DNC launches ‘coming back’ ad to tout return to pre-coronavirus life

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is launching a new Fourth of July ad blitz touting the Biden administration’s efforts to rein in the coronavirus pandemic. 

The minutelong ad declares that the United States is “coming back” after a more than  yearlong fight against COVID-19 that thrust the country into lockdowns and battered the U.S. economy. 

“July 4: the American holiday. A celebration of freedom,” a narrator says in the ad. “And this year, there’s more to celebrate. The freedom to hug a grandchild. To see a baseball game in person. To come back together again.”

The ad also proclaims that the U.S. is “leading the world out of a global pandemic,” touting the more than 300 million COVID-19 vaccines administered in the first 150 days of President Biden’s tenure in office.

The White House separately announced on Monday that Biden will travel to Michigan on Saturday, while Vice President Harris will be in Nevada, as part of the administration’s “America’s Back Together” tour. 

The flurry of activity from the DNC and the White House comes as Democrats gear up for the 2022 midterm elections, when their narrow congressional majorities will be on the line. 

Republicans likely need to gain only about half a dozen seats in the House and just one seat in the Senate next year to recapture control of both chambers.

The party of a new president tends to lose ground in midterm elections, as was the case in 2018, when voters handed Democrats the House majority nearly two years into former President Trump’s tenure in the White House.

But Democrats are hoping to stave off such losses in 2022 by touting their response to the coronavirus pandemic, including their passage earlier this year of a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill that was unanimously opposed by Republicans in both chambers.