Biden says Virginia race wasn’t blowback against him

By COLLEEN LONG and AAMER MADHANI
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden says the Democrats’ setbacks in Tuesday’s elections underscore that the party needs to “produce for the American people.” But he’s pushing back against the notion that the off-year election results were a repudiation of his presidency. Biden insisted Wednesday that his inability to get Congress to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure deal and a $1.75 trillion package of social and climate programs ahead of Tuesday’s vote didn’t make a difference. In Virginia’s governor’s race, Democrat Terry McAuliffe lost to first-time Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin in a state that Biden won by 10 percentage points a year ago.