Who will win the blame game?

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Shortly after the midterm elections, I had a conversation with a Democratic strategist who concluded that a divided government would help President Bidens re-elect in 2024. Of course, the Biden administration would now do the l subject to further scrutiny from the House GOP, but it was just as likely that the Republicans would go too far and allow their most extravagant members to dominate the process. New Speaker Kevin McCarthy, with just a few votes to spare, would find himself held hostage by the conservative Freedom Caucus party, forcing the House to take a slew of votes that, while popular with the base, will be toxic to swing voters. . With Democrats no longer in charge of all the levers of power in DC, Biden can use his bully pulpit to blame a dysfunctional and/or unresponsive Washington on Republicans in MAGA.

Moreover, the last two times a Democratic president faced a new GOP majority, the GOP came out the loser. Voters blamed the 21-day government shutdown at the end of 1995 and the 2011 debt ceiling battle at the feet of the new GOP majority, not the Democratic president.

But NBC News polls suggest the public is far less willing to give the Democratic president the same benefit of the doubt he gave Clinton in 1995 or Obama in 2011.

By a significant margin, voters at the time thought the Democratic president would be far more flexible in his dealings with the new GOP majority than the GOP Congress would be in dealing with the first-term Democratic president. In other words, in a battle between the president and the GOP Congress, Americans expected the GOP to be more entrenched and less willing to compromise. As such, it’s easy to see why, when big showdowns like the debt ceiling and the government shutdown occurred, voters were quick to blame the GOP.

For example, at this point in 1995, as House Republicans took control of the House for the first time in 40 years, 47% of Americans said they expected Congressional Republicans to be too inflexible in the face of President Clinton. Only 17 percent felt the same way about President Clinton’s relationship with the GOP Congressa 30 point bias in favor of Clinton.

In early 2011, as the GOP settled into its newly won majority in the House, 55% of Americans said they thought Republicans would be too inflexible in their dealings with President Obama, compared to 26% who thought that Obama would be too rigid in his relations. with Congress’s new 29-point gap in favor of Obama.

Today, however, while voters still think Republicans will be more adamant about compromise than a Democratic president, that’s by a much smaller margin than it was in 1995 or 2011. The survey report revealed that 54% expect Republicans to be too inflexible compared to 45% who thought Biden would be less willing to compromise with the GOPa’s nine-point advantage for Biden.

In other words, when/if pressure builds between the GOP Congress and Biden, Americans are less likely to side with the president than they were in the days of Obama and Clinton. Another way of putting it is that Americans might be more evenly divided on blame than they were in earlier eras.

Why the change? Independent voters are a big part of the story. In 2011 and 2014 (the 1995 crosstabs were not readily available), independent voters overwhelmingly expected the GOP Congress to be more inflexible than President Obama. Today, 57% of independents thought Republicans would be unwilling to compromise, compared with 53% who thought Biden would be too inflexible.

Another interesting data point on public expectations regarding the relationship between a new congressional majority and a president from the other party comes from Pew Research.

In surveys since 2011, they’ve found that while most Americans want to see a divided government working together, supporters don’t. It’s not a particularly surprising finding, but it helps explain why negotiating deals in a divided government has become virtually impossible.

For example, according to the Pew survey released this week, 63% of voters think GOP congressional leaders should work with President Biden to get things done, even if it disappoints some GOP voters, while 35% think that Republicans in Congress should stand up to Biden on issues important to GOP voters, even if that means it’s harder to resolve critical issues.

Unsurprisingly, Democrats are far more supportive of Republicans compromising with the president than Republicans. Only 34% of Republicans want their congressional leaders to work with Biden, while another 64% want them to stand up to Biden. Among Democrats, 91% think Republicans should work closely with the president.

This isn’t just a problem for GOP supporters, however. In January 2019, as Democrats won the House majority for the first time in eight years, only 26% of Democrats wanted to see Democratic leaders in Congress working closely with President Trump, while 70% said that would rather see Congress leaders stand up to Trump. In 2011, 58% of Republicans wanted their leaders in Congress to push back against President Obama, even as 61% of Americans said they wanted Congress to work closely with Obama to get things done.

We live in a time of intense polarization, with both sides desperate to prevent the other team from making gains. At the same time, regardless of the election results, no one thinks America is winning. Voters are worried, uncertain and frustrated. Despite signs of an economic recovery, most Americans think the country is on the wrong track. The recent NBC survey found that more than two-thirds use negative words or phrases to describe where they think the country is heading next year, the highest percentage of negativity they have ever recorded. That is why neither side should be convinced that, in a highly publicized struggle between the executive and legislative branches, their side will prevail in the court of public opinion.

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