Jen Psaki, the former White House Press Secretary, stated that Old Uncle Joe is going to continue his tirades against so-called “MAGA Republicans” to help Democrats try and win their areas in the November midterms.
While speaking as part of an appearance on the Sunday edition of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Psaki claimed that in the early stages of Biden’s presidency, the people of America did not want him to try and go after and attack President Donald Trump and his supporters. But as of now, with most of the major agenda items for Biden having already been pushed through, he is taking strides to hold a harder line to attempt to increase the hopes of holding Democratic majorities within the Senate and the House.
“You were there [at a time] when you didn’t say [Trump’s] name,” stated Todd as he kicked off his interview with Psaki. “‘Don’t say their names.’ It’s like Beetlejuice, somehow it won’t show up if you don’t say their name. Now [Biden] leans into it more. Why?”
“There was a strategic decision made when he came into office that ‘that’s not what the public wanted,'” answered Psaki. “The public wanted a President who was going to … kind of expand the base of people who [are] interested in them. But now, it’s election season again, he did a lot of what he wanted to do, much of it in a bipartisan way, getting legislation done. And now the gloves are off. He’s got to maintain control of at least one house of Congress.”
Biden has chosen to escalate his rhetoric over this past summer, stating that Trump and his supporters within the Republican Party are heavily motivated by “semi-fascism” while speaking at a recent donor event that took place in late August. He went on to label them as outright threats to the democracy of America in what is now being called his infamous “Soul of the Nation” address on September 1st, which was widely labeled as one of the most divisive political addresses given by any United States President.
This divisive rhetoric stemming from Biden seems to not have had the desired effect for him or the Democratic party as a whole in their attempts to maintain control over Congress. A recent poll from ABC News/Washington Post of the likely voters, released this past Sunday, discovered that Republicans sport a five-point advantage regarding the generic Congressional ballot for 2022, and former President Donald Trump sports a roughly 2 point advantage in a hypothetical 2024 matchup across registered voters.
This past week, one of the leading independent pollsters for the country highlighted that Biden’s overly divisive tone would only end up making the polling of Trump supporters much more complicated, resulting in pollsters being unreliable due to an undercount of Trump voters, and GOP turnout could end up being much higher than they expect for 2022.
“Now [the] Biden administration has essentially classified ‘MAGA Republicans’ as a threat to democracy marshaling federal law enforcement to focus on them,” expressed Robert Cahaly, the chief pollster for Trafalgar Group, via a social media post. “This move has created a new type of voter that will be even harder to poll or even estimate.”
“I call this new group ‘submerged voters,’” stated Cahaly. “They aren’t putting stickers on their cars, signs in their yards, posting their opinions, or even answering polls. At this point I think it’s fair to say that Biden’s pursuit of and attacks on ‘MAGA Republicans’ has created an army of voters who will be virtually impossible to poll (even for us) and more difficult still to estimate.”
“The 2022 Republican turnout will likely be higher than any of the polls or models are showing,” he finished. “All polls (including ours) will understate the impact of these ‘submerged voters.’”