At Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball Kyle Kondik and J. Miles Coleman cite five “warning signs” for the Biden Administration as President Biden’s first year in office concludes:
- Biden’s overall job approval has stagnated
- Biden is having trouble with key subgroups
- Republicans are gaining strength
- Inflation has led to political turbulence in the past…
- … and the public sees an administration not focused on its top concerns
to which I would add a sixth: the Congressional progressives, who clearly have the president’s ear, want him to double down on “Build Back Better” and do what he can to get it enacted as-is. Devoting his energies to that effort would almost certainly aggravate the other five. He would be better off if they were advising him to devoting 100% of his attention to COVID-19. Or just maintain a low profile.
There seems to be a lot of these considerations going around. To riff off your point, a more targeted $1B BBB instead of 6 would probably be much more palatable to Manchin and Synema, pass, and give the Dems something to run on for the fall.
The damn the torpedoes attitude of the progressives, as well as Biden’s weakness in pushing back, could be suicidal.