WASHINGTON — Republicans are increasingly placing President Joe Biden at the center of their campaign attacks as his standing with the public deteriorates, a strategic shift for a party that had struggled to define him in the early months of his White House tenure.
Through much of the summer, Biden enjoyed positive marks from a consistent majority of Americans, making it difficult for the GOP to find a line of attack that stuck to the new president. But that dynamic began to change following the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and a resurgence of coronavirus cases.
Those moments led some voters, particularly independents, to have broader doubts about Biden’s leadership ability and capacity to handle the job, according to Republican operatives working on the 2022 midterm elections. They say that has opened the door for GOP attacks on other issues they see as politically advantageous, such as inflation, immigration and crime.
Now Republican groups are beginning to attempt to tie Biden to vulnerable congressional Democrats in attack ads, a trend that leading party strategists say they expect to continue into next year’s election if the president’s approval rating remains underwater.
“Republicans were having a hard time figuring out if you could make him the boogeyman. But I think that’s rapidly changing,” said Steven Law, the CEO of Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC with ties to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “The trajectory of his own image and voters’ assessment of him suggests that Biden will become a focus of Republican messaging.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee released a new round of digital ads this week criticizing Biden and 17 House Democrats in competitive races over taxes, which the group said was its first paid media campaign of the election cycle attacking the president.
Those ads came shortly after the Republican State Leadership Committee aired an ad linking a Virginia state Democratic lawmaker who is running for reelection this year to Biden and “Washington liberals.”
“I think if he continues on this trajectory, he will be front and center in the midterms,” NRCC communications director Michael McAdams said of Biden.
The conservative Club for Growth Action had also planned to launch their most pointed attack on Biden yet with an ad focused on the economy ahead of the president’s scheduled trip to Chicago this week before it was postponed. Joe Kildea, a spokesman for the group, said they plan to run another ad in the near future criticizing the administration for rising prices.
“There’s no question Democratic leadership will be a drag on the ticket, and President Biden as well as Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi will be featured prominently in Club for Growth Action advertising and digital campaigns in the midterm cycle,” the group’s president, David McIntosh, said in a statement.
The groups are spending relatively small amounts of money on the ads, and the messaging wars from both parties won’t begin to fully escalate until closer to November 2022. GOP operatives also say it’s unlikely Biden will become as effective of a campaign villain as Democratic congressional leaders such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Pelosi or progressive favorites such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Still, the recent messaging reflects a change in outlook among top Republican operatives, who see a greater opportunity to directly attack Biden than they did for much of the summer.
The latest FiveThirtyEight polling average shows that 45% of Americans approve of Biden’s job performance and 49% disapprove. At the end of July, 52% approved and 43% disapproved. Both parties traditionally view the sitting president’s approval rating as a barometer for the political environment heading into a midterm election.
Recent polls suggest much of that decline is due to Biden’s standing among swing voters, who will be critical in the midterms. For instance, a Pew Research Center survey found that 42% of independents approve of the way Biden is handling his job as president, down from 54% in July.
Republican strategists say they weren’t able to easily define Biden early in his presidency because voters generally liked him as a person and were ready to move on from former President Donald Trump’s chaotic tenure.
But they say Biden started to lose that benefit of the doubt amid a rise in COVID cases and a messy end to the war in Afghanistan, causing some voters to view his administration in a different light on a wide range of issues.
“Biden had the trust and likability factor. When that goes away, everything else becomes more effective,” said National Republican Senatorial Committee communications director Chris Hartline. “He’s going to be an anchor that is dragging down pretty much every Democratic campaign in the country.”
GOP operatives acknowledge most Americans won’t cast their vote based solely on the Afghanistan withdrawal and that the pandemic situation will likely change over the next 13 months.
But they argue that it will be difficult for the president to regain ground with the public, in part because he benefited from the support of voters who were mainly anti-Trump rather than pro-Biden in 2020.
Exit polls from the last election show that roughly a quarter of the electorate said they cast their vote for president to oppose a candidate instead of support one. Of those voters, nearly 7 in 10 backed Biden.
“His campaign was about a return to politics as normal and that the adults are going to be in charge,” said Mark Harris, a Pennsylvania-based GOP consultant. “He could be a lot of things to a lot of people. That tends to fall apart pretty fast because his support was soft.”
While Democrats acknowledge that Biden has taken a political hit, they are hopeful that he and the party have time to recover, especially if they are able to successfully pass and sell their economic agenda, which includes an infrastructure bill and a larger social safety net package.
“If Democrats win in November, I think it will be because we passed it and explained it well,” said Sean Bagniewski, the chairman of Polk County Democratic Party in Iowa. “If Democrats lose in November, it’s because we didn’t pass it or passed it and didn’t explain it well.”
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