President Biden's speech to Congress on Wednesday night left us with little doubt of his strategic thinking for the months between now and the midterm election of 2022. The Democrats have determined (in consultation with the Senate Parliamentarian) that three bills can be passed using the budget reconciliation process in this legislative calendar year. The first, the American Rescue Plan Act, has already been signed into law. On Wednesday night Biden laid out the parameters of two further major legislative initiatives: the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan. If the White House can maintain party discipline within the Democratic Senate caucus, both of those bills will pass out of Congress before next November, and will not require any alteration to the Senate filibuster rules to be enacted as law.
This is clearly Biden's plan for the Congressional campaign of 2022, and it is admittedly a bold and potentially effective strategy. On the one hand he cannot be faulted as "radical" for pushing through legislation that would require a change to the Senate rules enacted on a razor-thin mandate. On the other, his three bills combined commit the federal government to a transformational level of spending: $5.5 trillion all told. If the programs these bills entail can be efficiently executed, it will effect the greatest expansion of the public sector and intensification of the role of government in the United States since the days of FDR and the New Deal.
Biden is playing to his strengths as a long veteran of government, someone with deep networks of relationships in both the legislative and executive branches. The successful federalization of the Covid-19 vaccination program, which has more than doubled the promised pace of distribution, suggests that Biden's instincts might prove quite shrewd. Putting the government to work actually solving problems is an obvious way to restore the civic trust that has collapsed in recent years and thrown our politics into chaos. Beyond this, increasing spending and raising taxes is a natural path to redressing the spiraling wealth inequality that has festered for four decades and eroded social cohesion.
While all of this makes good sense, the political outcomes that we may expect from a course of "Bidenomics" are impossible to predict. Biden's approval/disapproval ratio stands at roughly 55%/40%: the exact inverse of his predecessor. This despite the fact that virtually all of the component policies of his governing initiatives (modernizing the electrical grid, expanding access to child care and education, etc.) poll better than he does personally, typically enjoying 60-65% approval among the electorate at large. It would seem that for 40% of the electorate one fact about Biden trumps all others (pun intended): he is not the other guy.
This is a strange and vexing state of affairs, but the experience of the past four years should have inured us to it. There is of course, the chance that some tangible effects of Bidenomics might sway hearts and minds. If recalcitrant citizens see their businesses thrive and their quality of life improve, perhaps they will give Biden some assent that they now withhold. But I would not bet on it. If death counts climbing into the hundreds of thousands from Covid-19 did not change a person's mind about the other guy, a boost in her 401K is not likely to shift her opinion about his successor.
So what are we to expect, moving forward? It is likely that Democrats will lose control of one or both houses of Congress in 2022. It would be nice to think that Bidenomics will excite the Democratic base sufficiently to secure an extraordinary incumbent midterm victory, but no signs point to such a scenario. Biden's supporters are not any more moved to new opinions or enthusiasm than his opponents. The typical dropoff in Democratic turnout during a midterm election, in combination with gerrymandering and general demographic challenges are likely to yield predictable results.
By the same token, however, the strange inertia that favors Republicans in 2022 is likely to favor Democrats, at least in the contest for the White House, in 2024. A 55/40 split going into a national presidential contest is a crippling disadvantage, even accounting for the exigencies of the Electoral College. We are always fighting the last war, so the public discourse is likely to imagine that 2024 will play out in ways similar to 2016 or 2020. But though the 55% of the electorate that currently approves of Joe Biden might be burnt out and apathetic, they don't suffer from amnesia. As polls open in November of 2024 they will remember very clearly everything that happened between January 20, 2017 and January 7, 2021. Will they be blithe about the prospect of four more years of the other guy? I would not bet money that I could not afford to lose on that notion.
So gridlock is probably in the cards, but for how long? That is hard to say. An energized base could give control of Congress back to the Democrats in 2024. If Biden is still at the helm then, and has a slightly expanded majority in the Senate (53-55 seats rather than the current 50) he would most likely be amenable to a move against the filibuster, and then things could really get interesting. But will our politics take us there? Who knows? As long as 40% of the electorate remains wedded to an abstraction, predicting what specific policy path will lead us out of our electoral impasse is impossible. If we can get to the point where real robust regulatory change (a reform of health care, voting rights, or policing laws, for example, as opposed to primarily fiscal policy) is achievable, we might see new coalitions and movements form around concrete ideas. But how we get to that point is anyone's guess.
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