Democrats keep doing surprisingly well in special elections. The party’s most vulnerable Senate incumbents are running ahead of their rivals in key battleground states. One of Democrats’ signature issues — reproductive rights — has repeatedly proved a winning message.
And yet Joe Biden is struggling to pull even with Donald Trump.
It’s another ominous sign for the president: Even as other Democrats are running strong, the party’s down-ballot successes aren’t translating into momentum at the top of the ticket. Biden trails Trump in many of the states he needs to win to keep the White House. His job approval is underwater. And the coalition of voters that ushered him into office four years ago is fraying.
“Democrats are enthusiastic about trying to win the Senate and trying to win the House,” said Neil Oxman, a Pennsylvania-based Democratic strategist.
And they’re “not enthusiastic about Biden’s reelection,” Oxman said. “Period.”
It’s a tough position to be in. He came in with 2 years of apocalypse to undo, and 45 years of neoliberal betrayal and exploitation to contend with, and he actually made a significant amount of progress in the face of those obstacles; so as a result I’m sure when he hears “Biden sucks on the economy, we want Trump back, those were great days and nothing good has happened since then” from news networks to whom unions and manufacturing jobs mean nothing in terms of economic priority, he wants to push back on it
But you’re not wrong about the optics of trying to tell anyone things are good for working people in America