Biden admin rebooting comms strategy as polls collapse

The White House is pursuing a new communications strategy in an attempt to rescue President Joe Biden’s agenda and tanking approval ratings, according to a report Tuesday.

The new strategy would focus less on his dealings with Congress and more on direct appeals to the American Public, reported NBC News citing “senior administration officials.”

One official said that Biden wanted to move away from the perception that he is “approaching the presidency like a member of the Senate,” where he represented Delaware from 1973 to 2009.

“He’s mindful that he doesn’t want to send the message that his role is to be legislator-in-chief,” the senior administration official said.

Biden’s advisers agree that Biden must lean into his natural connection with ordinary Americans and “talk to more people directly,” but there is not agreement on what it will look like or whether it will work, according to another official. One obstacle is how the coronavirus pandemic has made travel more complicated.

Pivoting to engage directly with the average citizen is a popular reset plan activated by many past presidents.

“Oftentimes in modern history when a president has frustrations and drops in the polls, the president will say, ‘It's now time for me to talk over the heads of the elites and talk directly to the people to convince them that what I'm trying to do is right,’” presidential historian Michael Beschloss told NBC.

However, Biden’s reset comes sooner than expected. His administration has struggled to contain the pandemic and failed to push through his Build Back Better legislation after negotiations with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) fell through, resulting in cratering poll numbers.

Fifty percent of Americans in a CBS News/YouGov survey last week said they were “frustrated” by the Biden presidency.

Another poll from last week by Quinnipiac showed Biden with only a 33 percent approval rating of his job performance.