The Point: Why Democrats can't run away from Joe Biden

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August 31, 2021 | by Chris Cillizza and Lauren Dezenski

Why Democrats can't run away from Joe Biden

There's a lot of talk in Democratic circles these days about vulnerable 2022 candidates beginning to distance themselves from President Joe Biden amid his faltering poll numbers on both how he has handled Afghanistan and his overall job performance.

"Although it is clear to me that we could not continue to put American service members in danger for an unwinnable war, I also believe that the evacuation process appears to have been egregiously mishandled," wrote Pennsylvania Rep. Susan Wild in a tweet late last week. (Biden won Wild's district with just 52% of the vote in 2020.)

"Many of us are deeply frustrated that we could not evacuate all Americans who wanted to leave Afghanistan," tweeted New Jersey Rep. Andy Kim on Monday. "Now we need to hear specifics on what the plan is to get them out and continue support for Afghan partners." (Donald Trump carried Kim's 3rd District by 0.2 percentage point in 2020.)

This is a worthy effort to get some space from a president whose approval rating is dipping below 50% for the first time since he came into office in January.

It also won't work.

The history of midterm elections is riddled with House members -- and even some senators -- who did everything they could to make sure voters knew they didn't agree with the president of their party all the time and still wound up cinched at the political waist to the commander in chief.

One classic example of this political reality came in 2020, when North Dakota Democratic Rep. Earl Pomeroy ran a TV ad late in the campaign in which he said this: "I'm not Nancy Pelosi. I'm not Barack Obama." He still lost by almost 10 points.

The simple fact is (and this is never more true than in our current moment of tribalism) that most people have little to no idea who their House members are. They use that vote as a sort of parliamentary one; they vote for (or against) one party as opposed to one person.

And history -- especially recent history -- suggests that is a very bad thing for House Democrats. In Trump's midterm election of 2018, Republicans lost 40 seats and the House majority. In 2010, Obama's first midterm election, Democrats lost 63 seats and, you guessed it, control of the House.

The wave metaphor is useful here. What the likes of Wild and Kim (and others in swing districts) are trying to do is row their own little boats away from the potential of an anti-Biden wave that will swamp them. But they can't row fast enough to get away. Either the wave will dissipate on its own or it will crash down on them.

They have very little agency in all of it. Which is both a) frustrating and b) true.

The Point: The best thing any swing district Democrat can do is push like crazy for Biden to stop the slippage on Afghanistan and pivot to stronger political ground like the infrastructure bill or the bigger coronavirus stimulus package.

-- Chris

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"I was not going to extend this forever war. And I was not extending a forever exit."

-- President Biden, in an address marking the end of the war in Afghanistan, saying that "I take responsibility for the decision" to withdraw by August 31 but he "respectfully" disagrees with those who said mass evacuations should have happened sooner.

EYES ON TEXAS

A Texas state law that is set to go into effect on Wednesday could provide the playbook for red states to pass extreme abortion restrictions -- without having to wait for the Supreme Court to revisit Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that enshrined a constitutional right to abortion before the fetus is viable.

CNN's Tierney Sneed has more on the new Texas law banning abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy:

Rather than imposing a criminal or regulatory punishment for those who conduct abortions after the point in the pregnancy, the state law created a so-called "private right of action" to enforce the restriction. Essentially, the legislature deputized private citizens to bring civil litigation -- with the threat of $10,000 or more in damages -- against providers or even anyone who helped a woman access an abortion after six weeks.

The national context: The Texas law was passed amid a slew of restrictions that were approved by GOP legislatures across the country this year, after the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett jerked the Supreme Court further to the right and made it more likely that the court will scale back or reverse Roe v. Wade entirely.

TUESDAY'S MUST-SEE TWEETS

1. The Delta variant is spreading in states outside the South

2. What, exactly, is Rep. Paul Gosar talking about?

3. Oh man, I CANNOT wait for this

4. I've always been a fan of Bishop Sycamore football

5. On this day in 1987, REM released "Document." What an amazing album.

6. I lol-ed

CHRIS' GOOD READS

One of the most persistent criticisms of the Biden administrations' pullout from Afghanistan is that $83 billion worth of military equipment was left behind. That didn't happen, according to The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler.

The Senate, especially on the Republican side, has begun to look more and more like the House -- sharply partisan with little interest or incentive to work across the aisle -- over the past decade or so. The class of 2022 Senate GOP candidates will exacerbate that evolution, writes Marc Caputo smartly in Politico.

As the dad of a 9-year-old, I am constantly wondering when we will get a vaccine approved for kids under 12. This Michelle Goldberg piece in The New York Times gave me some reason for hope on that front.

I loved this homage to common sense -- and math! -- by Caroline Chen in the Times.

I didn't know I needed this licorice explainer from Eater until I read it.

MUSICAL INTERLUDE

I can't really put the music Indigo De Souza makes into a genre or category. There's pop, folk, emo and a whole lot else in her new album, "Any Shape You Take." All I know is I dig it.

-- Chris

WILL BREYER RETIRE?

The most senior member of the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Breyer, may be more willing than anticipated to consider retiring before President Biden leaves office.

In the latest episode of The Point, Chris explains just how closely Democrats have been watching Breyer's words for any hint of his plans, in hopes that his successor will be a liberal appointed by Biden.

Stick with The Point on YouTube and subscribe!

ONE BIG ASSIST

$10 million

The Senate approved a bill that would provide $10 million for every fiscal year for the next two years to give temporary emergency repatriation assistance to American citizens who have returned from Afghanistan. The bill has already been approved by the House and is headed to President Biden's desk to be signed into law.

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