President Joe Biden participates in a Q&A townhall with Chief Medical Adviser to the President Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday, May 17, 2021, in the Blue Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
During the Obama administration, Rahm Emanuel posited what became “a truism of Democratic politics:”
You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that [is] it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not before.
On the other hand, Daniel Henninger points out in the WSJ, a crisis is a terrible thing to bungle.
Biden Makes a Hash of the Crisis
With the Covid pandemic, President Biden got his crisis. It is an understatement for the ages to say he has used this crisis to do things no Democrat has attempted in more than 50 years.
Are the Democrats on course to lose the House next year (and not beyond imagining, the Senate)? Is the Biden agenda disappearing up the flue of Joe Manchin’s chimney?
Yes, Yes and Yes
Mr. Biden misread the crisis, his party will lose the House, and his and the left’s ham-handed attacks on a Democratic senator from red West Virginia have put Mr. Biden’s domestic policies at risk of implosion.
What Went Wrong so Quickly
On May 28, Mr. Biden released his self-defining $6 trillion budget. Two weeks later this is where we are: His negotiations with Republicans have collapsed, progressives are freaking out over Mr. Manchin’s opposition to breaking the filibuster and passing the S.1 voting bill (a New Republic article argues “Yes, Take This Seriously: It’s Time to Kill the Senate”), and the political calendar is ticking off the summer days before members of Congress desert Washington—and the Biden agenda—to campaign back home for Numero Uno’s re-election.
Burdening Grandkids with Monster Debt?
The American public has just spent a year committing unprecedented acts of self-discipline. They entered 2021 looking for post-pandemic stability.
Suddenly, they get this Democratic fiscal extravaganza, including the oddity of mass-mailing $1,400 checks even to people who held well-paying jobs. Instead of a new progressive revolution, Mr. Biden may be reviving some old saws, such as the burden this outsized debt will impose on one’s children or grandchildren.
If intimidation by progressives and the media fails to force Sens. Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to support blowing up the filibuster, the Democrats’ default strategy is more coals into the inferno: a massive reconciliation bill of spending, taxes, cats and dogs.
Mr. Biden and the Democrats won’t turn back now, but the political price for misreading the pandemic crisis could be high. House control is probably gone.
After Trump, Normalcy?
After Donald Trump, voters wanted “normalcy,” as Joe Biden said.
Let us all hope then, as Mr. Henninger does, Americans will keep voting until they get it.
Read more about Biden’s scapegoating of Sen. Joe Manchin here.
