Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease doctor, tells Axios, “Right now, we’re still in pandemic mode, because we have 160,000 new infections a day. That’s not even modestly good control … which means it’s a public health threat.” Fauci adds, “In a country of our size, you can’t be hanging around and having 100,000 infections a day. You’ve got to get well below 10,000 before you start feeling comfortable.”
Covid won’t die. But there are signs of life from national Democrats as the Delta variant continues to ravage the country, especially among the unvaccinated.
In a throw-down speech Thursday, President Joe Biden flexed his adminstration’s regulatory muscle and ordered businesses with more than 100 employees to require their workers to be immunized or else test them each week:
Biden also said that he would require most health-care facilities that accept Medicare or Medicaid funding to vaccinate their employees, which the White House believes will cover 50,000 locations.
And the president signed an executive order compelling all federal employees to get vaccinated — without an option for those who prefer to be regularly tested instead — in an effort to create a model he hopes state governments will embrace. He is also ordering all staffers in Head Start programs, along with Defense Department and federally operated schools for Native Americans, to be vaccinated.
But Biden was not done:
Biden adopted a newly antagonistic tone toward the unvaccinated Thursday, underlining his shift from cajoling to coercion as he placed blame on those still refusing to get shots for harming other Americans. “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin,” Biden said. “And your refusal has cost all of us.”
A Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee memo Greg Sargent obtained indicates that Democrats mean to lean into Republicans for perpetuating the country’s pain and suffering, both economic and medical (Washington Post):
“House Republicans have lied about its impact” and “dangerously rejected medical guidance to wear masks and social distance,” the memo says, adding that “extremist Republicans” have “even encouraged Americans to consume horse and cattle dewormer.”
House Republicans and GOP candidates have spread disinformation about the virus, have staged epic fake-outrage fests about mask mandates, have demagogued about vaccines in ridiculous, hallucinogenic and obscenely wretched ways, and have pushed the rankest of absurdities to undermine confidence in federal health officials.
Critically, the memo notes that if Republicans continue impeding our covid response, that will stand in the way of “getting Americans back to work.” And it’s true that the backsliding on covid is showing serious signs of harming the economic recovery.
Republicans are undermining Covid response so they can blame Joe Biden and Democrats for failure to rein in the pandemic, when in fact the GOP is actively sabotaging the country in a way that’s harming the economy and killing Americans. Cynical is too mild a term for it. Villainous does not quite cover it either.
A populous weary of nearly two years of masks, disease and death has, as Biden said, run out of patience with the petulance of self-described patriots who refuse to come to aid their country in a time of crisis. Patriots do not risk their country or their neighbors over political pique.
Partisan redistricting ahead of the 2022 elections is likely to hand control of the House of Representatives back to Republicans. But Dave Wasserman of Cook’s Political Report suggests the mood of the country could be a wild card. Suburban and educated whites could turn against Republicans over their tantrums about masks and vaccines:
“If independent voters begin to see Republicans as interfering with their ability to get back to normal, because they are flirting with things that are contrary to medical expertise,” Wasserman told me, “it makes it easier for Democrats to cast Republicans as a political fringe movement.”
That, Wasserman notes, could speak to voters who believe impeding our covid recovery is keeping us from “getting the economy back to normal,” and enabling them to “get back to their pre-covid lives.”
This debate could also “resonate with the highest propensity voters who are college graduates,” Wasserman said. The Virginia gubernatorial contest is a test: Democrats are aggressively engaging the debate on vaccines and masks, and if they win with good turnout among suburban and educated voters, that could be a “template.”
Dan Pfeiffer notes that while Republicans think they can weaponize masks and mandates for the midterms, they may be misreading the room. Vaccine mandates enjoy widespread support in a Politico/Morning Consult from August: about 55% including a third of Trump 2020 voters.
To capitalize on that Democrats need to do three things, Pfeiffer writes. They need to make Republicans wear their opposition to vaccine and mask mandates like an albatross and “hold them accountable for enabling the unvaccinated minority to put our children in danger.”
Next, Democrats should stop tiptoeing around vaccine mandates. He offers some Navigator Research language that tests 17 points better than Republican messaging:
These types of requirements have been around for decades. Students are typically required to receive the smallpox and polio vaccine, and it only makes sense to require the coronavirus vaccine as well.
Finally, they must actively tout Biden’s efforts to beat back the virus:
Vaccinated adults suffer through the inconveniences of masks and the anxiety of becoming one of the very rare breakthrough cases. But kids under 12 do not have the choice to get vaccinated. Across the country, they are returning to school without masks or any other preventative measures in place. The number of cases is rising and pediatric wards are filling up in several states.
This is “a direct result of Republican leadership” of which voters need relentless reminding.
Odds are against Democrats holding their ground or gaining in 2022. Or at least they would be in normal times. Promising voters a return to normal may just be the message that works for them. Plus a whole lot of worn shoe leather.