Is President Biden actually running for reelection? You have to wonder, and not just because he’s held so few rallies or fundraisers, or that he was so slow to organize his campaign team.
The puzzle is, why isn’t the president pivoting to the center to boost his approval ratings, as Bill Clinton so famously did in 1994? Like Biden, Clinton’s approval ratings were mired in the low 40s as he began to campaign for a second term. The Arkansas president’s pivot entailed embracing welfare reform and declaring, “The era of Big Government is over” – a radical statement for a Democrat.
The gambit worked; after suffering a crushing defeat in the midterms, Clinton began to regain traction and easily won reelection
Why isn’t Biden following a similar path? It wouldn’t even be that hard. There are two issues that are clearly hurting the president’s standing: gasoline prices and illegal immigration. According to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, Biden is underwater on immigration by 29 points, with only 34 percent of voters approving of his position. His standing on inflation, related to gas prices, is even worse, with only 32 percent of voters giving him a thumbs-up.
Biden could easily tweak his stubborn and harmful war on fossil fuels, and he could take steps to close the border, with little political risk. Let’s face it, the GOP isn’t going to walk off with the windmill crowd or sanctuary city advocates any time soon.
But, far from tempering his stances on those twin crises, Biden has been doubling down, showing contempt for voters.
Consider the oil situation. I and others have documented that when gasoline prices go up, Biden’s approval ratings go down. Voters connect the dots between the president’s many efforts to rein in U.S. exploration and production and paying more at the pump. They blame Biden, and rightly so.
Even though oil and gasoline prices are rising again, thanks to Saudi Arabia and Russia, Biden has taken even more measures sure to restrain U.S. drilling. Only recently, his Interior Department canceled leases on thousands of acres in Alaska, pleasing environmentalists but making it even less appetizing for big oil companies to spend their exploration dollars in the U.S.
In addition, the administration just days ago issued a proposal that would forbid oil and gas development across thousands of acres in New Mexico. If the proposal is finalized, the restrictions would be in place for upwards of 50 years.
In July, Biden’s team slapped the oil industry with substantially higher permit and leasing fees and quadrupled the cost of insurance for drillers.
The message is clear: Biden does not seem to care that Americans are paying more at the pump, and will not budge on prioritizing his radical climate agenda over the welfare of people who have to drive to work or get their kids to school. This is almost surely one reason that 55 percent of voters in a recent CNN poll say that the expression “cares about people like you” does not apply to Joe Biden.
On immigration, Joe Biden is just as tone deaf. At the United Nations meetings this week in New York, Democratic city officials implored the president to pay attention to the migrant crisis that is creating havoc in America’s greatest city. More than 110,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in New York City; the cost of housing and caring for that enormous number of people is estimated at a crushing $12 billion over the next three years.
Rather than confront the problem, the president declined to meet with New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, and ignored his pleas to visit one of the city’s shelters, to see for himself the disaster he has created. The White House has repeatedly rebuffed New York’s pleas for help. Just weeks ago, Governor Kathy Hochul traveled to Washington D.C.; the president did not even grant her a meeting on the subject.
Across the country, the president is being smacked for allowing millions of people to enter the U.S. illegally, many of whom are released into the country with nothing more than a court date far in the future that will presumably hear their appeal for asylum.
Biden’s policies have contributed to tens of thousands of people being poisoned by fentanyl coming across our porous border, a record-high number of people on the FBI’s terror watch list being apprehended and thousands of Chinese also being stopped; voters are not happy.
As with rising gasoline prices, the president seems intent on ignoring and even making our open border problem worse. Not only has he refused to meet with concerned officials or answer questions on the topic, but yesterday the administration announced it would provide work permits for an additional 230,000 or so Venezuelans in the country illegally. The controversial move will perhaps help mitigate the cost of caring for those migrants, but it also likely to attract even more people to try to breach our border.
Joe Biden is underwater with almost every demographic and income group. But Biden and his team are confidant; they are telling Democrat worrywarts that distaste for Donald Trump, whom they consider the likely Republican nominee, and concerns about abortion will carry them to victory. For the record, the polls do not support that optimism.
The White House apparatchiks may be right, but Joe Biden is also thought by a majority of the country to be too old to run again. He can’t fix that; all the more reason to move to the center on some of the issues costing him support. It worked for master politician Bill Clinton and might work for Joe Biden.
Unless… he isn’t actually running.
Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. Follow her on Twitter @lizpeek.