3 awkward topics for Biden
If Donald Trump were still president, everybody in America would know US oil and natural gas production has surged to record levels.
President Joe Biden seems to hope nobody notices. Biden talks about many things as he tours the country campaigning for reelection: Record job growth during his presidency, laws he signed to promote an infrastructure buildout, more semiconductor manufacturing, and the green energy transition.
Biden even addresses some things that are working against him, especially inflation. He routinely acknowledges there’s more work to do getting prices down, even though inflation has dropped sharply from its 2022 peak.
But a few things that matter a lot to voters don’t make it into Biden’s stump speeches or his social media feeds. These are the three most awkward topics for Biden as he campaigns for reelection.
A gusher of fossil fuel. Biden campaigned in 2020 as a foe of Big Oil and a champion of green energy. As president, he has lived up to that by signing the biggest set of green energy incentives in US history and imposing regulations to further restrict carbon emissions.
At the same time, high gasoline and energy prices have clearly stung Biden. Gas prices have been higher under Biden than they were for most of the time Trump was president, and they hit an average of $5 per gallon in June 2022, the highest level ever in the United States. Biden’s approval rank sank in 2021 and 2022 as gas prices and overall inflation were cresting, and his ratings have never recovered, even though inflation and gas prices are back to manageable levels.
Biden has done a lot to tamp gas prices down: releasing oil from the national reserve, entreating oil-producing nations to produce more, and tacitly easing sanctions on Iran to keep its oil on the global market. At the same time, US producers have drilled more to cash in on high prices, cementing America’s status as the world's largest oil and natural gas producer.
It would be normal for any president to hail American leadership in an industry as crucial as energy and to take some credit for it. But not Biden. He does brag about gas prices when they fall, making sure people notice. But he gives no credit to domestic producers that employ Americans in relatively good-paying jobs and boost the stock market returns of investors with broad-based portfolios.
Most presidents campaigning for reelection, whether liberal or conservative, tack more to the center as the election nears to capture the crucial undecided and independent swing voters that tend to decide elections these days. Biden isn’t doing that on energy because climate activists are a key part of his base. The risk isn’t that those voters would flip and vote for Trump, whose policy on energy is “drill, baby drill.” It’s that they’ll lose enthusiasm for Biden and stay home, depressing his turnout.
Biden could still tout energy-sector success in the home stretch of the campaign by borrowing Barack Obama’s tagline on energy. Obama promised an “all of the above” energy strategy, which meant ample supplies of the fossil fuels we rely on now, plus the aggressive promotion of green energy and other fuels of the future. Obama's phraseology still applies to the energy reality Biden faces.
Improvement at the southwest border. Many Americans know that migrant crossings at the southwest border have surged under Biden. Hardly anybody is aware the situation has improved recently, with the pace of crossings down 40% in 2024, compared with December 2023. A typical surge in springtime crossings hasn’t occurred, in part because of new cooperation by Mexico, which has been interdicting migrants before they get to the US border.
Handling of immigration is Biden’s weakest issue, according to multiple polls. As border chaos has dominated the news, the issue has become a top concern for many voters, which could make immigration Biden’s biggest reelection vulnerability.
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So you might think he’d be eager to let people know that a messy situation is getting better. But immigration is another issue Biden rarely talks about. There are at least two catches for Biden. One is that immigration advocates, like climate activists, are a key part of Biden’s liberal coalition, and Biden doesn’t want to alienate them. Another is that Biden may simply not want to draw any attention at all to immigration, since the situation could turn ugly again in ways the White House can’t control.
Biden did advocate for the immigration reform bill Congress considered earlier this year but failed to pass when Republicans turned against it. The president says it will take new legislation to solve the immigration mess, and there’s little he can do alone. But Trump demonstrated that bluster and executive action, even if overturned by courts, can at least create the impression of competence on immigration. Trump polls considerably better than Biden on immigration, even if his actual policies as president — such as separating migrant parents from their children — were unpopular. For better or worse, Trump talks a better game than Biden does on this key issue.
The TikTok ban. This is a surprise entrant in the 2024 election policy matrix. A congressional law to ban the social media app within a year, unless its Chinese owner ByteDance sells it, seemed like a long shot until the measure got attached to must-pass foreign-aid legislation in mid-April and landed on Biden’s desk. Biden signed the TikTok provision into law on April 24 with no apparent concern that it could damage his electoral standing with young Americans, who are the bulk of TikTok’s 170 million US users.
Was it a setup? The Hill news outlet recently suggested Republicans in the House bundled the TikTok ban with aid for Ukraine and Israel as a “secret weapon” meant to turn young voters against Biden. Biden — whose campaign established its own TikTok account in February — has yet to explain his thinking. It may help that TikTok plans to challenge the law in court, with a decent chance of winning. That litigation could take way longer than the one-year time frame Congress established.
But TikTok users still want to know how one of their own — a fellow TikTokker — could sign the law that might shut down their beloved platform. Biden can’t very well say, “Don’t worry, the law is bogus, the lawyers will kill it in court.” So he’ll need to explain that his real aim isn’t a ban, it’s a forced divestiture meant to assure the company’s Chinese owners don't abuse users or their data at the behest of China's communist party.
It seems like a complicated explanation for election season, when misinformation often muscles facts aside and a snappy sound bite, whether true or false, can determine a vote. So maybe Biden will avoid talking about TikTok, hope voters forget about the risk of a ban, and keep publishing TikTok videos highlighting what's wrong with Donald Trump.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @rickjnewman.
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