It was the word that the far right of the Republican party most wanted to hear. Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the House of Representatives, said this week his colleagues’ investigations of Joe Biden are rising to the level of an “impeachment” inquiry.
Republicans in Congress admit that they do not yet have any direct evidence of wrongdoing by the US president. But, critics say, there is a simple explanation why they would float the ultimate sanction: they need to put Biden’s character on trial because their case against his policies is falling apart.
Heading into next year’s presidential election, Republicans have been readying a three-pronged attack: crime soaring in cities, chaos raging at the southern border and prices spiralling out of control everywhere. But each of these narratives is being disrupted by facts on the ground: crime is falling in most parts of the country, there is relative calm at the border and inflation is at a two-year low.
“Republican talking points are having a really bad summer,” said Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist. “The core attacks against Biden are evaporating. The economy is strong. Inflation’s down. The deficit’s down. The Washington Post called the border ‘eerily quiet’. We’ve seen murder rates have come down dramatically this year. He’s been competently managing foreign policy.”
Inflation has been a millstone around Biden’s neck. Last year the prices of gas, food and most other goods and services surged by 9%, a 40-year high that took a toll on households. Some economists blamed Biden for pumping more money into the economy than it could handle with a $1.9tn coronavirus relief package. The president pointed to other causes such as global supply chain issues, the pandemic, stimulus from the Federal Reserve and the Russian war in Ukraine.
But now inflation is down to 3%, lower than in any other major economy, while unemployment has been below 4% for the longest stretch in half a century. Consumer sentiment is at its highest point in two years, according to a survey by the University of Michigan, while both Federal Reserve staff and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office now predict that America will avoid a recession.
Crime, meanwhile, has been seen as a vulnerability for Democrats since the days of Republican Richard Nixon’s “law and order” campaign. Violent offences rose sharply in major cities during the coronavirus pandemic, loomed large during last year’s midterm elections and prompted a backlash against progressives pushing to “defund the police”.
But a study of crime trends in 37 cities by the Council on Criminal Justice found that the number of murders in the first half of 2023 fell by 9.4% compared with the first half of 2022 (a decrease of 202 homicides in those cities). Gun assaults, robberies, burglaries and aggravated assaults were also down.
Immigration is another quintessential line of attack for Republicans. There were dire predictions about what would happen when pandemic-era Title 42 restrictions were lifted in May. Yet last month, under a new rule that makes it harder to attain full asylum, illegal border crossings fell to the lowest level in more than two years and the issue quickly faded from the news agenda.
Rosenberg added: “His argument for re-election has gotten much stronger over the last few months. It’s getting very unclear how the Republicans are going to go after his record as president and what it means is that you’re probably going to see in the short term a much more significant ratcheting up of attacks on him as a person or father and not as a president.”
With the numbers trending in Biden’s direction, there may be greater incentive than ever for Republicans to focus instead on his age, his vice-president, Kamala Harris, his son Hunter Biden and the threat of impeachment over an alleged foreign bribery scheme for which they are yet to provide evidence. “Culture war” attacks around gender identity and “wokeness” could also intensify.
Wendy Schiller, a political scientist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, commented: “It’s not a coincidence that Kevin McCarthy is talking about impeachment. They thought they were going to have the economy. They thought they were going to have inflation … People have a generally decent opinion of Biden’s character so chipping away at that is a smart move if Trump is going to be your nominee.”
Mocking the criticisms as “a fragmented grab-bag”, Andrew Bates, deputy press secretary at the White House, wrote in a memo on Wednesday: “At 8am, House Republicans are shouting something about drag queens (yeah, we don’t know); at 9am, it’s ‘Joe Biden’s still old and also he keeps outsmarting us’ (but actually); at 10am, it’s calling Ukraine a US adversary (we’re as confused as you are).
“By the time 4 o’clock shows up, it’s a game of mad libs with bizarre conspiracies about the President’s family and then something about ‘wokeness’ (we keep asking them what ‘wokeness’ is, but then they leave the chat). Apparently, this clown carousel wasn’t weird enough. Now House Republicans are channeling their frustrated energy into a measured and purposeful urge to impeach … someone … somewhere … for something.”
Republicans, however, deny the premise that they have already lost the battle of ideas. They contend that average hourly earnings (not adjusted for inflation) are now $33.58 and a gallon of gas costs $3.60, whereas in January 2021, when Trump left office, those figures were $29.92 and $2.39 respectively – meaning that a worker can afford less “gas for an hour of work” today than when Biden become president.
Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, said this week: “No matter how many ways administration officials spin the numbers, folks who work for a living and manage a family budget know that ‘Bidenomics’ has made their lives harder. They know that prices have risen 16.6% since the president took office because they feel it every time they pay their bills.”
In addition, America’s immigration crisis is far from resolved. House Republicans describe Biden’s border policy as cruel, inhumane and ineffective and say illicit drugs are flowing into the country. They are continuing with a drive to lay the groundwork to impeach the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, over the “illegal immigration crisis”.
Crime, while falling, also remains above levels seen before the pandemic and protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd. Motor vehicle theft rose by 33.5% in the first half of the year. Recent history suggests that Republicans will not hesitate to highlight particularly horrific incidents to whip up fear.
Whit Ayres, a political consultant and pollster, said of the policy areas: “They may be moving in the right direction but they still are major problems from the perspective of Republican voters as well as a number of independents. We are a long way from having the border under control.
“We’re a long way from having inflation back at the rate we became used to for quite a while. And crime remains a very significant problem in lots of American cities. So while each of those may not be quite as bad as they were, they are still very significant problems and likely to remain so through the election.”
Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, agreed that it was too soon to say whether Biden will keep winning on policy. “It’s quite easily possible that inflation pops up, that the border gets worse – June tends to be a low month anyway – what’s it going to look like in September and October? Crime has always been more of a local issue. The argument has points but it’s way overstated at this point in the cycle.”
If it comes down to a communications war, Democrats are far from assured of victory. Biden’s claims of success over two and a half years have often not translated to opinion polls. His public approval rating remained at 40% in early July, close to the lowest levels of his presidency, according to Reuters/Ipsos. The president is trying to break through the media noise with a series of public events trumpeting “Bidenomics”.
Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist who has worked on several presidential campaigns, said: “There’s a lag time so it’s going to take a while for people to fully feel it in their own lives. Now, the good news for Biden is he’s got a while. There were points in 1983 where Democrats were salivating to run against [Ronald] Reagan and, by 1984, the impact of the economy was being felt by people and Reagan went on to win 49 states, which you can’t do any more because we’re living in a very polarised environment.”
Democrats have long been criticised for lacking clear messaging and a sense of swagger even when the statistics are on their side. But Biden did prosecute a successful case against Republicans in last year’s midterms over abortion rights and the threat of Maga [Make America great again] extremism. A rematch against Trump could make the choice unusually stark.
Schiller, the political scientist at Brown University, said: “It’s definitely clear the Democrats do not know how to benefit from their own success in terms of messaging. They’re historically bad at it with the exception of Bill Clinton.
“But the intrinsic tendency for Americans, at least up until this point, to go with the status quo incumbent administration when things are pretty good because they fear change I think still holds. So how much advertising Democrats have to do is unclear because people know things are good and Donald Trump represents chaos.”
Earlier this week Biden poked fun at Republicans over the threats.
Speaking at a manufacturing plant in Auburn, Maine, the president said: “While there is more work ahead, earlier this week, the Washington Post suggested Republicans may have to find something else to criticise me for now that inflation is coming down. Maybe they’ll decide to impeach me because it’s coming down. I don’t know. I love that one.”
