‘Dems Need to Quit Bedwetting But My Wife Already Changed Me to Rubber Sheets’
Democrats start addressing Biden's poor poll numbers, age issue more forcefully
President Biden ended an unkind week by climbing aboard Air Force One for the long flight to India to participate in the global G20 summit.
It's begun falling to his advisors and other Democrats to begin answering questions about his accomplishments and advanced age much more directly and forcefully a little more than a year before Biden faces voters for a second term.
The week brought troubling poll numbers for Biden's reelection, with at least two opinion polls finding the president at best tied — and in some cases losing outright — to his potential Republican opponents.
That includes against Donald Trump, who has been indicted four times for a raft of alleged criminal activity.
One poll even found 67 percent of Democrats said that they would prefer a different Democratic nominee for president next year.
Increasing numbers of Democratic senators and others — including Sens Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut and Jon Tester, of Montana — are looking for a more-robust response to concerns about Biden's age and more public singing the praises of the president’s various accomplishments.
“Look, I respect them all and I think they prove the point that it’s now time to go into campaign mode and talk about the president’s accomplishments because they are great accomplishments. Beating the NRA. Passing infrastructure which no other president could do, although they promised it. Those are the things that I believe those senators are talking about, we need to go out and talk about,” said Cedric Richmond, a former congressman and current Biden advisor. “And just like the Republicans are a one-trick pony talking about the president’s age, that’s all they talk about. So of course the poll numbers show Republicans highly question it. But we have to go out and talk about the accomplishments just as much as they talk about lies and misdirection and red herrings.
“We have to be solely focused on what not only this president and vice president but what this Congress has done, the Democratic Senate and the Democratic House when we had it,” he added. “And I think that that’s going to prove to be a winning formula once again for all Democrats and for President Biden and Vice President Harris.”
A longtime Democratic strategist who helped elect Bill Clinton president in 1992, acknowledged the recent polls, but cautioned against writing off Biden and the Democrats.
“There is not much else you can say when you look at them. I guess the best thing you could say is if anything they work for Trump but there is an apprehension. That is undeniable. On the other hand I point out we haven’t lost an election since the Dobbs decision,” James Carville said, referring to last year's Supreme Court decision which overturned nearly a half-century of a national right to abortion. “We were supposed to lose in November in an off year and didn’t really. We kind of tied. I don’t know. The polling I’ve seen or anybody else has seen is not very good.
“There was a memo, my friend Jim said Democrats need to quit bed wetting but my wife already changed me to rubber sheets,” he added, referring to Obama campaign manager Jim Messina.
Democratic Rep Katie Porter, who is running in a crowded primary field to become California’s next US senator, said that she embraces Biden.
“Well, I absolutely want to be President Biden’s partner in helping him deliver a strong message on the economy across the country, and so one of the things we see consistently is voters across party lines, across geographies, across different categories tell us that the economy is the most important issue to them,” she said. “Democrats need to listen, and we need to match the intensity and quality of our messaging on the economy to where voters’ concerns are. Not take the bait on some of this stuff that Republicans are trying to distract from.
“But instead the Democratic Party needs to find its next generation, next set of leaders to talk about the economy and to help drive home what the president has done on the economy, what he’s going to do on the economy and to be his partner in delivering that,” Porter added.
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