President Biden appeared to reject the idea that his administration or party is to blame for the surprising outcome of Virginia's gubernatorial race and other GOP victories during Tuesday's elections. Asked at the White House on Wednesday "how much responsibility" he takes for the "dismal" results for Democrats, Biden—in his first public comments on the matter, per USA Today—said the Virginia election reminded him of our "sacred right" to vote and our "obligation" to accept the legitimate outcomes of such elections; pointed out that no governor who is of the same political party as the sitting president has ever won a race in Virginia and that more Democrats came out to vote than ever before; and then said that what people really want is for his administration to "get things done."
"People are upset and uncertain about a lot of things—from COVID, to school, to jobs, to a whole range of things, and the cost of a gallon of gasoline," said Biden, who'd just returned that day from a Scotland climate conference, the BBC reports. "And that’s why I’m continuing to push very hard for the Democratic Party to move along and pass my infrastructure bill and my Build Back Better bill." If the Build Back Better bill is signed into law, he said, "you’re going to see a lot of those things ameliorated quickly and swiftly. And so that has to be done." Asked whether he thought, then, that Democrat Terry McAuliffe might have won had the bill passed before Tuesday, he said that while it should have, "I’m not sure that I would be able to have changed the number of very conservative folks who turned out in the red districts who were Trump voters. But maybe. Maybe."
Per the Washington Post, other Democratic officials and lawmakers were similarly citing the election news as evidence the party needs to accelerate its agenda. But, the paper declares, "Even the process of searching Tuesday’s electoral wreckage for clues about how to fix their problems was disorderly, echoing the ideological disagreements that have plagued the party for much of Biden’s presidency. By day’s end, there remained real disputes about who was to blame for the debacle and what changes would need to be put in place to realign the party with voters." Some were blaming Biden, who ran as a moderate and has now veered decidedly liberal; some blamed liberal lawmakers for demands they feel have slowed negotiations on the bills; still others say the party has yet to clearly state its position on such divisive issues as race and education. (More Virginia stories.)
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