BIDEN 2024 FORMULA: MESS THINGS UP, BLAME TRUMP AND CONGRESS. The Biden campaign is using the widely read newsletter Politico Playbook to roll out the president’s plan to address the rising cost of housing. It is President Joe Biden‘s “personal preoccupation,” Politico says, his “secret policy obsession.”
Given the importance of housing in American lives, it seems strange that the president would keep his concern for the matter a “secret.” But there it is. Playbook tells a story from 50 years ago, when Biden was a young senator, and legendary Democratic Sen. Hubert Humphrey told Biden that to be effective, he would have to focus on a single issue and make it his own. Humphrey suggested Biden become “Mr. Housing,” leading an effort to provide “decent housing in America for middle-class and lower-middle-class people and the poor.”Â
And then this, from Politico, with a straight face:Â “Fast-forward a half-century: Biden is in the White House, and that long-ago advice seems to have taken hold.” Right now, in a difficult election year, it has “taken hold.” An “obsessed” Biden is “using briefings to press senior staff on housing affordability, quizzing aides on mortgage rates and rental costs, and demanding details on the burden that inflation has placed on families’ monthly housing budgets.”
Wait a minute. What president spent the last three-plus years making housing more expensive and difficult to obtain? You’re right — it’s Joe Biden! Now, though, as his general election campaign is beginning, and after a half-century of ignoring Humphrey’s advice, Biden has decided to become Mr. Housing.
Look at what has happened to housing since Biden became president: higher prices and higher interest rates, both exacerbated by the reckless Biden spending that fueled inflation. “Since Mr. Biden became president, the median home price has jumped over 27%, and interest rates have risen from 2.8% to 7.2%,” E.J. Antoni of the conservative Heritage Foundation writes. “Those two factors have caused the monthly mortgage payment on a median-priced home to more than double, from $979 to $2,075. That’s costing a family more than $13,000 extra per year for the same house. This has forced many Americans to rent instead, and the increased demand for apartments has driven rents to record highs.”
But don’t worry. Joe Biden, now campaigning for reelection and behind in the polls, is on the case. His aides tell Politico he’s come up with five initiatives — new tax incentives, bigger tax credits, giving more taxpayer money to renters, giving more taxpayer money to homebuyers, and giving more taxpayer money to localities seeking to increase the housing supply. The problem is that Biden’s proposals would require Congress to act, and Politico notes it is “unlikely that Congress will pass any consequential housing legislation before the election.”Â
So what will Biden do? He will point the finger of blame — at Republicans in Congress and his election opponent, former President Donald Trump — for not fixing the housing mess he, Biden, helped create. Biden will take to the campaign trail and tell voters that it’s those big, bad Republicans, in thrall to Trump, who are keeping them out of an affordable home. Congress must act!
“Biden aides and allies believe that, over time, they’ll be able to neutralize their vulnerability on the [housing] issue and turn it back around on Trump,” Playbook reports. “It’s going to be a contrast issue,” one Biden ally told Playbook. “I think Trump is going to be seen as a real estate billionaire who takes advantage of people. So I like that contrast message even more in September and October.”
Does any of this sound familiar? It is exactly what Biden is doing with the border crisis: Mess things up and then blame Congress and Trump. Of course, Biden did not just help create the disaster on the border — he pretty much single-handedly created it. There’s no need to go through everything Biden has done to make the situation at the border infinitely worse, welcoming millions of illegal crossers into the United States. Now, in 2024 — as immigrants crowd blue cities, require expensive housing, food, and all sorts of aid, and also, in some cases, commit crimes — now, as all that comes home to roost, Biden is blaming Trump and Republicans in Congress for not passing an immigration bill he claims would fix the problems he created.
There’s a pattern here. Biden has done some disastrously bad things to the economy and the border. His actions have long-term negative consequences. But now he wants to be reelected, and he is blaming Trump and Congress for the negative consequences of his own actions. Just last month, Biden had the chutzpah, or the gall, or whatever, to say, “Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends.”
It was a jaw-dropping falsehood. Now, you can expect the same sort of mess-things-up-and-blame-Trump-and-Republicans strategy on all sorts of issues.
For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show — available on Radio America and the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found.
