You could say they need better messaging, perhaps, but messaging on a legislative agenda this convoluted and unpopular will only go so far. What’s needed is better leadership from the White House to get the American people on board. That hasn’t happened. In fact, the opposite has happened as voters learn more about both plans, the less they seem to understand or feel comfortable with tossing around trillions of dollars.
What’s more, the public is confused about which parts of Biden’s agenda have actually passed and which parts are still sitting in Congress waiting for a vote. This would seem counterintuitive as the entirety of the legislative branch was tied up for months trying to push and prod Biden’s agenda through Congress. It was making news every day, yet the disconnect remains wide between what voters think they know, and what’s actually true.
New polling finds that only around 20% of voters actually know what happened in Congress over the last few months:
While the debate over President Biden’s legislative agenda has consumed official Washington, voters have remained fairly disengaged. In fact, just 43% know that the Infrastructure bill has been passed. Additionally, only 36% know that the Build Back Better plan has not.
Just one-out-of-five voters (19%) answered both questions correctly.
The survey was conducted over the 24 hours following President Biden’s signing of the Infrastructure bill.
There was little partisan difference on the question about the infrastructure bill. As for the Build Back Better proposal, Democrats were somewhat more likely to mistakenly believe it had passed. On both questions, older voters were more informed than younger voters.
That last section about Democrats being just as uninformed as the rest of the electorate is key since they have more invested in this administration and the outcome in 2022 and 2024. The leadership has been so bad, however, that very few voters are able to correctly identify which bill was passed, and what it contains.
This is a problem for Democrats as we touched on yesterday. There are fears that Democrats have done a poor job on messaging surrounding Biden’s domestic agenda, and those fears are valid. However, this is mostly a symptom of a weak leader at the top unable to articulate and excite voters with an agenda they can understand and support.
What does “Build Back Better” even mean? Build what back? America? The environment? Social justice issues? Labor unions? What, exactly?
Slogans like “Build The Wall” are easy to understand. “America First” is easy to understand. Build back better sounds like a confusing way to encapsulate America’s struggle switch Covid, I suppose, and then to “build back” better than Trump’s economy? It’s a stretch, to say the least, and one which any first-year marketing student should’ve tossed in the trash before it left the conference room.
Beyond that, trying to follow not one but two trillion-dollar spending bills through Congress is enough to make your head spin, even if you follow this stuff all day long. The average voter has been confused about the stand-alone infrastructure bill, which passed and was signed by the President, and the Build Back Better reconciliation package, which has passed the House but is likely dead in the Senate.
On the other hand, voters are more in tune with things that are immediately and directly impacting their everyday lives, such as supply chain shortages and vaccine mandates:
Other data suggests that voters are more focused on other issues: 63% have experienced supply chain problems. Fifty-nine percent (59%) want vaccine mandates relaxed to address the supply chain issues.
As noted yesterday, Democrats are doing too much, too fast, and the public is not on board with their actions. Not only is their agenda unpopular, but they can’t even adequately explain what they’re doing or how spending trillions of dollars will do anything to alleviate inflationary pains in the short term. Instead, voters are rightly fearing that unchecked government spending will cause far more problems down the road.
Democrats bet big on monstrous domestic legislative agenda items, and their gamble has been a total bust so far. With the public focused on skyrocketing costs of gas, groceries, and winter heating fuel, it’s unlikely much progress will be made anytime soon.
