The Democrats maybe should have put a little more thought into what they were doing when they decided to run Joe Biden in 2020, because now it certainly feels as though they’re stuck with a bit of a dud.
Biden wasn’t particularly thrilled to be running for President, it was plain to see. And now that he’s in the White House, that reticence has continued, leading to a grand stagnation in the Executive Branch.
Which, unsurprisingly, has become a real thorn in the side for the Democrats themselves, especially as the 2022 midterms loom just over the horizon.
This is why the party appears to be seething.
Democrats are growing increasingly frustrated by what they say is a flat-footed White House that is slow to catch up on solving a seemingly never-ending cascade of problems in the face of an unrelenting news cycle.
They point to the recent baby formula shortage as the latest example of how President Biden has failed to get ahead of the story, allowing Republicans to set the narrative as yet another failure for the White House. But they also highlighted Biden’s lag on other issues at the top of voter’s minds: inflation and gas prices.
Democrats were also miffed when the White House was caught off guard when a federal judge in Florida lifted the mask mandate on airlines in April and also when a leaked draft of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was made public, even though both were events that surprised Washington more broadly — not just the White House.
They certainly weren’t pulling any punches, either.
“It’s really simple: ‘Be the f—ing president!,” said one Democratic strategist frustrated by the administration. “I realize it’s tough and you’re drinking out of a fire hose every single day, but there are things you can do to control the public perception and they haven’t done any of that.”
With the 2022 midterms fast approaching, (and Biden’s approval rating continuing to flounder), the left is running out of time to right the ship.
