Blame Biden.
The Wall Street Journal Editorialized:
Mr. Biden had no plan to deal with the large numbers of vaccine holdouts, other than to deride them. He missed his goal of getting 70% of adults vaccinated by July 4 but proclaimed victory nonetheless.
It sounds like a crazy strategy, but it seems to work in politics: Oppose government efforts to address a problem, and then condemn the administration for failing to overcome your opposition.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page is the serious, grown-up opinion face of the Murdoch empire, read by educated policy-makers. Cable network Fox News is the tabloid version of Murdoch. Both versions blame Biden for the refusal of about one-third of Americans to get vaccinated for COVID.
Who are those refusers? There is a spattering of people on the wholistic naturopathic-medicine left and some Black Americans skeptical about the White medical establishment. But, overwhelmingly, vaccination refusers are people who consume Murdoch news. Fox News hosts and guests frame vaccinations as government tyranny and questionable science. They condemn the CDC and Anthony Fauci. They cheer athletes who refuse vaccinations and who get COVID advice from Joe Rogan. They praise GOP governors who stop businesses like Disney from requiring vaccinations from cruise ship passengers.
Biden's critics are correct: He did indeed fail to overcome the vaccination messages sent out by Fox and Trump. Those refusers are hospitalized and dying at a ten-to-one disproportion to the vaccinated. Someone must be blamed. Blame Biden.
Something similar is in the works for December. Watch for it. If the U.S. fails to raise the debt limit, the country will default on its debt, creating economic catastrophe. Money market funds will "break the buck" or freeze. What Americans understand to be "money" is in fact the debt we owe one another resting on a foundation of U.S. Treasury securities that mature and roll over. Republicans in congress are adamant that they will vote as a block to oppose raising the debt limit. It is "Biden's economy" and therefore Biden's failure if he fails to overcome GOP sabotage.
Surely the blatant hypocrisy of blaming Biden for a mess openly planned by his opponents undermines this strategy. Right? No. Voters are presumably smarter than gorillas, but maybe not.
The primary duty of a male silverback gorilla is to protect his harem of several females and their children. Frustrated bachelor males jealously watch from a distance. Sometimes a bachelor charges into the group, grabs an infant from a mother's arms, kills it, then runs off. The mother grieves, and then, incredibly enough, sometimes leaves the harem to join that bachelor, the murderer of her infant. Why? Because the murderer just proved that the previous silverback harem-owner could not protect her infants from murderous bachelors. She joins the guy strong enough to kill babies, including hers.
That is the GOP message. If Biden is unable to overcome the vaccine hesitancy of people who listen to Trump and Fox, and if Biden is unable to stop Republicans from sabotaging the economy by creating a debt crisis, then Biden is too weak to govern.
The message to voters: Since Biden can't stop us, it is better to make peace with the saboteurs.