Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Max If you’ve been following any number of Democratic operatives on Twitter the past few days, you likely encountered a particular genre of boast. It goes something like this. In the span of a less than a year, President JOE BIDEN managed to achieve the main policy pursuits that DONALD TRUMP chased at various junctures but never accomplished. The basis of the claim is that Trump talked about passing infrastructure reform, reducing the cost of prescription drug prices, enhancing U.S. competitiveness with China, and even pursuing modest gun regulation. Biden, following the signing of the major health and climate bill this past week, has checked off all that and more. But the boast, which has been echoed by the White House, is not actually an attempt to co-opt the Trump policy legacy. No one at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. believes Trump had some sort of youthful, wonkish enthusiasm for these ideas. Nor do they give him any credit for them. Many have been standard, bedrock Democratic pursuits for decades. Trump’s novelty was that he was the Republican president who triangulated around them. But the boast still is notable because it further illustrates the advantageous political climate in which the White House believes it now finds itself. Not only does the party — and Biden specifically — have legislative accomplishments to run on, it has ready-made rejoinders for its critics. We are not in the age of hostile town hall meetings like the ones that confronted Democrats in the summer of 2009. “Obamacare was immediately underwater and unpopular,” said JOHN ANZALONE, one of Biden’s top pollsters, who helped poll BARACK OBAMA’s health care initiative during its own tortuous path towards passage. “There was at least a quarter of a billion spent against it,” he speculated of the opposition to the Affordable Care Act. “The fact is, the Biden agenda…. every component of it was popular in the high 60s and low 70s. Americans could digest it. The ACA was a complicated concept and easy to demonize.” The current White House certainly feels that way. Already, the outlines of their counter-offensive have taken shape.
- The billions of dollars that the Inflation Reduction Act sends to the IRS? That’s support for law enforcement.
- The $370 billion it offers for climate change? Tax credits and technological innovation are the alternative to government-authored climate regulations Republicans rejected.
- The feds negotiating the price of a handful of prescription drugs? This is what Trump himself wanted. Here’s a video clip to prove it.
In the end, these arguments — alongside the larger debate over the Inflation Reduction Act — may be largely immaterial to the midterm landscape. Inflation remains the main crux of the Republican opposition to Biden. And, if anything, there’s evidence to suggest that any recent uptick in the president’s standing is due to falling gas prices rather than a public reaction to legislative momentum. | 
