President Joe Biden will have a tricky line to walk going into the general election of appealing to centrists while not forgetting about those in the Democrats’ progressive base.
While he is mired in poor polling, Biden is under fire for paying too much attention to the most left-leaning members of the Democratic Party’s base instead of appealing to those in the middle who are off-put by former President Donald Trump.
Biden’s team hasn’t completely ignored who could be considered persuadable voters. When former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley dropped out of the Republican presidential primary, the Biden campaign launched a message to try to rally some of her supporters. Something that Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has not done.
However, centrist Democratic groups are pushing for Biden to ditch the harder edges of the party and focus on getting voters in the middle to join him on the Left.
The Israel-Hamas war has proven to be a challenge for Biden politically. In primary elections in key swing states such as Wisconsin and Michigan, he faced an “uninstructed” and “uncommitted” vote, in which thousands voted in protest of his policies toward Israel. Some pro-Palestinian protesters called him “Genocide Joe.”
Trump has not laid out a plan for what he would do regarding the Israel-Hamas war. Despite Trump urging Israel to “get it over with,” some polls show people believe Trump would have handled the crisis better.
Some center-left voters have pointed out that Haley received far more support than those on the Left voting in protest of Biden, signaling he could be more successful in appealing to that demographic. In Michigan’s primary, 13% of Democrats voted “uncommitted” over Biden, which is more than the 11% who similarly cast a protest vote against then-President Barack Obama in 2012.
“People assume that being upset about the conflict means being upset about supporting Israel, but that’s not true,” Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster and president of Democratic Majority for Israel, told the Wall Street Journal. “When you create distance, there is a risk on the other side — a risk of losing the pro-Israel community, which is significantly larger than the anti-Israel group.”
Biden is reportedly weighing taking stronger action to curb illegal immigration to dint Republican criticisms of a “border crisis.” But up to this point, he has taken small steps so as not to run afoul of the courts or his base.
According to a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll, 44% of respondents pointed to the influx of migrants crossing the border as Biden’s biggest policy failure. Of that, 57% of Republicans, almost half of independents, and nearly 30% of Democrats made up those who believed the border was his biggest failure.
The Biden administration helped negotiate the bipartisan Senate border bill earlier this year, which was supported by 59% of voters in a poll and around an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. The bill failed, and Biden is expected to use his executive order powers to address the border in the coming weeks.
Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) successfully won a recent special election to replace former New York Republican Rep. George Santos. Following his 8-point win in a swing district, Suozzi had advice for the president going into the general election about how to win the middle.
“The president should lean into that immigration issue — and I think he’s doing that,” he said. “He should lean into the immigration, and he should say, ‘OK, we have a bipartisan deal on the table. It’s been negotiated by very reasonable people. Why are you not going forward with them?’”
His campaign largely focused on border policies, which Suozzi said is proof Democrats can run on policy issues historically saved for Republicans.
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“Everybody always says you’ve got to get the base out, but what we’ve lost track of is the fact that so many people are more moderate that are voting for Democrats,” Suozzi said. “A lot of what the president has done is to the middle,” such as legislation on semiconductors, infrastructure, and veterans, “and his 2020 campaign was to the middle. He is genuinely a more middle-of-the-road person. He just needs to manifest that more now.”
“My strategy has always been to try to address the concerns people have,” Suozzi said. “People said, ‘That’s not a Democratic issue.’ It is an American issue, and ignoring it is not going to work. I am encouraging my colleagues to keep on banging this drum.”