WASHINGTON – In an effort to align its unity path with its pursuit of a bold agenda, President Joe Biden has sold his $ 1.9 billion Covid-19 package as a duplicate.
But the message crashed into a harsh reality early Saturday morning when the House passed the bill – without a single Republican vote.
This past week, Ron Klain, chief of staff at Biden, gathered the White House messaging equipment to confirm the case that the president’s aid package is twofold, not because GOP legislators have signed it, but because polls show support for a vast majority of the public, and because some Republicans mayors and officials outside Washington supported it.
The bill now goes to the Senate, where it also does not have IDP support.
Klain has repeatedly cited polls in the face of criticism for following a party-line approach.
Rob Flaherty, White House Digital Director said Wednesday that the Covid plan is ‘extremely ambiguous’, citing a Morning Consult poll that showed 76 percent of public support, including 60 percent of the self-identified Republicans.
While Democrats can do it without Republicans if they stay together, the dynamic direction points to a bigger battle for Biden: the GOP “epiphany” he predicted shows no sign of materializing. and his agenda is likely to face the kind of full-fledged partisan opposition that defrauded Barack Obama as president.
At a recent CNN City Hall meeting on how he would heal a divided nation, Biden cited polls that garnered significant support among Republican voters for his Covid-19 plan. He said they were showing that the US “is not nearly as divided as we predict.”
But these pleas did not move Republican lawmakers. His job is hampered by the fact that large numbers of Republican voters falsely say he lost the 2020 election and, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, want their leaders to stand up to him rather than cut agreements. .
“It’s an interesting approach to that,” said former Senate Republican budgetman Bill Hoagland. “What they are saying is that the Republicans who are here do not represent their voters at home and that is why we need to listen to the voters.”
Hoagland, now at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said bipartisanship in Washington historically means that the votes of the other party must be won. He said he had never seen it defined by polls during his 25 years at Capitol Hill, and Biden’s version was “an interesting twist in the legislative and democratic process.”
But many progressive people like the new approach, including those who have criticized Biden’s unity speeches.
“I think it’s very clever,” said Adam Jentleson, former assistant to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. ‘If you let Mitch McConnell define what’s dual, nothing will ever be. Defining it based on public opinion is accurate and opens the door to doing great things. ”
‘You can not have it both ways’
The frustration spread to Republicans on Capitol Hill, who hoped Biden would reduce its $ 1.9 billion package to win their support, but talks broke down after Biden decided their $ 618 billion plan was too small was to face the crisis.
“No matter how many times they tweet about it, unelected White House staff members cannot change the definition of ‘unity’ alone. At some point, have the courage to acknowledge what you’re doing: by pushing a biased bill through a biased process, ”said a Republican assistant familiar with the dual Covid-19 emergency relief talks. “You can’t have it both ways.”
Matt Gorman, an IDP consultant and campaigner, called Biden’s approach “half too smart.”
As a candidate, during his time in the Senate, Biden was often nostalgic about cooperation between parties, saying he would be a president who strives to revive the spirit. His tenure dates back to the 1970s and 1980s, an era when the two parties each had a broad mix of liberals and conservatives in their ranks, paving the way for dual coalitions. That is not the case today.
“President Biden has promised unity, but Democrats are delivering a one-party government,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, said before his entire caucus was voted by two Democrats to vote against the bill.
In his inaugural address last month, Biden used the word “unity” eight times, saying, “We have never failed in America when we performed together.”
On February 2, Klain quoted a poll by Yahoo News / YouGov shows that more than two-thirds of Americans support the policy in its US rescue plan. “It IS a dual agenda,” he tweeted.
On Monday, Klain wrote that the plan “has dual support among voters; state / local leaders; business and labor,” and that this “must get the same in Congress.”
At a recent meeting with labor leaders in the Oval Office, Biden said that Americans “based on the ballot box data” want everything in the plan – not a joke. ‘
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki is riddled with reporters’ questions in her daily briefings on whether Biden’s promise to pursue a Covid-19 bill on a party vote, his promise to find common ground, break.
“He did not promise to unite the Democratic and Republican parties in Washington into one party,” Psaki said on February 5. “This package has the vast majority of support from the American public.”
