The challenges ahead (Biden's America)

[N.E. Brigand]

In a bizarre screed issued today, Donald Trump complains that Mitch McConnell (whom Trump calls a "Broken Old Crow" who should have resigned "a long time ago"), because he voted for the infrastructure bill (and attended the signing ceremony at the White House this week), has "given Democrats a great political lift" so that they achieved "a big victory" and have "the wind at their back."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

McConnell did not actually attend the signing ceremony, though Biden did give him a shout out.

[N.E. Brigand]

I didn't realize that; thanks for the correction.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

House Closes in on Vote for $2 Trillion Bill

Of course, Manchin and Sinema are still wild cards in the senate. Manchin did say that he did not object to holding a vote by the end of the year, but he didn't say that he will vote yes. I doubt he would vote yes on the current bill with even the very limited paid leave provision included, but we'll see.

[N.E. Brigand]

Per a new Quinnipiac poll, a clear majority of the U.S. public approves both (A) the infrastructure bill that was passed with votes from almost all Congressional Democrats and a small minority of Congressional Republicans and signed into law by Joe Biden this week (57%-37%) and (B) the provisions in the Build Back Better bill proposed by Biden that is slowly working through Congress that if passed into law, will do so with few or no Republican Congressional votes (58%-38%).

And yet, the same poll, of the same people, finds that Joe Biden's approval numbers are lower than ever (36%-53%) and that a plurality wants Republicans to retake Congress next year (46%-38%).

So the public likes these bills but also wishes they didn't exist?

Because Republicans had two years of controlling the Presidency and both houses of Congress and couldn't get an infrastructure bill passed (not even after Congressional Democrat leaders offered their support), and Republicans have no interest in passing anything like BBB.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The Build Back Better bill has passed the House. All Democrats except Jared Golden of Maine voted for the bill; all Republicans voted against. The vote was delayed by a rambling, nonsensical over eight and half hour speech of minority leader Kevin McCarthy.

Now it heads to the Senate where it faces an uncertain fate.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Build Back Better bill has passed the House. All Democrats except Jared Golden of Maine voted for the bill; all Republicans voted against. The vote was delayed by a rambling, nonsensical over eight and half hour speech of minority leader Kevin McCarthy.

Now it heads to the Senate where it faces an uncertain fate.

Wow. I didn't realize McCarthy went on that long. Did his speech break the House record that Nancy Pelosi set when she was minority leader?

If this bill gets through the Senate reasonably intact, it will, despite having been cut almost in half from the bill as originally conceived in the summer (and nearly cut 70% from what progressives had originally proposed), still be a huge deal that positively impacts many people. For instance, it would cut patients' price of insulin to $35 per month (many patients now pay much more than that). Here's hoping.

[N.E. Brigand]

For the first time in U.S. history, a woman today served as the acting president.

(For about 90 minutes while Joe Biden underwent a colonoscopy.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Did we ever once see a physical assessment of President Trump like this one issued today for President Biden?

[River]

No, but Trump had the best genes and best body ever and didn't really need a doctor ever. Or something.

Biden's not doing bad for 78. Hiatal hernias show up in my family on occasion. My cousin had to have surgery for one.

[N.E. Brigand]

Although 73% of Americans would like federally-mandated paid leave, only 46% realize that a provision for that is included in the Build Back Better legislation, whereas 59% of Americans know how much BBB costs. Similarly, federal action to lower drug prices is supported by 88% of the the American public, but only 40% of Americans know BBB includes provisions for that.

This column argues that this disconnect is largely a result of how the media have been covering the story, and that this coverage is contributing to Joe Biden's average approval rating being stuck at 43%, despite his agenda being much more popular than that. The piece also makes some interesting points about "negativity bias" in the media, which for example makes reporters likelier to penalize Democrats from negotiating by characterizing that as disarray (while generally omitting the fact that Republicans, by choice, aren't participating at all in these discussions) or to omit positive information that would properly contextualize political discussions, e.g.:

Imagine if every headline about Manchin and Sinema's shenanigans included info about the popularity of the provisions they wanted to cut. "Manchin opposed to Paid Leave; 73% of Americans disagree." "Manchin opposed to Medicare Expansion; 84% of Americans disagree."

Or to take a step back: shouldn't the media be covering the underlying problem that the legislation is meant to solve? It's a sort of cart before horse situation. It's as if the press thinks that Americans' desire for paid leave exists only insofar as legislation is being crafted to deal with that issue.

[N.E. Brigand]

My fear is that Biden's popular agenda gets passed into law by Democrats, but that the media lets Republicans take credit for it, which helps Republicans retake Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024, upon which the Republicans allow these popular but only temporarily funded items to lapse, and Americans lose everything they've gained. (For much of my lifetime, there has been a trend of Republicans making a mess and Democrats having to spend years cleaning it up.)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

My fear is that Biden's popular agenda gets passed into law by Democrats, but that the media lets Republicans take credit for it

That's a bridge too far for me. Assuming the Build Back Better bill passes, it will be with not a single GOP vote in either House. And the "Bipartisan" Infrastructure bill passed despite vociferous opposition by the GOP leadership in the House, and most importantly, by the self-declared (by both himself and the party) leader of the Republican Party. Even a biased media can't pull that off.

My fear is that GOP wins despite that.

[elengil]

I'm not worried about Republicans trying to take credit for it, I'm worried about Democrats mysteriously refusing to take credit for it, or indeed not publicly touting anything that's in it, and leaving Republicans free to simply lie about it or the public to forget about it.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Exactly.

[N.E. Brigand]

Morgan Stanley today revised expectations for the final quarter of 2021. Previously they had projected U.S. GDP to grow by 3.0%.

Now the financial firm projects U.S. GDP to grow by 8.7% this quarter.

And unemployment claims last week fell to their lowest point since 1969, three years before I was born.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And yet:

Economic woes cripple Biden approval ratings, new polling shows

[River]

And yet:

Economic woes cripple Biden approval ratings, new polling shows

It's a weird disconnect. When you ask people how they feel about their personal finances, they feel good, but when asked about the nation as a whole, it's a very different story.

[N.E. Brigand]

Thanks for sharing that, V; as River says, the disconnect is very strange.

The economy may be in better shape now than it was during Donald Trump's presidency prior to the pandemic, when it was pretty good (something I never disputed; I only argued that the good numbers in the Trump years were just a continuation of the steady growth dating back through most of Obama's two terms), and when the economy also was widely perceived as being pretty good.

In that CBS video at your Yahoo link, President Biden talks about aspects of the economy that still need improvement, delivered as part of some remarks, not shown in the video, in which Biden also touted elements of the economy that are positive. Maybe Biden should just do like Trump did and just keep saying, with no caveats, that the economy is great? Don't give the media any negative comments to use?

Because I think that link shows once again the role of the press in shaping the news. The short text in the Yahoo story says nothing about how good the economy actually is, and the reporter in the video story only says "Monday, President Biden expressed confidence in positive indicators like falling jobless claims and rising retail sales but admitted there are challenges," before showing Biden speaking about economic challenges still want to be overcome. Later the reporter states that Biden is renominating Jerome Power as Federal Reserve chair to encourage "stability ... to continue what he calls 'remarkable progress emerging from the pandemic recession.'"

That's a total of fourteen seconds about economic good news, all of it expressed as being merely Joe Biden's spin, out of a ninety-eight second story. (The story is followed by eight minutes of a White House reporter being interviewed,* but most people will have stopped before then.) What if the story were instead presented as eight-four seconds about the state of the economy, with fourteen seconds about how Americans nonetheless aren't happy?

*And that eight-minute interview segment is just disastrous. Any economic news that could be considered good is described as representing merely the White House position on the economy, and is paired with Republican claims that the economy is bad. There is no attempt whatsoever to actually determine whether the economy is in good or bad shape. The video predates the economic news I mentioned a few hours ago, but it postdates the good October jobs report and the very good August and September jobs report revisions. None of that gets mentioned.

Consider how she says this: "This holiday shopping season will be a major test for the President in his handling of the economy and the rebound. You know, right now with rising inflation, supply chain crisis, worker shortage, this is all--if that impacts the holiday shopping season, a lot of the blame will be placed on the President." Placed by whom? By the reporter, probably (later to be echoed by the public who heard something on CBS about how the President is struggling with the economy), who says nothing here about what the Biden administration could do to mitigate those potential problems, and whether or not the Biden administration is doing those things. The reporter focuses almost entirely on what the White House is saying and not what the White House is doing.

It's like the old joke about how reporters will tell you that Democrats say it's sunny while Republicans says it's raining but will never actually look out the window and tell you one is telling the truth.

Additionally, about the 67% of the CBS poll respondents who "now disapprove of how the President is handling inflation": I would love to see a couple follow-up questions: "What do you believe the President is doing to manage inflation, and what do you believe Presidents can do to manage inflation?" How many people could give correct answers to those questions?

(Also, to pick a nit: Jerome Powell is described as a "Trump appointee." I think he should be referred to as "Obama and Trump appointee." Obama appointed him to the Federal Reserve board. Trump appointed him to chair that board. It's generally agreed by economists that Powell's policies merely continued those of the chair appointed by Obama, Janet Yellen -- who is now Biden's Treasury Secretary -- and most political observers believe that Trump only replaced Yellen because he didn't like Obama.)

Finally, I'm also going to quibble with the reporter's characterization of the House passing the Build Back Better legislation last week (with the Senate's work still to come) as "the first step in a much longer process." The process has been going on for some time. As the Wikipedia article on BBB notes, it was "spun off from the American Jobs Plan," which Joe Biden unveiled on March 31. You might pick various later dates in the bill's legislative history as the "first step," but it would have to be pretty late indeed for the remaining time to put us nearer the beginning than the end -- whatever the end may be. Framing the process as only just starting is a choice by a supposedly neutral reporter to spin the situation negatively.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Jerome Powell is now a Biden appointee!

Biden picks Jerome Powell to serve a second term as Fed chair after piloting COVID-era recovery

I'm beginning to come around to your view about the media bias.