Freedom

By Fran Beyer

Democrats are raising alarms about sinking support among voters disappointed about President Joe Biden’s broken campaign promises.

Despite passage of Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill and House passage of a nearly $2 trillion social policy and climate change bill, Democrats have little incentive to vote in the midterms, the New York Times reported.

It’s not just the lack of action on party priorities — a large percentage of frustration is with the Democratic Party itself, the news outlet reported.

“It’s frustrating to see the Democrats spend all of this time fighting against themselves and to give a perception to the country, which the Republicans are seizing on, that the Democrats can’t govern,” Bishop Reginald Jackson, who leads the AME churches across Georgia, told the Times.

“And some of us are tired of them getting pushed around, because when they get pushed around, African Americans get shoved.”

Adding to the angst is the fact Democrats have slim congressional majorities, and can’t pass anything unless the entire caucus agrees.

Biden needs to signal he’s at least fighting for immigration and voting rights, Faiz Shakir, a close adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told the Times.

“I’m a supporter of Biden, a supporter of the agenda, and I’m frustrated and upset with him to allow this to go in the direction it has,” Shakir, who managed Sanders’ presidential run in 2020, told the Times.

“It looks like we have President Manchin instead of President Biden in this debate,” he said referring to centrist Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.

“It’s made the president look weak,” Shakir told the news outlet.

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White House advisers argue that winning swing voters, particularly the suburban independents in battleground districts, will keep Democrats in power — or at least curb the scale of their midterm losses, the Times reported.

But according to a survey conducted by Global Strategy Group, a Democratic polling firm, only about one-third of white battleground voters think that either infrastructure or the broader spending bill will help them personally, the Times reported, adding, among white Democratic battleground voters, support for the bills is only 72%.

Tomás Robles, co-chair of Lucha, a Latino civil rights group based in Phoenix, Ariz., widely credited with helping Democrats win the state in 2020, said people were “disillusioned and unmotivated” by what they had seen in the first 10 months of Democratic governance.

“When you’re not passing bold progressive policies, you have to be able to show something,” Robles told the times. “President Biden gets the most blame because he’s the most visible, but it’s the party as a whole that has failed its voters.”