Republicans – especially Donald Trump – ruined everything, as they always do. And Joe Biden is just the man to fix it. That was the current commander-in-chief’s only campaign strategy, the core mission of his presidency, or so he said. But a year-and-a-half later, things have gotten worse rather than better. So, with midterms fast approaching, the Biden blame game intensifies.
The Biden Blame Game
“Republicans are doing nothing but obstructing our efforts to crack down on gas-price gouging, lower food prices, lower healthcare costs, and hopefully, soon, lower your prescription drug costs,” the president tweeted July 10.
Of course, political scapegoating is nothing new for this president. It was an “out of control Supreme Court” and GOP officials “pushing an extremist agenda to take away our freedoms and personal autonomy” that saw Roe v. Wade overturned – not the fact that it was a bad decision to begin with. It’s the fault of Republicans that Biden hasn’t gotten his so-called assault weapons ban yet. Even though the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court demonstrated that Biden can see nominees confirmed without a single red vote, it’s still those Republicans holding back the anti-gun activist he chose to lead the ATF, and the one before this guy, too!
Hard to Pass the Blame With Hands Full of Power
Biden might get away with pinning some of his party’s legislative failures on Republicans – like the dead-on-arrival bills covering citizenship voting, religious freedom, abortion, and “assault weapons” bans – as clearing those through the Senate requires either gaining ten GOP supporters or ending the filibuster once and for all. Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have reliably resisted repealing the procedural rule, and that’s resistance from within his own party, but Biden and company can at least argue that passing legislation shouldn’t require changing the rules of law-making.
The same can’t be said for most economic issues, given the availability of the reconciliation process, which requires just a simple majority – something Democrats have, courtesy of the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris. Much worse, of course, is the fact that many of the policy positions that led America to this place flow out of the executive agencies under the president, not acts of Congress.
It was executive orders and departmental memos from the president’s desk, for example, that changed America’s oil and gas policies, causing the nation to go from energy independent for the first time in decades to an energy crisis in which the only thing scarier than the price is the uncertainty of availability in the near future.
It’s All Politics
Of course, the Biden blame game is all about politics. Just look at the targets. First, the price of gas was all about the pandemic. Then it was Vladimir Putin’s fault. After a while, it had to be that greedy oil companies and gas station owners were gouging at the pumps. Oh, Donald Trump and the Republicans have been the cause of every other ill the nation has faced during Biden’s presidency so far, but they only became responsible for gas prices and the economy in general once the midterms drew near.
After all, the president and his party can’t afford for voters to hold them accountable for these failures come November.
