Donald Trump’s administration became infamous for routinely declaring it was “Infrastructure Week,” only to make exactly zero progress on his pledge to “put millions of our people to work” rebuilding highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, and hospitals. In political circles, mentioning “Infrastructure Week” not only drew surefire laughs, it also became synonymous with Trump’s pervasive governing incompetence. In the end, Trump and his allies never even got around to unveiling a bill on the matter.
Yet while Trump campaigned on a $1 trillion infrastructure plan in 2016, Joe Biden was the president who got it done, ensuring a once-in-a-generation investment into upgrading the country’s ailing transit systems.
But new polling conducted by Morning Consult for Politico shows that voters credit Biden and Trump almost equally for advancing infrastructure projects—and the jobs that flow from them.
While 40% of voters say Biden “has done more to promote infrastructure improvements and job creation,” 37% say the same of Trump. On the bright side, nearly three-quarters of Democrats say Biden has done more—it’s important for Democratic voters to have some concept of their president’s accomplishments.
But among independents, Trump gets slightly more credit than Biden, at 34% to 32%.
The poll speaks to a persistent conundrum for Biden’s White House: how to make sure voters are aware of the historic amount of legislation the president has helped usher through a deeply polarized Congress, with the thinnest of margins.
The notion that Trump, who became the butt of Beltway infrastructure jokes, is now viewed as having advanced the policy nearly as much as Biden is gobsmacking.
Biden has delivered so many speeches in front of bridges over the past year that his former White House chief of staff Ron Klain was recorded disparaging the strategy.
“I think the president is out there too much talking about bridges,” Klain said, according to audio obtained by Politico. “He does two or three events a week where he’s cutting a ribbon on a bridge. And here’s a bridge. Like I tell you, if you go into the grocery store, you go to the grocery store and, you know, eggs and milk are expensive, the fact that there’s a fucking bridge is not (inaudible).”
Klain, a longtime Biden ally, suggested the White House needed to get more creative.
To that end, President Biden is now consistently drawing more contrasts on the issue between himself and Trump.
“You may recall that my predecessor promised ‘Infrastructure Week’ every single week for four years,” Biden told attendees at an event last week in Wilmington, North Carolina. “He didn’t build a damn thing — nothing,” Biden said to laughter and applause.
“At the same time,” Biden continued, “he and his MAGA allies in Congress were happy to give the very super rich a $2 trillion tax cut in his administration — $2 trillion — that benefitted the super wealthy and the biggest corporations while exploding the federal debt.”
Biden traveled to another battleground state on Wednesday to tout a multibillion-dollar investment by Microsoft at the very site in Racine, Wisconsin, where Trump once promised Foxconn would pour $10 trillion into building a new manufacturing complex, creating some 13,000 new jobs.
“Are you kidding me?” Biden said, noting that Trump and GOP Sen. Ron Johnson wielded golden shovels at the event. “Look what happened. They dug a hole with those golden shovels, and then they fell into it,” he quipped.
Foxconn, Biden added, “turned out to be just that, a con.”
“Folks, during the previous administration, my predecessor made promises which he broke more than kept and left a lot of people behind in communities like Racine,” Biden said. “On my watch, we make promises and we keep promises.”
Expect to see Biden do a lot more comparing and contrasting of records in the coming months, particularly at choice locations in battleground states. And if Biden’s presentation is sharper around the edges than it has been in the past, remember that the best way for him to get his speeches covered is by needling Trump while he delivers them.
Navigator collects, analyzes, and distributes real data on progressive messaging. The Hub Project’s Bryan Bennett and Gabriela Parra talk with Kerry about what they are seeing in their research this election cycle, and which messaging can help progressive candidates win elections in 2024—and beyond.
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