The frustration in the Democratic party is growing increasingly by what they say is a flat-footed White House that is slow to catch up on solving a seemingly never-ending cascade of problems in the face of an unrelenting news cycle.
They say that the latest example of how President Biden has failed to get ahead of the story is the recent baby formula shortage, allowing Republicans to set the narrative as yet another failure for the White House. But Biden’s lag on other issues at the top of voters’ minds was also highlighted by them, such as inflation and gas prices.
In April, when the White House was caught off guard when a federal judge in Florida lifted the mask mandate on airlines, the Democrats were also frustrated, and also when a leaked draft of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was made public, even though both were events that surprised Washington more broadly, not just the White House.
One Democratic strategist frustrated by the administration said: “It’s really simple: ‘Be the f—ing president! I realize it’s tough and you’re drinking out of a fire hose every single day, but there are things you can do to control the public perception and they haven’t done any of that.”
The White House has shown some naivete in recent months in trying to control the message, said Democratic strategist Christy Setzer, per report.
“It may come down to not understanding what they’re up against, both the media environment and today’s GOP. Biden did speak out on guns, on baby formula, on inflation … but the traditional tactics aren’t breaking through, and it doesn’t seem as though they’re taking in that information, re-trenching, and trying new approaches when it’s falling flat,” Setzer said.
“The President has led with urgency and solutions needed to deliver for American families due to Abbott’s recall,” a White House official said, routinely defending Biden and the administration’s response to the baby formula shortage, highlighting his invoking of the Defense Production Act to have baby formula flown into the U.S. at least five times in recent weeks.
Karine Jean-Pierre, a White House press secretary, acknowledged when speaking to the reporters during a briefing, that Biden is juggling “multiple crises” at one time.
Last August, Biden’s polling numbers began to, which was around the time he withdrew the last military forces out of Afghanistan after 20 years of war. Marked by the Taliban’s swift and sudden takeover of Kabul, the deadly and chaotic exit of the U.S. was labeled by both Democrats and Republicans as poorly executed. It was compounded by a terrorist bombing that took the lives of 13 American service members.
And since then, Biden did not recover.