A2 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, APRIL 3 , 2022
needing only a handful of seats
to take control of the House,
many Democrats have all but
conceded a change in power in
that chamber come next
January. The main question is
what the Republican margin will
look like.
The potential playing field is
large, giving Republicans plenty
of opportunities for gains.
Officials at the National
Republican Congressional
Committee now say they will be
looking at 72 Democratic-held
districts, though many of those
will be difficult to flip.
Meanwhile, the House Majority
PAC, a Democratic group, said it
is prepared to spend roughly
$100 million in 51 media
markets be tween now and
Election Day, an indication of
just how much defense
Democrats will be playing.
Democrats need a change in
the national mood: events or
things to alter what Gallup and
other pollsters continue to
report. Here are three factors to
watch:
Whether the public mood
brightens as people try to move
on from the pandemic.
What happens to inflation and
whether the Federal Reserve can
slow things down without
triggering a recession.
The war in Ukraine and what
a prolonged conflict might do to
the world economy and public
sentiment toward the Biden
administration.
For now, the good jobs report
is something for Biden and the
Democrats to point to as
progress, though recently,
monthly employment numbers
haven’t had any real political
impact. Democrats have only a
few months left to begin turning
the lines on all these polls
upward.with the messy withdrawal from
Afghanistan, and they have not
since recovered. He has,
however, seen some
improvement in assessments of
his handling of the coronavirus
pandemic.
The jobs market might be
churning in a positive direction,
and should be cause for crowing
at the White House. But it was
the action Biden announced on
Thursday to stem fast-rising
gasoline prices that underscored
why Democrats are so worried
about the November midterm
elections and why Republicans
are so bullish.
Biden sought to mitigate the
pain of higher gas prices by
announcing a historically large
disbursal from the Strategic
Petroleum Reserve — a million
barrels a day for the next six
months — while at the same
time trying to prod energy
companies to return some of
their profits to consumers and to
produce more oil and gas in the
short run.
His powers to battle inflation,
however, are limited. Some of
the rise in prices results from the
infusion of trillions of dollars in
spending by the federal
government. Some is the result
of pent-up consumer demand
outrunning supplies. Some of it
comes from pandemic-related
disruptions of global supply
chains, which is a problem likely
to ripple through the world
economy for a long time as
companies and nations readjust
to a post-pandemic world. The
latest surge in gas prices is the
result of the Russian invasion of
Ukraine.
In this environment,
Republicans are understandably
optimistic about their prospects
for November’s midterm
elections. With Republicanswith the direction, a level that
has not changed much since last
summer, with the exception of
January, when there was a dip
during the worst of the omicron
surge.
In recent months, Democrats
have become more optimistic
about the direction of the
country, according to Gallup, but
their level of satisfaction
remains well below the high
marks of a year ago.
Congress as an institution gets
low marks, with 21 percent of
Americans saying they approve
of the job the legislative branch
is doing. That’s been consistent
since last fall but is markedly
lower than it was in the spring of
2021, at a t ime when pieces of
Biden’s agenda had either been
passed or looked like they were
moving toward passage.
Growing dissatisfaction with
Congress among Democrats has
produced nearly all of the overall
decline over the past year. The
Gallup report notes that, after
Biden was elected and after
Democrats won control of the
Senate to go along with their
majority in the House, approval
of Congress among Democrats
surged by 50 percentage points
to 61 percent.
As Biden’s Build Back Better
legislation ran aground in the
Senate and as other Democratic
priorities such as voting rights
made no progress in the upper
chamber, approval of Congress
by Democrats dropped from that
high point to 38 percent last
June and 26 percent in January.
Today it stands at 35 percent.
Meanwhile, as nearly every
public poll has shown, the
president’s approval rating
remains in the low 40s and has
not changed significantly in
months. His numbers began to
tumble last summer, coincidingDownload The
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Friday’s robust
jobs report from
the Labor
Department
offered a
welcome, if
temporary, respite
for the White
House in a season
of otherwise
tough economic
news. But Democrats know
better than to see the
employment gains as the
beginning of a change in their
fortunes.
The Labor Department said the
economy added 431,000 jobs last
month, with the unemployment
rate dropping to 3.6 percent. The
economy has now added 400,
or more jobs in each of the past 11
months, which the Wall Street
Journal reported is the longest
such stretch dating back in
records to 1939.
Economists attribute the
thriving jobs market to a
continued loosening of pandemic-
related restrictions (though a
subvariant of the omicron variant
is looming). More businesses are
bringing workers back to the
office, and many Americans are
trying to return to pre-pandemic
habits and activities, though
cautiously. After two years of
disruption, the economy has now
gained back more than 90
percent of all the jobs lost at the
beginning of the pandemic.
All of that is news that
President Biden and the
Democrats can tout as progress.
For a political reality check,
however, here are some of the
headlines on the Gallup
organization’s website this past
week, based on their polling in
March:
“Inflation Dominates
Americans’ Economic Concerns
in March”
“Americans’ Energy Worries
Surge”
“Americans Remain Largely
Dissatisfied With Direction of U.S.”
“Congressional Approval
Remains Low in March”
“Biden’s Job Rating Still Tepid;
Covid-19, Russia Handling Up”
Take those headlines one at a
time. Gallup finds that 21
percent of Americans cite
inflation or gas prices as the
nation’s most important
problem, with another 11 percent
citing the general economy.
That’s about double the number
who named those three issues as
the biggest problem in January.
Nearly half of all Americans
say they worry a great deal about
the affordability and availability
of energy. A y ear ago it was 37
percent, and in 2020 it was 22
percent, at a t ime when energy
prices were low because of
reduced economic activity due to
the pandemic.
Higher prices and other
concerns have helped to keep
Americans in a gloomy mood
about the direction of the
country. About one quarter of all
Americans say they are satisfiedDespite the strong jobs report, a sour mood prevails
DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/THE WASHINGTON POST
President Biden delivers remarks Friday on the March jobs report. Nearly half of all Americans say
they worry a g reat deal about the affordability and availability of energ y. Biden’s move to disburse oil
from the strategic reserve underscored why Democr ats are so worried.Dan Balz
THE SUNDAY
TAKETALK SHOWSGuests to be interviewed Sunday on major television talk shows9 a.m. FOX NEWS SUNDAY (WTTG)
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.); Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.);
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby.
9 a.m. STATE OF THE UNION (CNN)
Secretary of State Antony Blinken; NATO Secretary-General
Jens Stoltenberg; Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R); Rep. Ro
Khanna (D-Calif.).
9 a.m. THIS WEEK (ABC, WJLA)
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain; Sen. Roy Blunt (R-
Mo.).
9 a.m. WHITE HOUSE CHRONICLE (PBS, WETA)
S heila Hollis, acting executive director of the U.S. Energy
Association, and Charlie Riedl, executive director of the
Center for LNG at the Natural Gas Supply Association,
discuss President Biden’s policy to export more liquefied
natural gas to Europe.
10 a.m. THIS IS AMERICA & THE WORLD (PBS, WETA)
Daniel S. Hamilton, senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins
Foreign Policy Institute, discusses how R ussia’s invasion of
Ukraine has revealed the fragility of world order and what
scenarios lie ahead for the region and the planet.
10:30 a.m. MEET THE PRESS (NBC, WRC)
Blinken; former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
10:30 a.m. FACE THE NATION (CBS, WUSA)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; Rep. Jamie B.
Raskin (D-Md.); New York Mayor Eric Adams.
BY EVA DOUSHANGHAI — Chinese tech giant
Huawei Technologies has promot-
ed chief financial officer Meng
Wanzhou to a key role just half a
year after the end of her U.S. extra-
dition fight, setting up a potential
family succession at one of China’s
most important companies.
The promotion makes 50-year-
old Meng, daughter of Hua wei
founder Ren Zhengfei, one of
three rotating chairs who helm
Huawei for six-month intervals.
Ren, 77, remains chief executive.
Ren had long said his children
would not succeed him at Huawei.
Meng, who spent most of her Hua-
wei career in the finance depart-
ment, was widely seen as lacking
the engineering expertise thatwould allow Huawei’s employees
to accept her as their leader.
Meng entered the internation-
al spotlight in December 2018,
when she was detained in Canada
at the request of U.S. authorities.
Her detention sparked a global
standoff after China jailed two
Canadian nationals on vague
charges, in what Western officials
said was an example of “hostage
diplomacy.” Meng remained in
house arrest in Vancouver for al-
most three years battling extradi-
tion to the United States.
She returned to China in Sep-
tember after cutting a deal with
the U.S. Justice Department in
which she acknowledged helping
to conceal the company’s direct
dealings in Iran, which violated
U.S. sanctions. While Meng ad-mitted illegal conduct, she did not
have to plead guilty as part of a
deferred prosecution agreement.
Huawei, which reported
$100 billion in revenue last year, is
the world’s largest telecommuni-
cati ons equipment supplier by
sales. The company’s global ad-
vance has raised concerns for
Washington because of its close
ties with C hinese government and
the telecom sector’s importance to
national security investigations
and government surveillance.
Meng will keep her place as
chief financial officer. She replac-
es Guo Ping, who joined Hua wei
shortly after its establishment
and helped organize the compa-
ny’s defense for its first major
clash with the West, an intellectu-
al property lawsuit from Cisco
Systems in 2003. The other two
rotating chairmen, Ken Hu and
Eric Xu, remain in place.
Huawei spokeswoman Evita
Cao said in a statement Saturday
that Guo is now chairman of the
company’s supervisory board,
which oversees top executives on
behalf of shareholders. Cao said
131,507 Huawei employees hold
shares in the company, which is
not publicly listed.
Ren has not announced when
he will retire or what the longer-
term succession plan will be.
There b een speculation that Ren
ultimately hopes to install Meng
as his successor.
Cao said Saturday that Hua-
wei’s succession plan relies on
collective leadership.
Meng made her first public ap-
pearance since her return to China
at a news conference on Monday.
“The past four years, there have
been tremendous changes in the
world and in China,” she said. “In
the few months that I’ve been
back, I’ve been trying to catch up.
I hope I will catch up.”Huawei’s CFO promoted to a top post
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