Voters are entering the midterm season primarily focused on economic matters and seemingly unconcerned with the Covid-19 pandemic.
A new CNN poll shows that voters are more concerned about economic issues than they have been in two decades.
Most voters 89%, said the economy will be either extremely or very important to their congressional vote in the midterm elections, while 83% said the same of inflation, and 76% on taxes.
A majority of voters, 59%, said the economy was ‘extremely important’ to their vote, the highest rank they could give it in the poll, and 55% said the same of inflation.
Concerns about the economy were not so prevalent in a midterm year CNN poll since 2002.
Only 38% of voters cited coronavirus as extremely important to their midterm vote, but 27% said it was ‘very important,’ one rank behind. Voting rights were also extremely important in the survey to 55% of respondents.
Education has emerged as a top issue, where 46% of voters rank it as extremely important to their vote. Half of Democrat-aligned voters, 50%, said so, while 42% of Republicans said the same.
But even more concerning for Democrats is that voters said they would prefer a candidate who opposes Biden to one who supports him by a 10 point margin 42 to 32.
By an even wider margin, voters preferred a candidate who eschewed Donald Trump to one who embraced him – 44% to 27%.
Two-thirds of Democrats and Democrat-leaning voters saw supporting Biden as an asset to a candidate, and in a show of possible waning support for Trump, only 53% of Republicans and Republican-leaning candidates said the same of him.
Voters were about split in their preference for the political parties – 44% said they would prefer a Republican candidate, 43% said they would prefer a Democrat.
Forty-one percent said the country would be better off if Republicans took over Congress, 36% said it would make things worse. Twenty-two percent said it would make no difference.
Another CNN survey out Thursday conducted in January and February found that 58 per cent disapproved of the job Biden is doing, with 56 per cent of that group having nothing positive to say about the Democratic leader.
As Democrats take on an uphill battle in the midterm elections this year, former President Obama told them on a call yesterday to stop complaining and start bragging about ‘what we did get done.’
He also told them to get serious about compromising.
‘Democrats have a tendency to complain about what we didn’t get done rather than talking about what we did get done,’ Obama said on a call with House Democrats.
He called on them to ‘take the wins you can get’ and told them that it ‘doesn’t help to whine about the stuff you can’t change,’ according to Punchbowl.
‘If we can get some stuff done, some major domestic initiative, some progress on climate…there will come a point where you decide if you are getting nothing or getting that,’ Obama said.
The former president’s nudge comes after Biden’s landmark $1.7 trillion social and climate spending bill, the Build Back Better Act, was tabled after Sen. Joe Manchin gave it a hard ‘no.’
Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer promised at the time to ‘vote on a revised version of the House-passed Build Back Better Act — and we will keep voting on it until we get something done.’
Obama’s appeal to the Democrats came after top Senators warned colleagues that the party wasn’t focused on the issues Americans care about – such as the economy – and called for action to avoid a disaster in the midterms.
‘Democrats have a tendency to complain about what we didn’t get done rather than talking about what we did get done,’ Obama said on a call with House Democrats
Biden signaled last month that Democrats might have to break up the sweeping package.
‘I think we can break the package up, get as much as we can now, and come back and fight for the rest later,’ Biden said at a news conference. He suggested he would have to remove provisions like free community college and the child tax credit.
Manchin has not rejected the idea of a budget bill passed with only Democratic votes this year, but his vision is more of a deficit-reduction bill which could include tax hikes than a massive spending package.
Democrats are coming to the sobering realization hat there’s no convincing Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to get on board with doing away with the 60-vote filibuster hurdle, which so far has stood in the way of their key legislative priorities – voting rights, immigration reform, police reform and more.
Meanwhile, 29 Democrats have already announced retirement. The party that is not in the White House historically has faired well in midterm elections, and that trend combined with Biden’s low approval rating could spell more trouble for Democrats.
A new CNN poll shows that voters are more concerned about economic issues than they have been in two decades.
A majority of voters, 59%, said the economy will be extremely important to their congressional vote in the midterm elections, while 55% said the same of inflation, and 49% on taxes.
Concerns about the economy were not so prevalent in a midterm year CNN poll since 2002.
But even more concerning for Democrats is that voters said they would prefer a candidate who opposes Biden to one who supports him by a 10 point margin 42 to 32%.
Top Senate Democrats are sounding the alarm on their party’s future on Thursday, less than nine months before Americans head to the polls in November to decide who controls Congress.
Montana Senator Jon Tester warned the rest of his caucus that large swaths of rural and middle America see Democrats in a ‘toxic’ light.
Meanwhile, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders conceded on Wednesday night that Democrats are not doing a good job ‘caring to the needs of the American people.’
In a statement reacting to the U.S. inflation rate hitting a 40-year high on Thursday, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin also tore into the Biden administration and his colleagues’ spending priorities.
Tester, Sanders and Manchin are all up for re-election in 2024.
What separates the trio from much of the rest of their Democratic colleagues is their appeal to a section of America that’s long felt abandoned by liberal politicians. Vermont, Montana and West Virginia are three of the most rural states in the country.
While Vermont has become reliably blue for much of the 21st century, both Montana and West Virginia were won handily by former President Donald Trump in 2020.
Recent polls have shown that Americans are more worried about the economy, while Republicans have accused Democrats of avoiding rising crime across the country while focusing on COVID policies and voting rights.
Tester, hailing from a state that President Joe Biden lost to Trump by more than 15 points, suggested to CNN’s David Axelrod that Democrats could be doomed in the midterms if they don’t start ‘appealing’ to states like his.
A man holds up a ‘Build Crack Better’ sign as President Joe Biden’s motorcade passes en route to an event Thursday in Culpeper, Virginia, a town about an hour and a half outside of Washington, D.C.
A young girl holds up a ‘Don’t Sniff Me’ sign as President Joe Biden drives by Thursday as he heads to a community college to talk about prescription drug prices
‘I honestly don’t think the Democratic Party can be a majority party unless we start appealing to Middle America a lot more. I’m talking about the area between the two mountain ranges, the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains. And if we’re able to do that, I think it will provide success,’ Tester said on Axelrod’s podcast.
Asked how his fellow Montanans feel about the Democratic Party, he said: ‘It’s toxic.’
‘The national Democratic brand in, I think in rural America generally, is toxic, and it’s because, quite frankly, we don’t show up. I’m talking about national Democrats,’ Tester explained.
He criticized Democrat leaders in Washington, DC for not being ‘willing to go places we’re not wanted and answer questions.’
‘I think it’s critically important if you’re going to win, you’ve got to go to those places, as miserable as it might be, you still go.’
Biden’s party is desperately looking for ways to retain their razor-thin Congressional majority, fighting past low approval ratings for Democratic leadership including the president himself, and a public appearance of constant inter-party squabble.
As Democrats debate how to course-correct, a new poll released on Thursday shows Biden’s approval rating slipped more than 10 points from September — a bad sign for an election that’s widely seen as a referendum on the party in power.
Inflation hit a 40-year high of 7.5 percent, the Labor Department announced Thursday, a figure not seen since the Carter administration. Manchin said the spike was proof that federal lawmakers need to rein in their spending efforts, in an indirect swipe at his fellow Democrats
His latest approval is just 41 percent, while disapproval of his job as president is at 58 percent, according to a new CNN poll.
Voters also don’t appear to have much confidence that anything will get done this year — just 15 percent of respondents said they have faith in Biden and Congress working together effectively.
And according to FiveThirtyEight‘s Congressional polling tracker, which averages ratings from multiple polls, Republicans are the current favorite to take control in 2022.
About 44.5 percent of Americans said they want Republicans in Congress on a generic ballot, while 42.6 percent favored Democrats.
One victory they’ll be able to tout to voters is Biden’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal, a historic and badly-needed agreement to fix America’s crumbling roads and bridges among other upgrades.
However, Democrats hoped to end the year also passing the progressive-backed $1.75 trillion social reform and climate change bill known as Build Back Better, as well as federal voting rights legislation. Both efforts were killed by opposition from moderates in their party.
Sanders, a Democratic socialist who backed both doomed bills, highlighted the lack of progress in remarks to reporters.
‘I think people are very impatient and not happy with where we are right now,’ the Vermont Independent said.
‘We started off with a strong agenda that was very popular, and people responded to the president’s leadership. What we’re doing here in Congress, I think, it’s no great secret that for five months, with the exception of the infrastructure, we have not been addressing the needs of the American people.’
In a split that’s emblematic of the greater party divide, West Virginia Senator Manchin said it was precisely those attempts at government spending that’s put Democrats in their precarious position.
Meanwhile President Joe Biden’s own low approval ratings threaten to sink Democrats’ chances of keeping control of Congress
A deeply red state, Trump carried West Virginia by nearly 40 points in 2020.
Manchin’s opposition to Build Back Better after months of negotiations effectively shelved the package, which was a promised cornerstone of Biden’s agenda. He also objected to scuttling the filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation — both bills needed to have the support of all 50 Senate Democrats to stand against uniform Republican opposition to pass.
He said in December last year that rising inflation was his primary concern about passing Build Back Better.
Now, after consumer prices went up for the sixth consecutive month in January for a year-over rise of 7.5 percent, Manchin again called on his party to curb their spending habits.
‘Congress and the Administration must proceed with caution before adding more fuel to an economy already on fire. As inflation and our $30 trillion in national debt continue a historic climb, only in Washington, DC do people seem to think that spending trillions more of taxpayers’ money will cure our problems, let alone inflation,’ Manchin said.
‘We must get serious about the finances of our country. It’s time we start acting like stewards of our economy and the money the American people entrust their government with.’
