President Joe Biden is probably the most capable president in recent history, at least when it comes to taking on James Buchanan or Jimmy Carter as the worst president in history. His handling of just about every crisis thrown at his administration has been so utterly disastrous that it’s almost as if they want to make things worse.

Today, the Biden Administration is expected to announce the release of 50 million barrels of oil in an effort to combat the energy crisis happening during one of the busiest travel seasons of the year. If you check out the government’s Energy Information Administration site, you’ll see that Americans averaged about 18.16 million barrels per day in 2020. So, the Biden administration is releasing about three days’ worth of oil while Americans are doing all our traveling.

It’s not just us. Several countries appear to be planning to do the same thing.

This comes after months of Biden attacking any attempt to increase U.S. production domestically, shutting down projects and pipelines aimed at doing just that. At the same time, he begged the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to just churn out more oil in an effort to stave off the looming energy crisis.

The message from the Biden Administration has already been clear: The U.S. is getting out of the oil production game, no matter how much it hurts us, but we don’t want it to hurt too much so we just need other people to make it for us.

Given America’s history with oil-producing countries in the Middle East, it seems like such a strategy would be risky at best.

However, if it wasn’t clear before, it should be now. Biden’s own Energy Secretary is now saying it out loud.

Biden Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on rising gas prices: "We're working through an energy transition…The reality is, we have to take some time to get off of oil and gas, we recognize this. This is a transition." pic.twitter.com/ZOCJIdZCa5

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 22, 2021

The aim is to get Americans off oil and gas, and her admission essentially confirms that the administration’s goal is just that. What they appear to have not anticipated is how painful it would be on Americans — and how much it would affect their popularity.

The Biden Administration has been focused on immediate, fundamental changes to American society thanks in part to their narrow majority in Congress and their dwindling popularity among American voters. They know their time is limited and they want to make incredibly drastic structural changes to how America operates before leaving office.

Their Hail Mary, though, has cost them what little support they already had and put a major hurt on American consumers. Their plan to investigate oil and gas companies for gouging and this plan to release oil from our strategic reserves are deflections from the source of the problem (their own policies) and stand to just make things worse.

But it didn’t have to be that way at all.

The Keystone XL Pipeline and other pipeline and drilling operations would have drastically increased American production. Biden wants us to focus on overseas producers, like OPEC, that produce what they can with the available resources. We are reliant on these foreign entities because Biden and the Democrats have made us dependent on them. They want America to stop producing and to use less oil and gas in the name of environmentalism.

But their inability (or refusal) to predict this outcome — a shortage and growing hostility from American consumers — makes it clear that they aren’t capable of making long-term plans work. The previous administration made America more energy independent and we experienced low prices that only grew in proportion to the needs of the vehicles we used. Those prices are now spiking not because of “seasonal” fluctuations or increased use, but because the administration has actively worked to make sure America isn’t producing oil and gas.

As with Afghanistan, inflation, and other crises we’ve been experiencing, the Biden Administration has been asleep at the wheel, focused only on ideological goals and not considering the reality of the situation.

This energy dependence we’re now facing (again) won’t drive Americans toward electric vehicles or to use their cars and trucks less. There was no plan to transition us away from oil and gas. They just decided to get it all done in one fell swoop and the result was unnecessary hardship on consumers.

Americans aren’t going to change their habits because of this. They will simply drive to the polls to vote out the people who inflicted this pain on them.