CNN’s Poppy Harlow and Tom Nichols Suggest Biden’s Pro-Democracy Push Was Right Move After All

CNN anchor Poppy Harlow and commentator Tom Nichols noted that critics of President Joe Biden’s pro-democracy focus appear to have been wrong after Tuesday night’s results.

President Biden’s midterm push has included a relentless focus on the economy, but he’s gotten the most attention for a pair of blistering speeches about defending democracy and assailing “MAGA forces” undermining it, as well as frequent references to the threat.

The latter strategy has come under heavy criticism from media figures — including Harlow — and Democrats, perhaps most emphatically and recently from Democratic CNN analyst Hilary Rosen.

But on Wednesday morning’s edition of CNN This Morning, Harlow observed that Tuesday night’s results point to a vindication of Biden, and Nichols cited Rep. Tim Ryan’s resounding defeat as evidence that Biden was right:

POPPY HARLOW: Tom, to you. You know, a lot of the focus, especially in the closing arguments from Democrats and the president, Biden chose to close on democracy. Democracy matters. He chose that over closing on the economy. A lot of pundits said that might be the wrong closing argument. Right. We don’t know who’s going to take the house, but this certainly isn’t a red wave. What does this tell you?

TOM NICHOLS: Well, I think it dovetails with Sarah’s point that when you have somebody like Trump pushing bad candidates, the democracy argument actually starts to matter again. That I think it reminds people of what’s at stake. You know, the, there were a lot of, the president got a lot of, President Biden got a lot of unsolicited advice about talk about the economy instead of talking about what’s at stake. And yet, I would say the candidate who came out with the strongest message about that was somebody like Tim Ryan. And it just didn’t really fly in Ohio. And I think that actually between Donald Trump and the president making this kind of an argument, I think a lot of voters seem to hear it.

Watch above via CNN This Morning.