By ZEKE MILLER, AP White House Correspondent
WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden’s record is on the ballot even when his name isn’t. And irrespective of what Tuesday’s midterm elections bring, his presidency is about for profound changes.
In public, Biden professed optimism to the top, telling Democratic state party officials on election eve that “we’re going to surprise the living devil out of individuals.” In private, though, White House aides have been drawing up contingencies should Republicans take control of 1, or each, chambers of Congress — a scenario Biden said would make his life “tougher.”
Whatever the consequence, the votes will help reshape the balance of Biden’s term after an ambitious first two years and can reorder his White House priorities.
The president, who spent the day making get-out-the-vote calls to radio outlets targeted to Black voters and thanking Democratic campaign staffers, was to spending election night on the White House watching returns with advisers. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden would address the nation on Wednesday concerning the results, that are sure to be incomplete at that time.
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The president last week appealed for Americans to be “patient” as votes are counted and to avoid engaging in conspiracy theories, a message he was more likely to repeat Wednesday about pending returns.
Biden, in his first two years, pushed through sweeping bills to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, address climate change and boost the nation’s competitiveness over China — all with the slimmest of congressional majorities. Now, aides and allies say, his focus will turn to preserving those gains, implementing the huge pieces of laws — perhaps while under intense GOP oversight — sustaining effective governance in an excellent more charged environment and shoring up his party’s standing ahead of the subsequent presidential election.
Biden’s job approval has rebounded from lows this summer, but he stays lower than popular with midterm voters. About 6 in 10 disapprove of how he’s handling his role as president, in accordance with AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of over 90,000 voters nationally. About 4 in 10 approve.
Should Republicans win control of Congress, Biden allies are gearing up for fights on keeping the federal government funded and its financial obligations met, sustaining support for Ukraine and protecting his signature legislative achievements from repeal efforts. Republican wins could also usher in a bunch of GOP candidates whom Biden has branded as threats to democracy for refusing to acknowledge the outcomes of the 2020 presidential race, limiting potential avenues of cooperation and exposing recent challenges ahead of 2024.
The Biden administration has been preparing for months for an expected flood of GOP investigations should Republicans take over one or each chambers, devising legal and media strategies to deal with probes into every part from the chaotic U.S. military pullout from Afghanistan to presidential son Hunter Biden’s business dealings.
If the Republicans take power, Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer said, history shows it will be “very effective” for Biden to “deal with their extremism, and to show their recent power against them.”
White House aides and allies have been closely monitoring the clamoring on the correct to research and even impeach Biden. While they’ve pledged to cooperate on what they see as legitimate oversight, they’re desirous to exact a political toll on Republicans should they overreach, casting the GOP as focused on investigations as a substitute of the problems most significant to Americans’ lives.
The potential shift comes as Biden, at 79, has repeated his intention to run for reelection. He might want to make a final decision soon, perhaps teeing up a rematch against former President Donald Trump, who has teased his own expected announcement for Nov. 15.
A nasty midterm consequence doesn’t preclude a president’s reelection — historically incumbents are strongly favored to win one other term. But Zelizer said that even presidents who manage to defy history and avoid major losses or hold their majorities are forced to alter course for the balance of their terms.
“What effective presidents do, is that they make defending what they’ve already done a priority,” he said. “After which come election time, your record, even when it hasn’t grown because the midterms, it looks good. What you don’t want is it to be dismantled, to not give you the chance to implement it, after which your opponent in 2024 goes to say, ‘Look, what he did was just terribly ineffective and didn’t work.’”
In a tacit admission of his narrowed ambitions, Biden’s midterm message to voters has largely focused on promoting his accomplishments and warning of the implications of a GOP takeover. The larger elements of his 2020 agenda that fell to the cutting room floor during his two years of legislating — akin to expanding free early childcare and two years of community college — have hardly factored into his speeches.
What hints he has given about what he hopes to pass in the approaching two years have been conditioned on the slim probability that Democrats expand their thin majorities in Congress: passing an assault weapons ban, voting reform and a law codifying a right to abortion nationwide.
Pressed Monday on why Biden hadn’t done more to stipulate what he hopes to perform in his next two years, Jean-Pierre said: “Why not only tell the country what now we have done? Why not only lay that out? Which now we have.”
The president’s advisers have stressed the headwinds facing Democrats this 12 months, as inflation combines with historic trends which might be unfavorable to the party in charge of the White House. They maintain that Biden’s agenda stays popular with voters and has been embraced, not shunned, by his party’s candidates — unlike 2010, when Democrats fled from the unpopularity of the Inexpensive Care Act, the Obama-era health law, and went on to lose 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats.
Republicans under Trump lost 40 House seats but gained two Senate seats in 2018, and Democrats under Bill Clinton lost 52 House seats and eight Senate seats in 1994.
Biden allies have begun considering areas of potential bipartisan cooperation that would also pay 2024 dividends should Republicans block them, akin to veterans’ care and lowering insulin costs for all Americans. The Democrats’ August health care and climate bill capped the drug’s cost at $35 a month for seniors.
Cedric Richmond, the previous Louisiana congressman and ex-Biden aide who’s now a top adviser to the Democratic National Committee, said Biden would deal with areas of bipartisan cooperation within the second half of his first term.
“No matter who’s in, he’s going to work to try to perform his goals,” Richmond said. He pointed to Biden’s ability to push through the infrastructure bill and a law to enhance veterans’ health care as areas “where he brought Republicans along, so he’s going to proceed doing what he’s doing, which is busting his tail to get accomplishments.”
Learn more concerning the issues and aspects at play within the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections. Follow the AP’s election coverage of the 2022 elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.
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