DESPERATE DEMOCRATS HOPE MIDTERMS ARE A REFERENDUM ON TRUMP, NOT BIDEN:

The Aug. 8 Mar-a-Lago Raid and President Joe Biden’s dystopian Independence Hall speech to start September began a transparent autumn effort to thrust former President Donald Trump back into the spotlight. Why you ask? Because Biden and Democrats much prefer to make the crucial midterm elections a referendum on someone not currently holding office than their party’s disastrous policies.

Any Trump-related headline, they believe, can distract not only from Democratic debacles but Republicans’ superior plans for America should the GOP reclaim power.

A recap shouldn’t be necessary, but the Reader’s Digest version includes Team Biden mishandling COVID-19 policies, letting teachers’ unions destroy vulnerable students’ futures, and continuous poor communication on masks, re-openings, and vaccines. Recently the White House botched monkeypox with vaccine shortages and misapplications.

The administration’s profligate federal spending, including two unnecessary recent bills to close the summer, exacerbated inflation, crushed the middle and lower classes, and reduced supplies of food and energy.

Interest rates are now soaring, making homeownership harder for people who want to marry and start families instead of relying on the government.

Small businesses, hampered by COVID lockdowns, still suffer under inflation and cumbersome regulations. But Biden wants to “help” them by adding nearly 90,000 new IRS agents, likely for audits.

Then there’s Biden’s shambolic student-loan “forgiveness” program that even a former top Obama White House advisor admits is atrocious public policy.

Related, from Glenn in the New York Post: Dems want the midterms to be a referendum on Trump, not bungling Biden — and the media are compliant.