Biden under fire from Democrats for moderating approach ahead of 2024 contest
Cami Mondeaux
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As President Joe Biden prepares to launch his reelection bid for 2024, he has begun using some familiar tactics from old playbooks: inching toward the middle to win over centrists and some Republicans he’ll need to secure the White House for another term.
Over the last few weeks, Biden has made a series of moves siding with conservatives on key matters such as crime, immigration, and oil. Although the White House has insisted those decisions are not part of a larger reelection strategy, the recent shift is not sitting well with many of his party’s more liberal members.
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“I think the devil is in the details, and we will see what happens,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) told Politico. “But has he made decisions that progressives disagree with? Absolutely. We will see what comes up in the next year.”
Biden first broke with Democrats earlier this month when he announced he would sign a GOP-led bill seeking to strike down the newly rewritten criminal code in Washington, D.C., which reduces the penalties for some crimes. The White House initially expressed opposition to the bill before Biden reversed course and said he would not veto the measure.
Several House Democrats were furious with Biden over the decision, accusing the president of flip-flopping on previous pledges to defend the district’s self-governance.
“This ain’t it. DC has a right to govern itself, like any other state or municipality. If the President supports DC statehood, he should govern like it,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tweeted. “Plenty of places pass laws the President may disagree with. He should respect the people’s gov of DC just as he does elsewhere.”
Biden once again broke with his party after announcing earlier this week he would approve an $8 billion Willow Project in Alaska that plans to extract 600 million barrels of oil from federal lands. The plan breaks from pledges Biden made on the campaign trail in 2020 to halt drilling on federal lands, prompting widespread criticism from members of his party.
“Youth voter turnout was at its highest in 2020 & young folks supported him because of commitments such as ‘no more drilling on federal land,’” Rep. Maxwell Frost (R-FL), the first Gen-Z member of Congress, tweeted this week. “That commitment has been broken.”
Democrats have also grown concerned that Biden is eyeing a move to the right on key topics such as immigration, particularly after it was reported the president is considering a revival of a Trump-era immigration policy that detains migrant families who attempt to cross the border illegally. Biden lifted the detention policy shortly after taking office in 2021, but now, officials are looking at ways to reinstate some of its provisions — stoking anger from Democrats who say Biden has been mum on his plans.
“The lack of communication on immigration-related policy decisions is an insult,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who is heavily involved with immigration reform in Congress, told Axios. “It would be like making civil rights legislative ideas and thoughts without checking with the Congressional Black Caucus.”
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The White House has maintained that Biden’s recent decisions are not campaign-related strategies but coincidental timing. Aides pointed to previous instances in which Biden broke with liberals on key matters during the 2020 campaign, arguing his actions are par for the course.
Biden has not announced his reelection campaign, but the president is likely to make a decision in the coming weeks.