With no room for error — none — in the U.S. Senate and the filibuster an artifact of the Jim Crow era as stubborn as Sens. Manchin and Sinema, the Democrats’ majority there is more theoretical than practical. It has helped President Joe Biden “substantively, but not politically,” notes The Atlantic‘s Russell Berman. Meaning Democrats control the Senate but cannot pass much through it. It means Biden’s ambitious economic package goes nowhere. It means his effort to pass voting rights legislation died Wednesday. Not that Democrats had any other choice than to take the loss. Their base had to see them fail trying.
Biden and alllies in the Senate hold a weak hand.
Biden might have had the nerve to stand for a nearly two-hour press conference Wednesday, but he lacks the verve to sell his accomplishments forcefully enough to make them stand out to a polling-obsessed press corps.
E.J. Dionne cites a short list:
With 6.2 million jobs created on his watch, the unemployment rate is at 3.9 percent, far lower than anyone anticipated when he took office. Gross domestic product is up and workers have more bargaining power than they’ve enjoyed in decades.
Nearly 210 million Americans are fully vaccinated, as Biden noted, through more than a half-billion shots. With very narrow congressional majorities, Biden secured his $1.9 trillion economic relief package and a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.
It’s a good record. The problem is that much of this occurred in the first part of Biden’s opening year. His approval ratings then, a healthy 50 percent or better,, reflected this.
But a Covid-weary public is in “what have you done for me lately” mode. Hence, Biden’s polling numbers in the 40s. Free Covid tests and N95 masks are little relief either from pandemic deaths pushing 900,000 or from gas fill-ups topping $50.
Virus and inflation, virus and inflation need to be Biden’s focus, Dionne suggests. He needs to be caught fighting both. Weekly.
“Going forward,” Dionne writes, “he needs to settle on a strategy that reaches toward as much normality as is consistent with the virus threat, and he needs to put an end to confusing messaging from various parts of the government. Neither will be easy.”
That was clear from reporters’ questions and Biden’s answers at Wednesday’s press conference.
And on the biggest struggle of this generation, the battle for voting rights and democracy, Trumpified Republicans are plainly committed to giving the states they run free rein to suppress votes and subvert elections.
Democrats need to enact whatever they can of the Build Back Better legislation and then move on to passing pieces of what’s left individually, if only to force the question Biden asked of Republicans at his news conference: “What are they for?” And whatever happens the next few days on voting rights, they cannot walk away from the struggle — in Washington or in the states.
That repeated attack was perhaps Biden’s best messaging of the day.
“What are Republicans for? What are they for? Name me one thing they’re for?”
Not for helping meet people’s material needs. Not for taming the climate that has coasts flooding and tornadoes ripping up communities. Not for defending the Constitution they swore oaths to defend.
The one thing Trump-licking Republicans have demonstrated they are for is preserving their own power by any means necessary, including by jetisoning the very principles of government of the people, by the people, for the people upon which the nation is founded. Including by subverting elections and promoting hatred of Black and brown citizens.
Biden needs to stick with that message while doing a better job of conveying that he’s doing a better job. Democrats are for governing. Republicans are for themselves.