WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden, in a speech to the Democratic National Committee on Thursday night, presented an optimistic vision of the party’s prospects in November’s midterm elections despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine and inflation continuing to slice into Americans’ purchasing power.
“The message resonates,” Biden said of his economic agenda. “And now we have to do is to sell it with confidence, clarity, conviction and repetition.”
His remarks come as the two greatest crises of his presidency — the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — have converged to drive up prices that Americans, already rattled by rising inflation, are paying for gasoline, food and housing.
A new Labor Department report earlier Thursday pegged the annual inflation rate at 7.9%, a 40-year high.
Biden told the audience at the DNC’s winter meeting in Washington — the organization’s first in-person event in two years — that Republicans vying to take over chambers of Congress have been “playing a game” by trying to blame his policies for soaring oil and gasoline prices.
“This crisis is another indication of why we need to get off of fossil fuels,” the president said. He spent several minutes touting the bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure law he signed last year. The other part of his economic agenda, the Build Back Better plan, remains blocked in Congress.
Democrats mustering in Washington Thursday defended the president’s policies while also criticizing recent Republican proposals to make lower-income workers pay more in taxes and make another attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act.
“We know exactly what the Republican economic agenda is,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison told reporters Thursday. “It’s for higher taxes, higher health care premiums. And they have no plan to reduce the cost of prescription drugs or other things in this county. Corporate profits are soaring right now but you don’t see Republicans asking the wealthy or corporations to pay a penny more in taxes.”
Biden is scheduled to meet with House Democrats for a strategy session in Philadelphia on Friday, as he tries to revive a legislative agenda that has fractured with a razor-thin majority in Congress. The Senate is divided 50-50, and Democrats have a five-seat majority in the House, where the president’s party typically loses 30 or more seats in elections when the incumbent is not on the ballot.
Biden’s approval rating has rebounded from its all-time low a month ago, following his March 1 State of the Union address and Russia’s assault on Ukraine. But stringent sanctions against Russia will only exacerbate the 40-year inflation high that’s been weighing on his approval numbers.
Before the DNC speech, Emma Vaughn, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee released a statement citing inflation, rises in crime, the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the surge of migration at the Mexican border as reasons Democrats “can expect to keep losing.”
