The Toughest Pain Points Awaiting Biden At The State Of The Union

President Joe Biden has a long list of victories he can boast about as he goes before the voters on Thursday — but his biggest challenge will be the towering pile of crises weighing down his prospects in November.

Yes, Biden has accomplished much of the daunting to-do list that confronted him when he entered the White House three years ago — including guiding the U.S. out of Covid, avoiding the recession that many economists declared all but inevitable, and enacting mammoth spending laws on climate change, infrastructure and competition with China. But the southern border is a mess, high prices are souring consumers’ mood, and many progressives are angry at his handling of fossil fuels, student loans and the war in Gaza, helping drive the president’s approval ratings to historic lows.

The White House has had only limited success in trying to fix the disconnect. Biden has visited the border, his economic officials have given speeches hailing rising wages and falling unemployment, and Vice President Kamala Harris has been dispatched to slam Republicans on abortion — one of the only issues where voters say they trust Biden more than his almost-certain challenger, former President Donald Trump.

Now, the State of the Union offers Biden a rare chance to convince voters that his term has been a success.

Here’s a rundown of what to expect:

The economy: Perception trumps reality

The economy presents one of the starkest contrasts between Biden’s triumphant attitude and disaffected voter opinion.

The U.S. economy far surpassed expectations in 2023, growing more than 3 percent in a year where economists had overwhelmingly expected a recession that never came. Biden can tout those numbers — along with the fact that unemployment has been below 4 percent for two years, inflation has fallen markedly from the four-decade highs seen earlier in his term, and wages are now growing faster than prices.

“I put this country back on its feet,” Biden proclaimed during a testy White House appearance with reporters last month.

But high costs, particularly in key areas like groceries and rent, are still weighing on people’s perceptions of the economy, even as the underlying data improves. Recent research published by the Federal Reserve shows that Americans still perceive inflation as above 6 percent – well above the pre-Covid levels – when the actual rate is about half that.

Consumers' impressions of the economy have been rising for the past few months, but still don't suggest that people think the problem has gone away.

In recognition of these concerns, Biden has recently slammed what he calls “shrinkflation,” hitting corporations for charging the same price for smaller quantities, and his top aides have pushed grocery store chains and food companies to lower costs.

The White House has also spotlighted the need for more housing, unveiling a raft of initiatives last week designed to boost supply in hopes of bringing down home prices. But the federal government is limited in what it can do, given the hurdles that many state and local zoning laws place for constructing new homes.

For Biden, messaging is a constant balancing act between trying to make voters aware of some of the positive economic outcomes that have happened under his watch and not coming off as unaware that people — particularly those with lower incomes — are straining under the weight of higher prices.

— Victoria Guida

Walking the line on Gaza

Biden’s toughest sell may be convincing a skeptical public that he has handled the Israel-Hamas war well from the start.

A new Gallup polls shows that 58 percent of Americans hold a favorable view of Israel, though that’s down from 68 percent around this time last year. In that sense, Biden can tout that he immediately stood by the Jewish state after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack, flying to the country to console Israel’s leadership and its people. He has continued that support, defending the Netanyahu government’s wartime strategy while pushing for more military aid.

But Biden is well aware that he faces strong pushback from progressive and pro-Palestinian voters who watch in horror as the war has killed more than 30,000 people in Gaza, on top of the 1,200 killed in Hamas’ attack. Though Biden handily won last month’s Michigan primary, which has a significant Arab American population, more than 100,000 people voted for “uncommitted” in protest.

Multiple polls show Biden is losing support from his base over the issue, even as left-leaning voters know that Trump would be more pro-Israel than Biden. The resistance has pushed the administration to do more for Gaza’s 2.2 million people, many of whom are on the brink of famine. Now the U.S. is airdropping assistance via military aircraft and working with allies to deliver even more aid by sea.

This will force Biden to walk a fine line during Thursday’s speech. He must show that he stands with Israel during one of its darkest moments and display strength in the face of Hamas’ aggression. At the same time he must convince Democrats that he feels the plight of Palestinians in his bones, that the president who promised to put human rights at the center of his foreign policy isn’t walking away from that pledge.

One of the hardest things in politics is to chart a middle course, especially when both sides will be furious when you don’t offer them rock-ribbed support. And yet, that is Biden’s task when discussing the world’s hottest of hot spots.

— Alex Ward

Making the most of limited powers on abortion

The Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade has overwhelmingly backfired against Republicans in the voting booth, yielding victory after victory for Democrats and handing Biden a cudgel to wield in his reelection fight.

But reproductive health is also an issue where Biden has only limited control over Americans’ access to abortion and services such as in vitro fertilization. 

Abortion access in the U.S. has crumbled in the nearly two years since the Supreme Court dismantled Roe. And the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision declaring that frozen embryos are children underscores a broader point Democrats have been making in the run-up to November — that the Dobbs decision’s effects have rippled far beyond abortion, imperiling IVF, birth control and emergency medical care.

Biden can point to a significant track record to argue that he used his executive authority to protect and expand access to reproductive health care. For instance, his regulators have cleared the way for retail pharmacies to begin selling abortion pills, as CVS and Walgreens plan to begin doing this month, and have promoted access to the nation’s first over-the-counter birth control pills, which will also be available in March.

The administration is also in court on a number of abortion-related fights, including two Supreme Court cases set to be argued this spring over a federal policy expanding access to abortion pills and a federal law requiring hospitals to provide abortions to patients experiencing medical emergencies.

But the tools available to Biden to meaningfully move the needle on abortion have been limited, up against a conservative Supreme Court, a divided Congress and a host of red states that have gotten new power to sharpen their abortion restrictions as a result of the Dobbs ruling. If Trump regains the White House, he could easily reverse many of Biden’s policies.

Biden is also struggling to show voters unhappy with the post-Roe world why they should hold Trump responsible, even though the ex-president nominated the three conservative justices who were critical to the Dobbs decision. A recent CBS News/YouGov poll found that while a majority of respondents said the court decision was bad for the country, only a third blamed Trump.

Biden supporters said the president needs to use the State of the Union address to highlight the knock-on effects from the Dobbs decision and make the issue more salient for voters. That includes the story of Kate Cox, a Texas woman who was denied an emergency abortion by her state’s Supreme Court and who will attend the speech as first lady Jill Biden’s guest.

“The State of the Union is an awesome opportunity to reach more Americans who don’t pay attention to the weekly press conferences,” said Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All. “They need to hear more directly from the highest bully pulpit of the land the devastating, real-life consequences that he’s trying to fight back to protect.”

— Megan Messerly

Shifting blame on the border

While other issues give Biden a chance to tout his successes, the U.S.-Mexico border catches him in a vise between liberals and conservatives — even as he seeks to shift the conversation to GOP obstruction.

The numbers alone are bad: Border crossings have surged in recent months, after dropping during the pandemic, with encounters along the U.S.-Mexico border hitting an all-time record in December. Those metrics waned in February, but officials are bracing for a spring surge of migrants.

The issue has brought Biden near-daily attacks from Trump and congressional Republicans, inspired court fights between federal courts and Texas over states’ powers to intervene, and even has prompted some Democratic leaders — such as New York Mayor Eric Adams — to warn that the inflow of migrants will “destroy” their communities. The House went so far as to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in February, though the Senate will likely acquit him of the charges.

Migrant rights’ groups, meanwhile, have hammered Biden for continuing some of the immigration policies of the Trump administration, such as separating families and curtailing options to apply for asylum.

The issue is resonating with voters, who broadly pan Biden’s handling of immigration and rank Trump higher on the issue. And that’s despite recent efforts from Biden and the Democrats to tack to the right.

In recent months, Biden and Senate Democrats have worked behind the scenes to reach a deal to beef up border enforcement. But just as the sides were on the verge of a deal, Trump blew up the negotiations, keen to keep the border as a festering political issue rather than give Biden a win. Even some Republicans — particularly Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, who led negotiations for the GOP side — have expressed exasperation at Trump’s move. Expect Biden to hammer Republicans for that on Thursday.

— Gavin Bade

Deflated on both sides of climate divide

Biden signed the biggest climate law in history, pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into technologies such as solar and wind power, carbon capture, clean hydrogen and electric cars. His presidency has also seen U.S. oil production soar to all-time highs, while booming natural gas exports have helped the White House achieve security goals in places like Ukraine.

In the process, he’s angered friends and foes alike.

Biden has faced conflicting pressures to lower the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions without being accused of throttling America’s energy dominance or being blamed if gasoline prices rise, as they did two years ago.

In response, the administration has taken some actions to boost oil and gas production and infrastructure, including approving the massive Willow oil project in Alaska and greenlighting the Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline through West Virginia and Virginia. Those moves, though, have angered climate activists and young voters who will be crucial to Biden’s reelection effort and say he isn’t doing enough to wean the nation off fossil fuels.

Now, those competing pressures are weighing on Biden as his agencies are expected to finish major rules clamping down on pollution from power plants and transportation — the two most polluting U.S. economic sectors. Recent signs suggest the administration is choosing to weaken or slow some climate regulations — including postponing new limits on pollution from existing gas-fueled power plants. POLITICO has also reported that EPA is leaning toward a less-aggressive option for regulating car and truck tailpipe pollution, in a potential watering down of its electric vehicle agenda.

Still, the rules are expected to be the most sweeping ever enacted in the U.S. to address climate pollution, and the administration is hopeful its more careful, targeted approach will make their regulatory agenda more legally durable in the face of a conservative Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed two years ago has spawned a boom in private investment for new manufacturing plants that will take advantage of the law’s $370 billion worth of incentives. Supporters hope they will reverse the trend that made China the dominant supplier of clean energy technologies — though Trump alleges that Biden’s policy moves will actually aid China.

Biden has also overcome four years of backsliding in international climate leadership under Trump, by rejoining the Paris Agreement and sealing a first-ever accord at the most recent U.N. climate summit committing nations to begin “transitioning away from fossil fuels.”

But he has more work to do to accomplish some aggressive targets. Among them: securing a 100 percent carbon-free power grid by 2035 and reaching net-zero carbon emissions for the U.S. by 2050.

— Josh Siegel

An unfinished struggle to lower drug prices

The IRA gave Biden a major victory in the effort to lower drug pricing, but the parts of the law with the most impact won’t take effect until his second term — if he wins.

And the narrow scope and lack of full implementation before the election could hurt Biden with voters.

Chief among those wins is implementation of a $35 co-pay cap on insulin for older Americans on Medicare. Even more sweeping steps are still to come, particularly the first-ever Medicare drug price negotiations.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is in the process of negotiating with nine drugmakers for the first 10 high-price medicines selected and will reach a final price by Sept. 1. But the prices won’t take effect until Jan. 1, 2026.

The same goes for a $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare recipients in Part D, the program’s prescription drug program. The new cap takes effect at the start of next year.

While the policies are popular with voters, they apply only to Medicare, and the wait before they kick in could blunt the political impact on voters this fall. Efforts to extend the insulin cap and negotiated prices to commercial or private-sector insurance plans during the IRA’s debate in Congress failed.

Polling has consistently shown drug prices as a major pain point for voters when it comes to tackling health costs. A Feb. 21 survey from the think tank KFF found that 55 percent of respondents were worried about paying for their prescription drugs.

But Biden has not necessarily reaped the benefits from his drug price and other health policies. Another KFF poll found that 50 percent of respondents believe Biden did more to tackle high health costs, compared with 48 percent for Trump.

— Robert King

Unheralded success on manufacturing

Reviving the American manufacturing sector is one of the biggest — and least recognized — accomplishments of Biden’s term.

It’s a policy focus borne of electoral defeat. In 2016, Trump trounced Hillary Clinton in the industrial Midwest with rhetoric about ending foreign trade deals, reversing outsourcing and bringing factory jobs back to the U.S. But despite Trump’s tariffs and blustery rhetoric, the manufacturing workforce barely budged during his tenure.

Desperate to prevent a repeat of 2016, Biden and congressional Democrats made industrial policy — government support for selected industries — a cornerstone of their economic policy. In 2022, they passed the CHIPS for America Act, which provided more than $50 billion for domestic microchip production, and the IRA, which rewrote the corporate tax code to offer incentives for companies to build clean energy projects such as solar panel and battery factories in the U.S.

Taken together, the initiatives amount to the most aggressive industrial policy the U.S. has undertaken since World War II, and the benefits are starting to show. The U.S. now has more manufacturing jobs than any time since before the 2008 financial crisis, and many of the new or expanded factories are in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin or Georgia.

But like other economic issues, voters don’t seem to have made the connection between the Democrats' complicated industrial policies and the factory growth happening across the nation.

Adding to that challenge, many of the tens of billions of dollars in clean energy projects that companies have announced since Biden signed the IRA have gone to Republican-held states and congressional districts. That has created some awkward optics for GOP lawmakers who oppose the law, but also has allowed Republican governors in states such as Georgia to attribute the influx of investments to their own business-friendly policies.

— Gavin Bade

Frustration on student loans

Biden has approved about $138 billion worth of student debt relief for nearly 4 million Americans, the most of any administration.

But the fact that he hasn’t been able to do more makes this another tough issue for the president.

The relief has come from dozens of executive actions that chipped away at student debt by tweaking or expanding existing federal relief programs. The borrowers who benefited included those who are severely disabled, those who were defrauded by their college, borrowers working public service jobs, and borrowers who had been trying to repay their debts for decades.

But Biden’s pledge to cancel student debt for more borrowers – and discharge loans on the massive scale that progressive want – remains unfulfilled.

The Supreme Court last summer struck down Biden’s most sweeping plan to cancel student debt for more than 40 million borrowers. The Education Department is moving forward with a slow-moving regulatory process to craft a replacement plan, which the White House agreed to expand earlier this year amid concerns from liberals that it was too narrow.

Biden and his allies have been trying to refocus voters’ attention on the student debt that the administration has canceled – despite stiff opposition from Republicans trying to block it in Congress and GOP-led states suing to stop it.

“The Supreme Court blocked me, but they didn’t stop me,” Biden said at a campaign event last month. “I found another way.”

The administration hassent congratulatory emails signed by Biden to borrowers who have received relief. It has also sought to emphasize Biden’s new student loan repayment program, which offers lower monthly payments and an easier path to loan forgiveness after years of paying.

Progressives, meanwhile, want Biden to promise he’ll get his Plan B student debt plan over the finish line before the election. And they want to be sure that it will rival the scope and breadth of his initial plan that was stopped by the court.

— Michael Stratford