Joe Biden sat out the 2016 presidential election as he mourned the death of his son, Beau. Processing that loss gave Biden time to absorb lessons from his eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president. His personal loss, like the others before, taught him time is precious. He seems determined now to make the most of it.
Obama’s biggest accomplishment was The Affordable Care Act, flaws and all. Months spent negotiating changes weakened the bill and allowed it to pass, but time lost trying to win some Republican support was for nothing. As president, Biden seems uninterested in wasting effort again on bad-faith negotiators. Time is fleeting, and 2022 is just over the horizon.
Another takeaway from his years in the Obama administration is that news of what Democrats deliver in Washington stays in Washington unless, as the classic speech advice goes, you tell ’em you told ’em. Or in this case, you tell ’em what you did for ’em.
Thus, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris along with their spouses embark this week on a sort of News of the World, seven-state tour to let Americans in the hinterlands know what Democrats under the Biden adminaistration have done to make their lives better.
Axios bullet-points their week:
- Today, Biden will launch what he’s branding the “Help is Here” campaign with a speech at the White House. Vice President Harris and the Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff will headline a launch event in Nevada. Dr. Jill Biden, a teacher, will travel to New Jersey to emphasize the impact of the bill on schools and students.
- Tuesday’s theme will be “help for small business.” The president will fly to Pennsylvania, and the vice president and second gentleman will visit Colorado.
- Wednesday — “help for schools” — will feature the first lady in New Hampshire and the second gentleman in New Mexico.
- Thursday — “help to stay in your home” — will highlight measures in the bill to cover back rent, protect people against eviction and aid people experiencing homelessness.
- Friday — “help immediately with direct checks” — will have Biden and Harris in Georgia.
Republican attempts to attack The American Rescue Plan Act, Biden’s signature accomplishment — to date anyway — fell flat on the Sunday talking heads shows. Attacking aid that puts food on the tables of struggling constituents back home is a bad look. Avoiding that, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Tex.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) instead sang Republican standards about scary, brown-skinned immigrants.
Mid-term elections go poorly for the incumbent party in normal times. Obama’s economic rescue was already a memory and the ACA had yet to take effect by Repiublicans’ November 2010 sweep. (Democrats lost 63 House seats and six Senate seats.) Democrats are betting these are not normal times, James Downie observed at the Washington Post:
The best way to keep Democrats’ assistance top of mind with voters is to keep passing more needed assistance. The Biden White House, fortunately, seems to recognize this, with infrastructure aid and a $15 minimum wage still on the agenda. Already some moderate Democrats — especially Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) — are wavering. They must understand that the more voters see Democrats working for them, the better the party’s fortunes. As for the inevitable question of how to pay for it, Democrats can raise trillions in revenue from politically popular proposals such as a wealth tax, a higher top income-tax rate and increased funding for IRS crackdowns on tax-dodging. The bigger the avalanche of aid, the more Republicans will be forced to rely on voter suppression and other counter-majoritarian tactics — which themselves can be blunted if Senate Democrats also push through the voting rights bill that the House passed earlier this month.
The next 20 months will be a battle royale for control of the last two years of Biden’s term. Democrats mean to run on the rescue bill and remind voters at every turn of Republicans’ unified refusal to help:
“This is absolutely something I will campaign on next year,” said Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who may be the most vulnerable incumbent Senate Democrat in the country on the ballot in 2022. Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, who heads the Democratic Senate campaign arm, said he would go on “offense” against Republicans who opposed the bill and sketched out their attack: “Every Republican said no in a time of need.”
After decades of Republicans undermining federal capabilities and public confidence in them, Biden and his party mean to prove just what government is there for.
Update: Added “Republicans” in last line to clear up the ambiguity. #HelpIsHere