Democrats have a track record they are proud of. Biden is having a hard time selling it.

Dan Diamond and Jeff Stein
|Washington Post

During their private strategy sessions ahead of last month’s debate, President Biden and his advisers focused on what they saw as one of their most effective political messages against Donald Trump: the administration’s success in capping drug prices for millions of seniors, according to two people who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the preparations.

But during the June 27 debate, Biden spent a grueling 10 seconds fumbling for the words to explain what his administration had done to lower prescription drug costs for seniors, before abruptly telling the 51 million viewers, “We finally defeated Medicare.” (The president appeared to be trying to say that he had finally defeated the drug companies that had long resisted allowing the government to negotiate the prices paid by Medicare.)

The gaffe was just one example of a pattern fueling the effort to push Biden aside as the Democratic Party’s nominee. Congressional Democrats and the administration believe Biden has big accomplishments and ambitious policy proposals for the next four years. And yet Biden’s increasing struggles in recent weeks to spell out those policies — on abortion, housing, child support and more — have raised doubts about his effectiveness as the party’s chief messenger, even beyond Democratic fears of debate.

“It’s pretty clear why Democrats are so intensely frustrated: They believe they have strong, compelling arguments both in defense of what the administration has done and what it plans to do — but that’s been completely overshadowed by Biden’s inability to articulate those arguments,” said Bill Galston, who served as a senior adviser during the Bill Clinton administration.

Biden’s decades-long verbal stumbles are well-documented, and his defenders have attributed some of the missteps to his lifelong battle with a stutter. His syntax problems, too, have ebb and flowed. On foreign policy, for example, the president’s allies say he has a good grasp of the issues. At a July 11 press conference at the end of the NATO summit, Biden delivered a finely-tuned overview of the murky rules of inward investment in China and domestic concerns about Chinese oversupply in green manufacturing.

“Since the debate, thousands of Americans have cheered on the president in Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and other battlegrounds — not just because his words resonated with them, but because his policies touch their lives every day: whether capping insulin at $35 a month for seniors, fixing their bridges and roads, creating millions of union jobs or ending exorbitant, bullshit benefits,” campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said in a statement. “Joe Biden grew up in Scranton and personally understands what Americans face at their kitchen tables — and that’s why he’s been so effective at delivering results that matter to people.”

Trump has his own communications problems, underscored by a rambling, 92-minute acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention this week, the longest address of its kind in history. The former president skipped over policy details and repeatedly veered off into sidetracks — giving Democrats hope that they simply needed to offer a more compelling alternative to win in November.

Still, Biden’s repeated struggles to articulate his own accomplishments and his goals for a second term have taken on new urgency in a campaign in which he is trailing Trump, according to most public polls. Those struggles have led the White House to carefully manage the president’s public appearances, limiting the Democrats’ message as Biden tries to shift the conversation away from his age and toward the two parties’ approaches to government. And his stumbles are deepening the frustrations of Democrats who believe they would have a clear advantage over Republicans in a race over policy contrasts — especially if they can put on stage a candidate who can build a case for the Democrats’ agenda while deconstructing Trump’s.

“I believe President Biden must do more to show he can campaign with force to defeat Donald Trump,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement this month. “Our nominee must be able to articulate what Democrats have accomplished and all we will do to make life better for American families and protect their freedoms — like making child care affordable and accessible to parents everywhere and restoring abortion rights to women in all 50 states.”

Conservatives say replacing Biden with a new candidate who embraces similar policy proposals may not be enough to guarantee Democrats’ success in November, especially if that replacement can be tied to his record. Harris has served as vice president throughout Biden’s tenure, including the rise in inflation.

“The vast majority of voters, particularly those who decide elections, are not that ideological … They’re angry about inflation and the cost of living, and that’s what polls consistently show people are worried about,” said Avik Roy, founder of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, which advocates for free markets, and a former adviser to leading GOP policymakers. “It’s not enough to just be clear in your message — if your background in government contradicts your message, that’s a problem, too.”

Biden has tried to rev up his campaign after his poor performance in the debates, but that performance has created new headaches. (He has been in self-isolation in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, since Wednesday after testing positive for the coronavirus.)

In a speech to the NAACP in Las Vegas on Tuesday, the president previewed a White House policy proposal to eliminate tax breaks for some landlords who raise annual rents by more than 5 percent. Democrats see the idea as a populist proposal to appeal to young voters stressed by high housing prices and a contrast to Trump, a billionaire real estate developer. But Biden has misrepresented the plan.

“Look folks, the idea — the idea that corporate housing can raise your rent by three, four hundred dollars a month or something — under what I’m about to announce, they can’t raise it more than $55,” Biden said. (Biden’s plan would need Congressional approval.)

Biden also appeared to run into trouble when he discussed his plans to cut drug prices.

“It saves taxpayers, just like I did in the first round of the deal — dealing with Medicare. It saves taxpayers $160 billion — because they don’t have to pay these exorbitant prices on this — anyway, I won’t do it,” he trailed off in his NAACP speech.

Biden’s struggles to explain his efforts to protect abortion access — an issue central to Democrats’ 2024 election hopes — have also frustrated allies and supporters. The president, a Catholic who once opposed abortion and often avoids the word “abortion” when asked about it, gave a convoluted response when pressed during the debate about legal restrictions on abortion.

“The first time is between a woman and a doctor. The second time is between the doctor and an extreme situation. And the third time is between the doctor — I mean, it would be between the woman and the state,” Biden said.

Biden inexplicably moved on to immigration in another response about abortion: “Look, there are so many young women who — including a young woman who was just murdered and he went to the funeral. The idea that she was murdered by — by — by an immigrant coming in and (unintelligible) talking about that,” the president said, according to the transcript.

Reproductive rights activists called the comments a missed opportunity to contrast with Trump, who appointed three of the five Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Taxes are another area where Democrats believe they should gain an edge over Trump, who signed a tax plan in 2017 that disproportionately benefited the wealthy.

But in an interview with Univision that aired Thursday, Biden addressed not only his pledge to raise taxes on billionaires, but also the country’s education system.

“Look at what’s happening in our schools,” he said, according to a Univision transcript. “What’s happening in schools, all this stuff about gay and lesbian kids. Look at what they’re like. Whatever. And so many things we could do.”

The president then referenced his expansion of the child tax credit, which lifted millions of families out of poverty and was set to expire at the end of 2021: “Anyone who had a child who was younger and made under $200,000, or if they made $200,000, they got a 38 — a deduction on their taxes.”

Biden’s actions on prescription drugs pose a particularly challenging test: His accomplishments are hard to explain simply, such as the provision requiring pharmaceutical companies to negotiate the prices of their drugs with Medicare, a long-awaited goal for policymakers. But the issues score well when voters understand them, so Democrats are eager to raise them.

Biden’s drug price victories are “the most important piece of test evidence I’ve seen in focus groups that I’ve personally observed,” said a communications strategist at a major Democratic-leaning group, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be candid. “A lot of people said they were going to rein in Big Pharma; he’s actually done it.”

But many Americans are unaware of Biden’s efforts, which include limiting seniors’ prescription drug spending to $2,000 a year. About a quarter of voters said they knew a federal law would limit drug spending for Medicare beneficiaries, according to a May poll by KFF, a nonpartisan health care think tank. Thirty-six percent of voters said they knew a law would require the federal government to negotiate the price of some prescription drugs for Medicare.

Leslie Dach, founder of the Democratic-leaning advocacy group Protect Our Care, said he was frustrated by Republicans trying to hijack the drug price issue. He pointed to a video of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) being introduced as Trump’s running mate Wednesday night, in which it was suggested that the GOP would help rein in drug costs for seniors. The assertion infuriated Dach, who said Biden’s drug price legislation failed to get a single vote from Republicans in Congress.

“We have winning issues. But we’re fighting people who are extending the ‘big lie’ to every part of their campaign,” Dach said. “It’s a communications war.”

It’s not clear whether Biden is well-equipped to fight this, even with the help of an autocue.

During a speech in Detroit last week, the president again stumbled over his explanation of drug price cuts. “By the way, I got criticized because I took on Medicare — I mean, I — I took on the drug companies and pharmaceuticals. Well — well, it is —,” Biden said, according to the official White House transcript.

Toluse Olorunnipa contributed to this report.