United States of America eSeries: A 2012 essay predicted all of Biden's problems

Sunday May 23, 2021

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by Paul LeBlanc and Zachary B. Wolf

: Asymmetric politics

President Joe Biden has pledged to seek out bipartisan solutions for big-ticket items, but he's running into a wall of no from Republicans in Washington, where legislation on infrastructure, voting rights, guns and most strikingly the January 6 investigative commission is stuck.

Biden's ability to move his colleagues across the aisle, which he repeatedly touted on the campaign trail, rests on an assumption of collective facts, good faith negotiation and an ability to operate above partisan politics for the public benefit. But the Republican Party that Biden now faces isn't the same one he navigated for decades as a senator or even as President Barack Obama's vice president.

Read this essay from 2012. A Washington Post essay from nearly 10 years ago described congressional extremists, their rejection of truth, a party turning into authoritarians or "an apocalyptic cult." It bore a striking headline:

"Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem."

The conspiratorial streak pre-dates Trump. CNN's John Harwood wrote of that essay on Sunday, "The piece demonstrates more than the foresight of its political scientist authors, Tom Mann of the center-left Brookings Institution and Norm Ornstein of the center-right American Enterprise Institute. It shows the disease within the Republican Party had spread long before Trump metastasized it.

What ailed the party in 2012 has worsened. Conspiracies like the Big Lie have become central to the party's platform and crystallized what appears to be relentless opposition to Biden's agenda at almost every turn.

Polling evidence suggests the alternate realities espoused by GOP lawmakers are taking hold in the party at scale. For example, a CNN poll in late April found that 70% of Republican respondents said they did not think Biden legitimately won enough votes to be President.

A push in the other direction. CNN's Donie O'Sullivan reports that evangelical pastors are preaching against QAnon, the Trump-aligned conspiracy theory. That includes Pastor Ben Marsh, of First Alliance Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who spoke up after seeing a Christian flag carried by protesters on January 6 because one also sits on the stage that he delivers sermons from.

"It was horrifying to me," Marsh told CNN Business. He said he took the flag down and in an impassioned speech, he told his congregation that the rioters had been led astray because "pastors had lied to them."

Read the whole story here.

: White House week ahead

Negotiations on a number of key Biden agenda items are sputtering out before Memorial Day weekend effectively pauses work in Washington.

The House is already out of town, and the Senate is about to hit its own holiday pause. Biden, meanwhile, still has a busy few days ahead. Here's a look at the week ahead as outlined by White House press secretary Jen Psaki last week:

Monday. Biden will travel to FEMA Headquarters in DC for a briefing on the Atlantic hurricane outlook.

Tuesday. The President will host the family of George Floyd at the White House on Tuesday to mark the one-year anniversary of his death at the hands of police, a White House official confirmed to CNN.

Psaki said last week that the White House will commemorate the anniversary of Floyd's death, telling reporters that "it was a moment that impacted millions of Americans and certainly the President on a personal level."

Thursday. Biden travels to Cleveland for remarks on the economy.

Friday. The White House will unveil the new budget before Biden departs for Wilmington, Delaware, for the Memorial Day Holiday.

: Biden's approval holds steady

A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds Biden's approval rating stands at 53% with a disapproval rating of 41%. A Gallup poll puts the split at 54% approving and 40% disapproving.

A lot has happened since Biden took office. Among other things, we've seen:

A failed impeachment trial
A major economic and coronavirus relief package signed into law
The continuation of a mass vaccination campaign

But so far, during the still early days of the Biden White House, nothing seems to have significantly moved public opinion.

Some context from CNN's Harry Enten: As I noted last month, Biden's approval rating is the most consistent through the early part of his presidency of any president since World War II. That's even more the case now than it was in April.

To put this in some recent perspective, look at what was happening during then-President Donald Trump's first four months in office. Recall that was the presidency in which supposedly nothing mattered.

Trump's approval rating had moved significantly by this point. He started off with an approval rating of around 45% and was in the 30s by this point.

: Covid-19 cases in sharp decline

The remarkable decline in US coronavirus cases is fueling even more optimism about the months ahead as warm weather and loosening restrictions begin to overlap.

We're not there yet. So far, about 61% of US adults have gotten at least one Covid-19 shot and more than 49% are fully vaccinated, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But it's clear even now that vaccines are delivering the relief that public health experts had promised, and their projections about the future are increasingly void of the "ifs" and "buts" that littered earlier forecasts.

"As each week passes and as we continue to see progress, these data give me hope,"Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, told reporters Friday.

Another state reaches the 70% threshold. Rhode Island is now the eighth state to have administered at least one Covid-19 shot to 70% of its adult population, according to the CDC.

The state joins Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Vermont, which have also vaccinated at least 70% of their adult population.

Remember Biden's goal. Earlier this month, the President set a goal of administering at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose to 70% of American adults by July 4 -- and has said Americans will be able to celebrate Independence Day by then with a true semblance of normalcy.

It's OK if you're not ready to take off your mask. Take it from Dr. Anthony Fauci. "Fears like that are not irrational," he said during the White House Covid-19 briefing.

"You can understand that when people have been following a certain trend for a considerable period of time, that it may take time for them to adjust. So I would not say that that's irrational, I'd say that's understandable."

Incentive programs are working. To help get more shots into arms, some state leaders have rolled out specific incentives for their residents, including road maps to normalcy and cash.

"I think the reason they work is because the vast number of people who are not yet vaccinated are actually not opposed to getting vaccinated, they're just not prioritizing it very high," White House senior Covid-19 adviser Andy Slavitt said Friday. "So things that draw attention to it, like the lotteries... are -- not surprisingly -- very effective."

The bottom line. Dr. Eric Topol, an expert on the use of data in medical research puts it this way: Even formidable variants have not been able to override strong protection by vaccination.

What are the top 5 ways to maintain that? Vaccination Vaccination Vaccination Vaccination Vaccination.

: What are we doing here?

We're trying to connect the dots at a time of political, cultural and economic upheaval.