remind voters that Democrats across the land have been in lockstep with Biden, endorsing his failed approaches.

Democrats have done an excellent job of portraying Republicans as “MAGA extremists”; the tables can and should be turned. The GOP should attack Democrats as the extremists they are; extremists on abortion, bail reform, immigration and climate change. Ignatius applauds Biden for having “in a polarized nation […] governed from the center out.” How can he possibly make that case for this most divisive and extreme of all presidents?

Vice President Kamala Harris, who was also dismissed by Ignatius as a poor candidate, refused in a recent interview to specify at what point in a pregnancy abortion should be illegal. She claimed GOP assertions that her party supported abortion up to nine months was a “mischaracterization.” How, then, does she explain the law Democrats passed in New York?

Abortion is not the only issue on which Democrats are guided to extreme positions by the progressive left. Bail reform and misguided “social justice” initiatives have led to unprecedented thievery and lawlessness in blue cities like San Francisco and New York. Biden has also led his party down a green path of no return, upending our auto industry and threatening to ban gas stoves, incandescent light bulbs, workable dishwashers and ceiling fans. Show me one Democrat who has said: enough!

Voters are concerned with their own welfare. They care about feeding their families, educating their kids and being able to put money aside to buy a home. They care about climbing the ladder of opportunity and keeping their families safe. These are the concerns that Republicans need to address, which Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats have largely ignored.

For months, Biden has been pitching “Bidenomics” to voters, arguing that his “middle out bottom up” approach to growing the economy has been a winner. The argument has not resonated, because his policies have failed to deliver.

A new Census Bureau report shows that “Between 2021 and 2022, inflation rose 7.8%; this is the largest annual increase in the cost-of-living adjustment since 1981.” The same report reveals that in Biden’s first year in office, poverty (based on the Supplemental Poverty Measure) in America rose from 7.8 to 12.4 percent — almost 5 percentage points. And remember, those increases took place as the White House tossed trillions of dollars into the economy.

Worse, incomes for middle-class Americans, supposedly the backbone of Biden’s support, fell by almost $2,000 since Biden became president; the decline was the most since 2010. No wonder Americans give the president low marks on his management of the economy.   

Inflation has not disappeared. In fact, thanks in part to Biden’s extreme climate agenda, backed by most Democrats, and to his antagonism toward Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, oil and gasoline prices are up 35 percent since early June while gasoline prices have climbed 18 percent.

Astonishingly, even as oil prices soar, Biden has doubled down on efforts to restrict U.S. future production by canceling important leases in Alaska and ramping up fees on oil producers. This is not just Biden’s obsession; Newsom’s California has adopted an even more ambitious climate agenda, reducing the state’s energy security and driving electricity prices higher.      

The GOP should clobber Democrats in 2024. They will run on the White House’s embrace of far-left programs that have left voters worse off. Biden has pushed these progressive initiatives, but he is not solely to blame — his fellow Democrats are responsible, too.

Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. Follow her on Twitter @lizpeek.