The banality of conventional wisdom

Despite sagging poll numbers and soaring inflation, it’s worth questioning the prevailing narrative that the sky is falling on the White House

In recent weeks, certain political narratives have become gospel, many pushed by the media, but it’s worth questioning the conventional wisdom that’s seized Washington — because a lot of it is more conventional than wise.

Most has sprung from the bad news that’s seemingly suffocating the White House — from President Biden’s inability to pass his Build Back Better agenda, to his sagging poll numbers, to rising inflation, to Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial win in Virginia.

The media operates on a 24/7 news cycle where people expect information on demand, so stepping back to gain perspective is not as easy for journalists as people think (we do sleep sometimes). At the same time, the “world is ending for the White House” narrative that’s dominated the headlines isn’t helpful either.

So let’s break down some of the insightful commentary that’s short on insights.

First, let’s dispense with the notion that the Democratic Party is too ideologically diverse to agree on anything. We hear it every day. We get it. Progressives and moderates are like Tom and Jerry. And yet, they managed to agree on a historic $1.2 trillion infrastructure package — it was ugly, but we forget it was also incredibly fast given the size and scope of the legislation.

And why are we talking as if internal disagreements are unique to Democrats? Last time I checked, the GOP is hardly a unified bunch (Trumpian loyalty tests aside). Infighting is normal in any party and, to a degree, healthy. After all, isn’t it good that Democrats represent diverse interests — given that America itself is diverse?

Next up is this head-scratching bit of advice: If only President Biden (or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Senate Majority Chuck Schumer) would use their powers to convince recalcitrant players — namely Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — to get on the same page.

I’m not sure what superpowers people think Biden-Pelosi-Schumer possess, but as we’ve seen after months of negotiations with Manchin and Sinema, no amount of browbeating or butt-kissing is going to convince politicians to vote for something that’s anathema to their political interests or beliefs.

That’s especially true because Manchin and Sinema know they’re the ones with all the power in a 50-50 Senate. Even the president’s hands are tied. So the constant criticism that Biden should be using the weight of the presidency to sway Sinemanchin makes little sense.

A presidential bully pulpit should be used sparingly — and strategically. One verbal blunder can easily drown out everything else. And once a president says something in public, he’s held to it. If he doesn’t deliver, he’s a failure — a narrative that can take on a life of its own.

As a senator who said he didn’t like being harangued by presidents, and as a gaffe-prone candidate, Biden likely knows that negotiating in public is a minefield. He’s also probably learned from former President Donald Trump that words quickly become meaningless if they’re abused.

On the one hand, Trump’s daily tweet-a-thon triggered the outrage and headlines the ex-TV star so craved, but it also inspired the eye-rolls and SNL punchlines he so disdained. Government agencies wasted time going through the motions of whatever policy idea Trump came up with on the fly, knowing it would never come to fruition because there would either be no follow-up from the White House or the policies would never pass legal muster.

After four years of Trump’s bluster, Biden has shown that bland can be bold — and passing the largest investment in infrastructure since Dwight D. Eisenhower’s national highway system is bold.

Biden has studiously avoided uttering his predecessor’s name, but he couldn’t resist one swipe at Trump when Biden declared, “Finally, infrastructure week!”

The inflationary coin

Next up is the $1.75 trillion social spending package, which can only be passed via a party-line reconciliation vote.

Republicans argue the package will exacerbate inflation, but even Lawrence Summers, the inflation thorn in Biden’s side, isn’t opposed to the price tag of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure and $1.75 social spending bills.

“The 10 years of the two spending bills together, A, are less than the one year of what they did last spring, and, B, unlike what they did last spring, are paid for by tax increases,” he told Chris Cuomo on CNN. “So I don’t think that’s an inflation problem. I think a lot of it is vitally needed investments in the future of the country.”

Summers, however, was right that the White House initially dropped the ball on inflation, an issue policymakers haven’t had to deal with in decades.

But it’s important to remember the reason behind the rise in prices: the pandemic, including the trillions of dollars in COVID relief that Congress has passed (under both Trump and Biden) and that Summers referred to.

That relief helped the economy roar back and consumer spending to surge — a good thing. On the flip side, many businesses can’t keep up with the consumer demand because of strained supply chains and labor shortages.

These labor shortages are a double-edged sword. They illustrate how, with any seismic economic shift, there are winners and losers, and the winners here are workers who have become newly empowered to leave thankless, low-paying jobs.

While some economists have decried the so-called Great Resignation — the Labor Department reported that 4.4 million people quit their jobs in September, about 3% of the nation’s workforce — it’s a sign of how businesses are being forced to compete for workers by offering higher wages and other perks.

It’s a long-overdue correction after decades of stagnant wages and gaping inequality.

In this way, while inflation is a problem, it’s also a problem of perception.

People instantly see higher prices at the gas pump, but they don’t always register that their paychecks have gotten fatter as well. For example, Axios noted that average hourly earnings rose another 11 cents an hour in October, to $30.96 — enough to keep up with inflation.

Weekly economic figures such as these reveal how quickly a narrative can change. On Nov. 5, the media exploded with positive news that the economy added more than 530,000 jobs in October and that previously low figures for August and September had been revised upward. “The Fall hiccup is now at best a Fall deep breath,” tweeted University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers.

A few days later, when reports came out that inflation in October shot up to 6.2%, the narrative did a complete 180.

That’s not to say expensive groceries or high gas prices aren’t hitting people hard, especially those with fixed incomes.

The president’s acknowledged the problem, albeit belatedly. He is working to shore up supply chains, but there’s only so much any president can do. Supply chains will remain global. The OPEC cartel isn’t about to turn on the spigot just to lower the price of gas, not when oil-producing countries are looking to recoup their pandemic financial losses.

Again, it comes back to the pandemic.

Customers complain that service is slow at restaurants because there’s no staffing. Yet how many times have you heard of customers yelling or spitting on servers who asked them to wear masks? Then these same people wonder why servers are quitting in droves.

Yes, the COVID relief spending that gave people a financial cushion to quit their jobs contributed to inflation — but at the same time, it helped America weather what could’ve been a catastrophic recession.

“You look across the world in developed countries, they all have inflation,” Claudia Sahm, a former Federal Reserve economist, told VOX’s Emily Stewart. “And you know what the difference is in the United States? We put thousands and thousands of dollars in people’s pockets at the beginning of the year.”

“Inflation is too high, it’s causing problems,” she added, “but it’s not our biggest problem right now. Covid is.”

If Republicans truly want to tackle inflation, they have to look at its root causes — the pandemic — and perhaps try tackling vaccine hesitancy among their own ranks.

What happened to the GOP?

But that won’t happen because the GOP is a shadow of what it once was.

The focus on Democrats is only natural given that they control the levers government — no matter how tenuously — but it also obscures one of the most profound, and corrosive, dynamics in American politics: The Republicans’ abandonment of substance in favor of obstructionism, culture wars and Trumpian extremism.

For years now, Republicans have latched onto Democratic ideas to show what they’re against, but offered little in return to show what they’re for.

Their latest bludgeon is inflation. It’s a legitimate argument, but it’s only being used to score political points. Before that, Republicans fought against:

Immigration reforms (building a non-existent wall doesn’t count as real problem-solving), voting reforms, police reforms, curbs on carbon emissions, tax incentives for clean energy, taxing corporations and the wealthy, paid parental leave, reducing prescription drug coverage, expanding health coverage, child tax credits, student loan forgiveness, any form of gun control, beefing up IRS enforcement to catch tax cheats, masks, vaccine mandates and whatever else Democrats have floated.

Fair enough, but what’s your alternative? Long-term threats like inequality require more than reflexive opposition.

Even on their own erstwhile goal of infrastructure investment, only 32 of 283 Republicans in Congress supported the “bipartisan” infrastructure package.

The 13 Republicans who did vote for the bill in the House have been attacked by their colleagues, with calls to strip them of their committee assignments. Some posted the 13 members’ phone numbers, prompting death threats.

Meanwhile, Republicans have been relatively mum about Rep. Paul Gosar, the colorful Arizona Republican who’s attended events with white nationalists and whose office recently produced an animated video that shows a Gosar-like character killing Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortiz of New York. 

“On the one hand, you have a bill with strong support across the country and both parties that everyone agrees is needed,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told Politico. “But voting for it was somehow considered to be worse than a congressman depicting himself killing a colleague.”

The GOP is now unequivocally the party of Trump — and all the erosion of decency that comes with it.

The Democratic drubbing in Virginia

But some Republicans want it both ways: They want the support of the fervent base Trump has cultivated, while distancing themselves from their fervent leader.

Enter Glenn Youngkin, the Republican who shattered the notion that Virginia was a blue state.

So was his recent gubernatorial victory the much-ballyhooed bellwether for Democrats that we keep hearing about?

Yes and no. Terry McAuliffe tried to make Trump an albatross for the political newcomer, but it never stuck. Youngkin, a fleece-wearing businessman, kept as much as distance as he could from the former president while still embracing the cultural wars Trump deftly exploits.

But in the future, when you have controversial candidates like Mo Brooks, Herschel Walker and Sean Parnell whom Trump has personally anointed, Youngkin’s “I’m with Trump but not really with him” dance won’t fly.

Trump will demand the floor.

And when you have Trump himself (most likely) run for president, the race will be nothing but a referendum on the man himself.

Youngkin did, however, gain what was likely a decisive advantage by tapping into the hot-button issues that have become catnip for far-right conservatives, namely education, identity, pandemic mandates and crime.

I’m not sure how much Youngkin cared about critical race theory or which bathroom transgender students go into while he was making millions as co-CEO of the The Carlyle Group. But he quickly understood the power of an angry parent and seized on McAuliffe’s gaffe of “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” to pummel his opponent.

Of course, other issues were at play. McAuliffe was the quintessential creature of the Beltway swamp, and Youngkin’s business credentials and pledge to lower taxes certainly resonated with some voters. Now, though, he will have to live up to his lofty promises of funding the “largest education budget in the history of the commonwealth” while also issuing “the largest tax refund in the history of Virginia.”

Not sure how that math will add up. Odds are Youngkin will have to blow a hole through the budget surplus created by current Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam.

Both Northam and McAuliffe, in fact, boasted solid economic track records, but economic successes are sometimes no match for emotionally charged issues, even when the impact of those issues is grossly exaggerated. Republicans know this, which is why they’ve largely abandoned offering policy solutions to complex problems in favor of focusing almost exclusively on culture wars.

Progressives cancel at their own peril

That said, cultural issues — not to mention cancel culture — do matter, and here, progressives remain too far-left of many Americans’ comfort zone.  

We saw this in the recent election in Minneapolis where, in the wake of soaring homicides, voters rejected a motion to replace the city’s police department with a quasi “Department of Public Safety.”

Like many cities, D.C. and its suburbs have seen murders jump and shootings become commonplace. While most jurisdictions did not actually “defund the police,” the movement did lead to resignations and low recruitment in police departments across the country, contributing to the surge in violence.   

And while criminal justice reforms are critical, police chiefs in cities like D.C. are pointing out that some “reforms” are releasing criminals right back onto the streets, fueling the uptick in violence.

But progressives are loath to admit this, and by painting all police as the enemy, they’ve alienated swing voters.

Meanwhile, wokeism has inspired an entire glossary of terms — BIPOC, Latinx, birthing parent, LGBTQIA+ community — that have bewildered many Americans, even those whom the terms claim to represent. (The New York Times has an excellent piece on this by Amy Harmon.)

I’ve personally noticed journalists eschewing the term “homeless” for “unhoused,” although I honestly have no clue what the distinction is.

It’s one thing to question gay rights, which are universal human rights. It’s another to question whether a five-year-old is ready to declare something as profound as his/her gender.

But some progressives automatically dismiss anyone who dares ask these types of questions as ignorant — which itself is a sign of ignorance.

Will the real centrists please stand up?

At the same time, whenever we talk about progressives, we get to another stubborn narrative: that they’re alienating the rural and suburban blue-collar workers who once made up the backbone of the Democratic Party.

And yet blue-collar workers stand to benefit the most from the progressive policies in the social spending bill that Democrats are trying to pass.

That tortured road to passage has flipped another narrative on its head: Progressives in Congress have become more moderate than so-called moderates like Sen. Joe Manchin.

Throughout months of negotiations, we’ve seen Manchin publicly flip-flip on his support of the Build Back Better agenda seemingly every week.

Yet at every change of heart, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, head of the House progressive caucus, has kept her cool — and offered concessions to keep Manchin and Sinema happy.

It’s a stark contrast from progressive firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who voted against the infrastructure package (along with five other progressives) because she wanted more money, sparking criticism even among her constituents that she chose righteous futility over roads and funds.

In a similar act of righteous futility, three House Democrats — Reps. Chuy Garcia (Ill.), Adriano Espaillat (N.Y.) and Lou Correa (Calif.) ­— stuffed immigration-related provisions into the social spending bill, even though the Senate parliamentarian is all but certain to strike them down. But now, House moderates will be forced to vote on a bill that includes controversial immigration provisions that have no hope of seeing the light of the day but will make them a target back home.

Inserting these types of poison pills for personal political again is shortsighted. But it pales in comparison to the pills progressives have been forced to swallow to keep moderates like Manchin from tanking Biden’s agenda.

The West Virginia senator has singlehandedly gutted some of the most popular and impactful proposals in BBB. That includes paid paternal leave, the ability to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, expanding Medicare coverage and universal community college.

Ironically, for a senator who opposes an “entitlement society,” he axed the two biggest provisions — parental leave and community college — that help people get and keep jobs.

In particular, Democrats spent months wooing Manchin on paid leave, whittling down their proposal from an initial 12 weeks to four weeks at a cost of $100 billion, although that was still too high for Manchin. But remember, that $100 billion would’ve been phased in over 10 years, so the real cost is closer to $10 billion a year — a small investment when you consider the federal government spends about $4 trillion annually and every other developed nation in the world offers paid leave.

Manchin’s insistence on paying for everything in the social spending package also rings hollow considering he relied on fuzzy pay-fors when negotiating his infrastructure deal, which will add an estimated $250 billion to the deficit over 10 years.

Meanwhile, Sinema upended the pay-fors that her entire party had agreed on with her last-minute tax demands, which forced Democrats to nix other popular proposals. That included scaling back plans to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy to accommodate Sinema’s alternative tax schemes, which will bring in significantly less revenue.  

Moderates blasted progressives for holding up passage of the infrastructure bill until their social spending bill was passed, but what choice did they have? Neither Manchin nor Sinema have shown they could be relied on to keep their word. They’ve made a litany of last-minute demands, changed their minds — or, in Sinema’s case, refused to say what’s on hers — and forced their entire party to follow them around like lapdogs, grateful for any crumbs they leave behind.

In the end though, progressives relented and voted for the infrastructure bill with only vague guarantees that House moderates would return the favor — and zero guarantees from Sinemanchin.

What’s the score?

In return for securing progressive support on the infrastructure bill, a group of House moderates promised to pass the Build Back Better social spending deal once the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scored it.

Checkmate moderates.

Any CBO score probably won’t be kind, especially because it’s likely to omit the $400 billion the administration is counting on from the IRS to find wealthy tax cheats.

There isn’t even a clear consensus on what “scoring” means.

“To clarify for everyone: the agreement we made w/our colleagues was NOT for CBO score,” Jayapal has said. “It was for some additional financial information from CBO. Agreement also says that in no event would the vote take place later than the week of Nov. 15. We trust our colleagues’ commitments.”

Nov. 15 was Monday.

And remember what the moderates initially said: If the CBO score “is inconsistent” with White House estimates on BBB, the group remains “committed to working to resolve any discrepancies in order to pass the Build Back Better legislation.”

Translation: The CBO score (or whatever estimates it releases) could give cold-feet House moderates the excuse they need to drag out the talks.

As of this writing, though, House leaders sounded bullish that moderates would pass the deal by the end of the week (which probably means closer to the weekend), so who knows.

But then the legislation goes to the Senate, where it will hit the Sinemanchin wall.

While Manchin has consistently tried to put the brakes on the negotiations, the recent inflation numbers could give him the reason he’s been looking for to grind BBB to a halt.

Questioning the Cassandras

Or it might not. At every move, Manchin has telegraphed that he’s content to walk away from BBB, and yet he hasn’t. Truth is, we have no idea what Manchin will do, just like we have no idea what the next few weeks will hold.

In the best case scenario, BBB makes it past moderates in the House and reaches the Senate. There, Manchin, Sinema, Bernie Sanders and every other Democrat manage to agree on an amended bill (and they will change it) — and then the House agrees on that version (that is sure be stripped of priorities like paid leave and immigration) to send to the president’s desk.

In the meantime, Democrats also have to fund the government, authorize defense spending and raise the debt ceiling.

The smart money is on the pessimists, but it’s still a risky bet.

December could drain every last bit of fight Democrats have, but it could also offer the window that Biden-Pelosi-Schumer need to force their caucus to fall in line. There’s nothing like a do-or-die deadline on Capitol Hill to overcome the deepest of differences — not to mention the desire to go home for the holidays.

Another prevailing narrative that needs to be tossed: Democrats can’t do anything after Christmas because the midterms are next year (November of next year, by the way). Sure, Congress will (eventually) go out of town for the holidays — but they’re not going to Mars. They’ll be back. Passing BBB early next year is going to be a herculean lift, but it shouldn’t be discounted — as the media so often did during the summer when they deemed infrastructure negotiations a failure every other week.

Will it even matter?

But even if BBB makes it over the finish line, will it really matter?

The more Biden seems to get done, the lower his poll numbers fall. The more he maintains a grueling schedule of travel and pitching his agenda, the more voters question his mental fitness.

Polls often reveal how illogical voters can be.

Take a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll. Among its findings: Biden’s approval rating tumbled to 41%, with 53% of those surveyed saying they disapprove of him.

At the same time, 63% of respondents supported the infrastructure deal, while 58% support spending roughly $2 trillion to “address climate change and to create or expand preschool, health care and other social programs.”

More than 6 in 10 Americans also say Biden has not accomplished much after 10 months in office — worse than Trump, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at similar points in their presidencies.

Come again? So you think Biden, who’s pushed through $1.9 trillion in COVID relief that has helped the economy rebound from a global pandemic — all with zero Republican support in a Congress Democrats barely control — coupled with a historic infrastructure package that Republicans have been trying to pass for decades, has done nothing in less than a year of being in office?

But you think Trump — who spent months fixated on the size of his inaugural crowd — was more productive?

And you disapprove of Biden but approve of the signature policies he’s made reality?

Voters can be the embodiment of contradictions — not to mention that many of them don’t even know what’s in the bills they claim to support. In an Axios Engagious/Schlesinger focus group, for instance, only four of the 10 voters even knew the long-awaited infrastructure legislation had passed Congress. An earlier ABC News-Ipsos poll found seven in 10 Americans know “just some” or even less about what’s in both the infrastructure and social spending bills.

Alexander Burns of The New York Times has an excellent piece on how large-scale voter shifts have become nearly impossible in today’s polarized landscape.

“The president — any president — might be able to chip away at voters’ skepticism of his party or their cynicism about Washington, but he cannot engineer a broad realignment in the public mood,” he writes.

This political inertia causes many voters to act against their own interests. After all, constraining child care costs, reducing the cost of prescription drugs or elderly care assistance would be a financial boon for many rural and working-class Republicans.

Democrats are banking on infrastructure and social spending to save them, but realistically, there might not be anything they can do to change people’s preconceived politics other than keep hammering home their narrative and hope it resonates.

And contrary to the deluge of advice that the administration needs to do more to tell to the American people about the benefits of its agenda, what do commentators think the White House has been doing all along? Biden has only mentioned the word “jobs” in practically every sentence he’s uttered since being elected. He’s been hitting up every town he can to literally point out what his legislation would repair.

The fact is people will hear what they want to believe. And if voters continue to see high prices at the pump next year, it won’t matter how much more money they have in their pockets. They will turn on the party in power.

So that leaves Democrats with two scenarios.

One, they enact profoundly positive changes to society that get them re-elected. Or the more likely Obamacare scenario: Voters ignore the legislative achievements, but they nevertheless improve the lives of voters — and, just maybe, Democrats will be rewarded down the line.

That’s the reality. Everything else is just noise.