People are upset and uncertain, says US President Joe Biden on poll drubbing for Democrats

After the Democratic election loss in Virginia governor race, US President Joe Biden has said that people in the country are ''upset and uncertain about a lot of things,'' seeking to deflect blame on his presidency.

Vowing to ''push very hard'' for his agenda, Biden said ''I do know people want us to get things done.''

"And that's why I'm continuing to push very hard for the Democratic Party to move along and pass my infrastructure bill and my Build Back Better bill."

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However, Biden pushed back against the notion that the off-year election results were a repudiation of his presidency.

He suggested that his inability to get Congress to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure deal and a $1.75 trillion package of social and climate programmes ahead of the voting did not make a difference.

His remarks came after Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe lost to his Republican rival Glenn Youngkin in Virginia's governor race. In US elections 2020, Biden had won by 10 percentage points in the state.

White House officials noted that while Virginia has leaned Democratic in recent years, the sitting president’s party has lost the governor’s race in 11 of 12 elections there.

There were also Republican gains across New York City and a conservative backlash to a liberal proposal in Minneapolis, the city where African American George Floyd was murdered by police, to dismantle the local force.

"Terry McAuliffe has been saying for weeks that his fate was tied to the progress of negotiations here on Capitol Hill," Senate majority whip Dick Durbin told reporters, echoing Biden.

"And there ought to be a clear message to my party and all those who support it to get the job done."

Biden is facing a thorny path to the November 2022 midterm elections. His approval ratings have also nosedived.

He has failed to bring together the increasingly polarised Democratic factions.

Despite his bold action on the climate in Glasgow at the weekend, he lacked tangible progress in Washington on his environmental goals reverberated through the COP26 summit, underscoring the damage being inflicted on his agenda by months of infighting.

(With inputs from agencies)