President Joe Biden’s positions on policing and gun control may torpedo the Dems hopes for the 2022 midterms.

As violent crimes are escalating nationwide, Biden’s push to reform policing and enact stronger gun laws is double edge sword that both his enemies on the right and his supposed allies in his own party can swing at his head.

Biden’s focus on gun crimes could provide fodder for Second Amendment advocates who have accused him of attacking legal gun ownership and for Republican lawmakers who have argued that Democratic calls to “defund the police” are most responsible for the crime wave. GOP strategists employed that tactic to great effect in down-ballot races during the 2020 election cycle. 

The president also risks alienating progressives wary that his tactics will undercut their push for law enforcement reform, deepening party divisions at a time when Democratic control of Congress is in jeopardy.

Biden appearing weak on crime and growing tensions within the Democratic party could spell disaster for them in the 2022 midterms. The politically fraught climate ahead of an expected spike in crime this summer creates a “major vulnerability” for Biden and Democrats in general heading into the 2022 midterms, according to Whit Ayers, a prominent Republican political consultant and founder of North Star Opinion Research. 

“One of the most potent criticisms over the last 40 years of Democrats is that they’re soft on crime and reluctant to crack down on crime,” Ayers said. “This surge and the forces on the far-left talking about defunding the police feed into the suspicious that Democrats are simply not serious about combating crime.”

Unveiled last month at a speech alongside Attorney General Merrick Garland, Biden’s anti-crime plan included a “zero tolerance” policy for federally licensed gun dealers who violate laws, a call for increased funding for the ATF, and the creation of “strike forces” to combat interstate weapons trafficking. The president noted that states and cities can use $350 billion in collective funding from the “American Rescue Plan” to hire officers, pay for overtime or invest in technology aimed at curbing gun violence. 

Recent polls indicate mounting concern among American voters about the crime surge. More than 73% of Americans think crime is on the rise nationally compared to one year ago, according to the results of a Fox News poll conducted in late May. Seventy-two percent of respondents said they had either a great deal or a fair amount of trust and confidence in the police.

Crime is “one of the top issues, and I think Democrats ignore it at their peril,” said Trevor Burrus, a research fellow at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies. “I think it has a bunch of complex causes. The thing is, American voters are fairly straightforward in the things that they care about.”

The crime wave dominated New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, where moderate candidates, including the expected winner, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, campaigned on a pledge to prioritize public safety. 

Some top Democrats, including members of the Biden administration, have already begun efforts to deflect GOP efforts at painting the Democratic Party as the party of “defund the police.” The most notable case came during a White House briefing when Biden press secretary Jen Psaki declared Republicans had defunded the police by failing to support the American Rescue Plan because within the $1.9 trillion in funding they mostly opposed was money for the police.

That counterpunch could help against the Republicans, but political strategists warn that “The Squad and AOC and others need to recalibrate their messaging, perhaps, too, because you can only say so much about reimagining the police and things like that when people are at home seeing these upticks in crime, when people are fearful, in many areas, to go out on the street,” said Kevin Walling, a Democratic campaign strategist, and former Biden campaign surrogate.