WASHINGTON, — President Joe Biden’s hazard lights are blinking after Democratic setbacks this week in the elections. But, the president insists that there is no need to panic.
One year after he won the White House with an unprecedented 81 million votes, Biden saw Terry McAuliffe, a Democratic stalwart, lose to Glenn Youngkin, the first-time Republican candidate in Virginia’s governor’s race . This was a state where Biden had won by ten percentage points. In New Jersey, incumbent Gov. In , Phil Murphy was barely victorious. Biden had won by 16 points.
However, with left-leaning Democrats warning of a five-alarm fire, Biden is arguing that the electorate — and Democratic fortunes – will improve if he gets Congress to pass the domestic agenda .
“People need some breathing space. They are overwhelmed. They are overwhelmed.
After presenting remarks at the White House, the president analyzed the election results and declared it “a day for relief and celebration” for all families.
However, despite arguing that his administration was moving past coronavirus pandemic, and that his domestic spending plan is the solution to an angry electorate’s anger, the president dismissed the notion that Democrats’ poor showing in the polls could be attributed to delays within the party in moving a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, and a $1.75 trillion 10-year package of social- and environmental initiatives.
Biden stated that even if the bills were passed before Tuesday’s election it wouldn’t have been much of a difference for McAuliffe who received more votes than any Democratic candidate for gubernatorial office in commonwealth history.
Biden stated that he was unsure if he would have been able to change the number of Trump voters who turned out in red districts. “But maybe. “But maybe.”
The results of voter surveys are a completely different story. Three quarters of voters stated that Washington’s drawn-out negotiations over Biden’s governing agenda played a significant role in their vote. According to preliminary results of AP VoteCast’s survey of Virginia voters, those voters were more likely than others to support Youngkin.
His support is now declining with 47% of Virginians approving his job performance, and 53% disapproving. This split is similar to the U.S. adult population in recent AP/NORC polling.
Virginia Democrat Gerry Connolly said that the Virginia results, in which GOP candidates won statewide races as lieutenant governor or attorney general, should serve as a wakeup call to Democrats and Biden ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, in which they seek to preserve razor-thin majoritys in the House, and Senate.
Connolly stated, “I think that the president’s sinking approval rating really made a very difficult ticket to rise above it.”
However, White House officials made the case that the situation isn’t so bad after pointing to historical patterns in the two states which suggested that Democrats would face a difficult task no matter what.
Despite Virginia’s recent trend towards Democratic, the party that is currently in power has lost the governor’s seat in 11 of the 12 elections. Murphy’s narrow victory in New Jersey marked the first time that an incumbent Democratic governor has been reelected for 44 years.
Biden studied the results and concluded that a reset was not necessary for his White House.
He spoke with certainty about the many factors that are affecting Americans: the lingering pandemic and rising gas prices, as well as the uncertainty surrounding the economy. These were all problems that he would solve if he could get his agenda passed.
The president stated, “If I can pass, sign into law my Build back Better initiative, you’re going see a lot more of those things ameliorated quick and quickly.”
Although it may not seem like it, this moment is reminiscent of 2010, when Democrats won what President Barack Obama called “a shellacking” in midterm elections. While the party lost 63 House seats, six gubernatorial seats were won by Republicans and 20 state legislative chambers were flipped to them.
The Great Recession had ended, and the economy was on the upswing. However, the recovery was slow for many Americans despite Obama’s stimulus package of more than $800billion. Obama also succeeded in passing his signature health care legislation.
For many Americans, the rebound was not enough. Republicans saw the keystone of the legislation, the requirement that all Americans be insured or pay a penalty — as government overreach.
The pandemic-jarred economic system continues to make gains after reaching bottom in the early days. A relative sense of normalcy is returning, even though the delta variant continues claiming hundreds of lives every day.
White House officials insist that they believe that the problems facing Biden and Democrats are temporary. That political pain will subside as COVID-19 patients decline, kids get shot, and Democrats move closer towards passing the infrastructure bill.
However, if the past is prologue, then the current burdens on the electorate could be too much even if Biden achieves what he desires.
Kyle Kondik, an election analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, stated that “Historically speaking, passing large legislation does not lead to electoral successes.” “Voters don’t often reward these things, and sometimes they punish aggressive legislating.”
