GOP attacks on President Joe Biden are falling flat, and at a price; over the past three months, Republicans and conservative outfits have reportedly spent close to $2.5 million on Facebook attack ads to no avail. According to Politico, that’s more than “more than three times what they’ve spent on Facebook ads targeting other leading Democrats” like Senator Bernie Sanders and former President Barack Obama and “issues like socialism, fake news, and ‘defund the police’ combined.”
Biden’s opponents predicted the struggle of going after him early on, fearing impotency against a politician whom Republican strategists have cast as almost too boring to demonize. Anti-Biden spots have targeted him on policy, but that approach is also suffering on the organizational front. An analysis conducted for Politico by the left-leaning communications agency Bully Pulpit reveals a lack of thematic focus—a so-called “spray and pray” strategy ahead of the midterms that has yet to shift what CNN has labeled a “historically consistent” approval rating. “If I were them, I’d be concerned about their ability to move numbers. It’s not at all clear to me that they can,” former Obama adviser David Axelrod told Politico.
While Americans for Prosperity, the conservative group leading the online charge against the president, is taking aim at infrastructure, taxes, and his “Build Back Better” agenda, the National Rifle Association is, predictably, running attack ads about Biden’s plan to “dismantle the 2nd Amendment.” Meanwhile, the National Republican Congressional Committee is decrying Biden for forgoing his predecessor’s border wall project. And Senator Ted Cruz is claiming that Biden—who has created an exploratory commission to study potential Supreme Court reforms—wants to “destroy the independence of the judiciary” by packing the court with “radical left-wing judicial activists.”
Even as the GOP is unable to find purchase against Biden, the most liberal members of his own party are growing more restless. Progressive lawmakers and groups are criticizing Biden’s $579 billion bipartisan infrastructure deal as failing to sufficiently address liberal priorities such as climate policy, and are demanding more than Biden may be willing to give for a reconciliation bill—among several points of tension between progressives and the White House on infrastructure, Bloomberg reports.
Infrastructure is far from the only agenda item that the left flank of the party has grown increasingly dissatisfied with. Voting rights legislation is a central liberal priority, a fight the White House is currently losing in Congress. “Tending to your democracy and ensuring we have the right to vote is an existential, foundational need that must be addressed by the end of the year,” Rahna Epting, executive director of the progressive advocacy group MoveOn, told Bloomberg.
The president is also perceived as falling short on proposed immigration plans, restrictions on police power, and spending on social programs—concerns that add to the question of whether the unexpected honeymoon between the left and the White House is about to be cut short. “I don’t know how voters will come out and vote for you in 2022 and 2024 if you don’t deliver on anything you promised,” Tré Easton, a senior adviser for the Battle Born Collective, a group advocating for filibuster reform, told Bloomberg. “What President Biden and the Democrats do now is determinative.”
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