The Memo: Biden in a bind as Ukraine crisis fails to pump up polls
By Niall Stanage - 03/26/22 05:58 AM EDT
President Biden is astride the world stage, charting a steady course on the Ukraine crisis — but it’s not doing him much good at home.
Biden has largely done what he said he would regarding Ukraine, maintaining a high degree of Western unity against Russian President Vladimir Putin while avoiding tactics that would cause the conflict to escalate.
His approval ratings have barely budged.
That’s a sizable problem for a president whose party faces a high risk of losing control of Congress in midterm elections that are now about seven months away.
Voters don’t necessarily dislike what Biden is doing in Ukraine. Nor are they indifferent to the suffering seen in Kyiv, Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities as the Russian invasion enters its second month.
But other problems — inflation above all — figure far more prominently in American voters’ lives. And unless Biden can ameliorate those troubles, his party may suffer steep losses in November. Such an outcome would leave the president tightly constrained by a GOP-led Congress for the final two years of his first term.
In that scenario, “the only thing I’ll have then is a veto pen,” Biden warned Democrats at a party retreat in Philadelphia earlier this month.
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https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/599829-the-memo-biden-in-a-bind-as-ukraine-crisis-fails-to-pump-up-polls
