The NPR Politics Podcast - Biden's Midterm Pitch: Inflation Is High, But You're Still Better Off With Me

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

In an economic speech that felt like a campaign stump, Biden touted his administration's efforts to bolster the American economy. He said that inflation is his top domestic priority and suggested that though costs may be up, voters are still better off with Democrats in charge.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Asma Khalid, national political correspondent Mara Liasson.Support the show and unlock sponsor-free listening with a subscription to The NPR Politics Podcast Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org/politics Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Nicole in Ithaca, New York. And after eight years, having a child, moving nine times, and getting through a pandemic, I just successfully defended my PhD dissertation in health policy. Look at you. Nice. This podcast was recorded at 1 21 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, May 10th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I will be on my way to my first vacation since before COVID to celebrate finally finishing my PhD. Okay, here's the show. Yes, you enjoy that. That sounds fun. You know those shirts that is like finished with a PH? She needs one of those.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And if it seems like we have been talking a lot on this podcast lately about inflation, it is because, frankly, Americans care a lot about inflation. It is the central issue in just about every single poll. Gas prices have reached a new all-time high. Costs are rising faster than wages. A majority of Americans think the federal government needs to do more to curb inflation. And the Federal Reserve is trying to slow it, but at the risk of causing a recession. Just a few minutes ago, the president wrapped up a speech where he

acknowledged he knows families are hurting. I want every American to know that I'm taking inflation very seriously and it's my top domestic priority. So let's start with the fact that the speech the president gave sounded very much like a campaign speech. You know, he was trying to turn the tables on the inflation conversation and make these upcoming midterm elections not a referendum on him or on the current economy, but as a choice between his policies, it seems, and congressional Republicans. Yeah, I talked to a top Democratic pollster yesterday who said that the president needs to acknowledge that inflation is a problem and that it's affecting people, reassure people that he's doing everything he can and that Democrats are doing everything they can,

and then draw a contrast with Republicans. Because the fact is that in polls, voters tend to think that Republicans are much better on the economy and inflation than Democrats, and Democrats need to turn that around. So that was like a campaign professional saying what the president needed to do. That is exactly the speech I just watched the president give. That's right. And Democratic strategists have been asking for this kind of speech for quite some time, define the opposition as extreme, try to make a midterm election, which is usually a referendum on the party in power into a choice. That's a very hard thing to do. But in the questions after the speech, when he was asked, why do Americans blame you? He said, very simply, because we're the party in power. We control all three branches. And there's the reality of

inflation, which is, as the president said, a lot of the causes of inflation are out of our control. But then there's political reality where voters think, fairly or otherwise, that the president of the United States, especially if his party also controls Congress, should be able to fix their problems. But I mean, to that point, you know, there are very limited tools that any president has to genuinely tackle inflation. And yet we did hear President Biden talk about things that Democrats are doing, that his administration is doing, that he believes will help. And I was struck by the fact that he is in some ways trying to take ownership over fixing the problem. Saying it isn't a problem or that it will go away didn't work and it didn't go away. And the president and the White House are trying to do the we feel your pain and this is what we're doing about it or what we want to do about it.

But in some cases, they haven't been able to do what they want to do, like lower prescription drug prices. That's right. But the great luxury of being the out party is you don't have to have solutions. You can just say the other guy didn't fix the problem. Now, the president has a whole bunch of things. He says the main job is up to the Federal Reserve, but he says he's boosting the oil supply. He's trying to make it cheaper for families to get all sorts of things, whether it's drugs or high-speed internet or gas at the pump. He's talking about all these leases, gas and oil leases on federal property that haven't been used. So he has a whole bunch of things that he wants to do. The problem is that he cannot wave a magic wand and fix the supply chain or fix all of the problems, including the war in Ukraine, that are causing energy prices to spike. And that really

is the leading cause of inflation, along with the price of automobiles, which is because they can't get the chips they need. That's the supply chain. Yeah. And the president did point to two main causes, one being the pandemic and also Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which certainly have contributed to all of this. Republicans would say that there are other causes, you know, one being, say, the American rescue plan that was passed last spring at this point, that they feel just pumped too much money into the economy. And President Biden's response to that is, but we've brought down the deficit. Well, also, when we send $1,400 checks to people, and if we hadn't done this, the economy wouldn't have bounced back in the way it had. I mean, there was a choice between inflation and growth, and they felt they made the right one. Well, and interestingly, now, though, President Biden is saying, you know, the Fed has a dual mission to to have full employment and to keep prices in check.

And he said, well, I don't want to tell the Fed what to do. I do think that they really should emphasize keeping prices in check, having stable prices, which obviously is what the Fed is very focused on. But Tim, doesn't that, you know, raise the risk of possible additional economic pain? I mean, this is what I've heard when I've spoken to a couple of economists is there's a very delicate balancing act between inflation and what is it, stagflation, right? Where you essentially have a recession at the same time. Everyone wants a soft landing. No one knows whether we're going to get one or not. It's a very big challenge. This is not easy stuff. And the reality is that people's views, you know, talking about voters, people are forming opinions now as they look at

the price of the pump. They are forming opinions now that will affect the way they vote in November. And that's why the White House and the president feel such urgency right now to show that they are addressing it, to show that they care, because truly people are making decisions now that will affect how they vote in November or whether they vote at all. Well, the thing is that the big political question is, well, number one, will any of these things work to actually bring down inflation? But two, can the president's big megaphone, which we've learned all our lives is supposed to be extremely powerful, can it be powerful enough to drown out the opposition's megaphone, which is huge? I mean,

there is no kind of left-wing, democratic-leaning media that's as powerful as right-leaning media in this country. And all you have to do is train your camera on a gas pump every single day and remind people about inflation. So it's going to be hard. He's not a master communicator. He's coming to this message rather late to using the bully pulpit and the president's megaphone to push this message. All right, let's take a quick break. We'll have more in just a moment. And we're back. And I want to ask you both about a phrase that it seems like President Biden has taken to rather recently. And this is this idea of calling Republicans the ultra MAGA party. MAGA

being obviously Make America Great Again, a reference to the former president, former President Trump. And his hats. Exactly. But this idea of calling Republicans, calling conservatives ultra MAGA, making this distinction to folks that, hey, this isn't your grandfather's Republican Party. It's a phrase that we heard President Biden use today. And it's a phrase that, frankly, I've begun to hear him say rather frequently. I never expected the ultra MAGA Republicans who seem to control the Republican Party now to have been able to control the Republican Party. I never anticipated that happening.

But what does it really mean to be a MAGA Republican when you start looping in, for example, people who want to see Roe versus Wade overturned? I mean, that's long been a conservative philosophy position that many old school Republicans wanted, right? Like, I don't think of Donald Trump as being the leader, for example, of wanting to overturn Roe versus Wade. And this is an argument I saw Meghan McCain, John McCain's daughter make, which is that, you know, that you can't loop in all of these cultural arguments that have long been part of the Republican Party and now try to dub it on Donald Trump. We're going to hear it a lot more, according to a White House official I spoke with. They think that sort of looping in lots of things like the abortion issue, like the economy, like same-sex marriage.

They believe that they can sort of loop all of this together and call it ultra MAGA and at the same time somehow maintain President Biden's brand of bipartisanship. Both parties' job is to make the other party look too extreme. So it's not so much that they want to overturn Roe. It's, I think, what Democrats are going to do when they talk about ultramaga. They're going to point to Republican legislators proposing things like giving embryos rights at fertilization, getting rid of the exception for rape, incest, and life of the mother when it comes to abortion, those kinds of things. And sure, there are going to be Republicans who don't fit that mold, but this is politics. And

in the midterm, your first job is to define the other side. And that's what he's trying to do. A Democrat I was talking to said that this messaging is really all about independent voters and trying to win them over. Because independent voters don't want the president to say every Republican is terrible. I understand the frustration. But the fact is, congressional Republicans, not all of them, but the mega Republicans are counting on you to be as frustrated by the pace of progress, which they have everything they've done, everything they can to slow down. That you're going to will hand power over to them and enact so they can enact their extreme agenda. So the idea here is that he's trying to make a distinction.

I don't really think it's I don't see how it works, but that's what they're doing. can differentiate in their minds between Trump, who's unique, and their own Republican candidate who's running in their district, who doesn't seem so extreme or so Trumpy. Now, by saying that their agenda is extreme, I think the Democrats think they can make a little more headway. I mean, one of the things I've heard from some Democrats in recent months has been this sense of frustration that they don't feel like messaging has been clear. They don't feel like Democrats at the national level have been very good at defining Republicans. And so, I mean, whether or not this works, who knows? But there at least is a clear attempt from the from the White House on down now to define their opponent. Yeah. Banning books, that's unpopular and sounds kind of extreme. Criminalizing women for having

an abortion, that sounds kind of extreme. Criminalizing women for having an abortion, that sounds kind of extreme to independent voters. But I do want to note that I asked President Biden today about abortion and whether he thinks there should be limits on it. And he said, I'm not going to answer that. I don't I want the story today to be about inflation. So I think what the White House is acknowledging here and what the president is acknowledging here is that the idea that Democrats are going to be so riled up about abortion that they're going to go vote and everything will be fine in the midterms is clearly not the case. And so by creating this ultra MAGA umbrella, they're trying to loop in

lots of things that Democratic voters care about and somehow also tying it to the economy. concrete message to sell to voters in November, because the consistent complaint I have heard from Democrats at local levels has been that they don't feel like the messaging has been clear, concise, and sufficient. Well, I think this is the outline of the message that Democrats have said they want to hear. Now it's up to Democrats to push it. They are coming rather late to this, and they don't have the kind of advantages that the out party has. But yes, this is the outlines. Make it a contrast, make it a choice, not a referendum, define your opponents as extreme, talk about the things that they are pushing that are unpopular. I think the complaints you hear from Democrats all over the country about the White House is that they don't really have a political operation. It's not so much that they didn't have the outlines of a message, but they just don't

have an operation to push it. All right, well, let's leave it there for today. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. And I'm Mara Eliasson, national political correspondent. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.