His margins in Congress are razor thin. Dems underperformed almost everywhere in Nov 2020 except the WH. BBB was this massive, IMO disjointed package, where both dems and repubs complain that there’s no talk about what it does and too much talk about what it costs. Hard to talk about what a massive hodgepodge does in thematic terms.

So I’m with those who say they should have picked one or a few priorities to focus on, as they intend to do now. We’ll see if it’s too late.

I think on voting rights Biden focused on it not at all, got criticism for that, and has been compensating ever since with over the top Jim Crow 2.0 rhetoric that only drives everyone’s heels in deeper. I think they should be laser focused on partisan takeovers of voting mechanisms (where the courts and not Congress are the way to go given the current dynamic), and the Electoral Count Act, where repubs have at least signaled a willingness to talk.

We never go for the low hanging fruit anymore. Instead of focusing on the things we can agree on, build momentum by agreeing on them, and then seeing where it can lead, we seem to focus on what we know we don’t agree on.

Biden’s mandate was to bring down the national temperature, to end Covid (not really his fault it hasn’t IMO), to restore a sense of normalcy. I don’t believe he got a mandate to transform American, and the track record so far supports that.