White House credits Biden with Democrats beating midterm expectations
Haisten Willis
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President Joe Biden should get full credit for the overperformance of his party in the midterm elections, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre argued on Monday.
Democrats beat expectations in November, losing just nine seats in the House and keeping control of the Senate. Biden was largely absent from the campaign trail, especially in battleground states, but Jean-Pierre argued that he still set the tone.
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“If you look at the midterms, the president played a big role here,” Jean-Pierre said. “He set the narrative on how Democrats were going to move forward in the midterms, how they’d talk about the successes they had, how they would talk about what’s important for American families.”
Biden skipped the battleground states of Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona during the heart of campaign season, instead visiting blue states and headlining private fundraisers. In the end, the strategy worked, as those blue states held and Republicans struggled even in purple areas.
One of Biden’s biggest talking points was the threat of “MAGA Republicans” who he said would undermine election integrity, curtail abortion access, and threaten entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.
“[Republicans] were talking about a national [abortion] ban, and it didn’t matter which state, red or blue,” Jean-Pierre said. “This is a thing the president talked about and others followed. So the president played a big role in setting that narrative, setting that contrast, and let’s not forget the successes that we have seen — his economic successes.”
She mentioned the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law specifically, which Democrats could point to in spite of the president’s persistent low approval ratings.
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“Those are the things that the president was able to get done, and Democrats were able to run on it,” said Jean-Pierre.
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