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*****
With new inflation numbers due out soon, all of America is asking the same question:
What can and will Team Biden-Harris-Klain-Pelosi-Schumer do to help both the nation and the Democratic Party’s midterm prospects?
Today, President Biden does this:
10:45 AM THE PRESIDENT delivers remarks on support for Ukrainians defending their country and their freedom against Russia’s brutal war
One variable, too little discussed, is why the highly successful Biden administration efforts to fight Putin have not led to a significant bump up in the president’s job approval ratings.
A related topic: Is it possible that such a bump will occur before the midterms, if the war effort goes positively?
I have (obvious) theories about the first matter; I don’t see any reason as of now to think the second will occur.
Today’s topic, then is to survey the literature on Democratic efforts to do whatever can be done to change their November fortunes for the better.
Conclusions first:
1. There are exactly (or: approximately) seventeen theories about how Team Biden should pursue some combination of legislative victories (including some bipartisan and some partisan – and including some where Democrats argue they can win by losing, if Republicans are painted as obstructionists) and executive action to put points on the board.
2. The new (and, apparently, growing) tensions between the White House and Speaker Nancy Pelosi add a wrinkling wrinkle that makes legislative success and party comity all the less likely.
3. Republican confidence is sky high (despite Kevin McCarthy’s bad week), while Democrats are frantic – and psychology and confidence matter in politics almost as much as they do in shooting free throws.
Karl Rove, who knows a thing or eight about psychology and confidence, uses his Wall Street Journal column to consider all the potential routes for the Democrats to avoid a November rout – and rejects them all as improbable or insufficient.
On his long list: the nation rallies around the commander in chief, fresh legislative victories, lower inflation, better economic news, a Supreme Court decision on abortion, cancelling student debt, boffo fundraising, an election message of “jobs and results,” and/or running against Donald Trump.
Team Biden-Harris-Klain-Pelosi-Schumer have all sorts of legislative aspirations. Any of them taken separately would be a heavy lift, with the clock ticking towards summer (and then, before we all know it, towards fall).
But as in a mythical amusement park attraction that merges clown cars with bumper cars, the odds of ANY of the various Capitol Hill gambits passing are lowered substantially by the simultaneous attempt to pass them all, or, at least, to consider trying to pass them all.
Take, for instance, the China competitiveness bill, a measure that has overwhelming bipartisan and bicameral support, but that still requires an old fashioned conference committee to get something to the president’s desk:
“At least”??!!
“A few”??!!
“Maybe”??!!
How about the various theories of the case about how to (or not…) combine legislative must-pass vehicles, such as pandemic relief and Ukraine aid?
President Joe Biden’s latest request for military aid to Ukraine is set to reach Congress as early as Thursday — and promptly get mired in legislative quicksand.
Top Republicans are shrugging off Democrats’ efforts to combine the new Ukraine assistance with a bipartisan agreement on Covid relief funding. GOP senators are threatening to force difficult votes on the Biden administration’s divisive decision to end pandemic-era curbs on immigration at the southern border, pressing an issue that Democrats are already lamenting that the White House has mishandled….
House Democratic leaders have privately acknowledged to members that more Covid aid would likely need to be attached to another must-pass bill in order to get it through the Senate, though there’s been no specific push to combine them. The House won’t address either issue until at least May 10, when lawmakers return after a week-long recess for Ramadan.
How about reviving some skinny slim version of Build Back Better?
With the midterm elections months away, many Democrats are eager to try to kick-start talks before campaign-season politics further complicate the effort—and before they possibly lose their thin control of the Senate and House.
“I think it’s a make-or-break moment for the elements of Build Back Better that are still on the table,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.). “The clock is ticking. This is a perishable moment….”
Forging an agreement on energy policy that can win broad support from Democrats, who prioritize aid for clean energy sources such as wind and solar power, and Republicans, who want to support fossil fuels, will be challenging.
“Given how dysfunctional Congress is right now, someone is taking too many edibles if they think they can deal with a slimmed-down [Build Back Better] in July or August,” said Jim Manley, who was a top aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “Congress simply can’t deal with it. It’s now or never and leaning towards never.”
How about taking on gas prices?
Top congressional Democrats are exploring new proposals to suspend the gas tax and penalize giant energy corporations, hoping to lower prices as part of a broader effort to blunt the financial and political fallout from soaring inflation….
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has asked his caucus in recent days to craft proposals that ratchet up federal enforcement targeting the energy sector, according to Democratic aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe their deliberations. A wide array of Democrats, including Sens. Maria Cantwell (Wash.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), are now finalizing measures that would impose steep fines for abuse, crack down on corporate consolidation or set up new taxes on oil and gas companies’ profit windfalls, the sources said.
Some in the party even are pushing to adopt the bills before Memorial Day weekend, a travel-heavy holiday that marks the beginning of summer. But they face an uphill battle, particularly in the Senate, where Republicans have exhibited little appetite for teaming up with Democrats and taking aim at the energy industry.
Democrats still hope they can ultimately mount an effective and swift policy response to an economic quandary that looms over this fall’s midterm elections….
Even if this legislative push fails, though, Democratic leaders sense a political opportunity: They say they can demonstrate their commitment to tackling inflation while portraying Republicans — if they try to block the forthcoming bills — as obstructing Congress from addressing Americans’ urgent financial needs….
Privately, House Democrats discussed their options to combat inflation at a caucus-wide meeting Wednesday morning. They focused on early legislative efforts targeting the rising costs of food, fertilizer and gasoline, according to a senior Democratic aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the gathering.
Notice a thematic through line here?
Lots of intentions, and/but a lack of intra-party, bicameral agreement, a million and one details to work out, and a calendar ticking faster than a busted North Korea analogue watch.
One way to view the Democrats’ challenge: they need to win back swing voters (alienated by the Biden performance on economics, the pandemic, and cultural issues), while also revving up their base voters, who are displeased with said performance for a variety of reasons.
Mike Bloomberg says the Ds are effing up on charter schools, while the New York Times says unions are cratering:
Labor politics have changed forever. There are fewer union voters, and the ones who remain are less Democratic, said Jeff Broxmeyer, a political scientist at the University of Toledo. Since 1990, the percentage of Ohio workers represented by unions has slipped from 23.2 percent to 13 percent.
“The organizational capacity of the Democratic Party in northwest Ohio is the organizational capacity of organized labor, and organized labor is much diminished,” he said. “Now we’re at the endgame.”
Polls show young people are not jazzed, so the White House continues its exploration of something something on student loan debt, a policy Pandora’s Box as fraught as cutting the gas tax:
President Joe Biden has signaled he might forgive some student loan debt and further extend the federal moratorium on repayments, a lawmaker who discussed the issue with him said Wednesday.
The White House was notably more measured about Biden’s stance… (Associated Press)
Two more items that Steve Ricchetti and Mike Donilon would likely have to acknowledge the truth of privately.
1. The victory laps of the right have already started, as in Dan Henninger:
The Washington Democrats wasted their political capital in 2021 trying to create a once-and-for-all U.S. entitlement state with Build Back Better. That became a spectacle of political failure. So Sen. Elizabeth Warren, another progressive oracle, argued last weekend that the party’s survival depends on passing legislation to regulate drug prices and leaning on Mr. Biden to issue a long list of executive orders. Likely political resonance: about zero.
Six months before Election Day, this is the political landscape: Most voters see House and Senate Democrats as largely irrelevant to their lives, which today consist of climbing out of a pandemic amid rising inflation, crime and illegal border crossings.
That the Democrats are about to tumble down the mountain has nothing to do with their unheard message and everything to do with conscious policy choices.
2. If there is an October Surprise coming, it is as likely to be about Hunter Biden as it is about anything else, foreshadowed by these new Fox News and New York Post stories.
****
If you have not watched the remarks by the daughters of Madeleine Albright at the very lovely memorial service for her, you should. They were wonderful and heartbreaking.
At that service, President Biden sat with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, two Democrats who know a ton about what it takes to be a successful president, and two people who long held the view that their pal Joey would not necessarily be fantastic at the job of running the Oval Office.
Today’s snapshot suggests that their instincts might have been right.
Joe Biden has a handful of months to prove to them (and the world) that they were wrong, that he can lead his party against the Republicans as effectively as he has led the world against Putin.