NY Times:
In a big week for Biden, House to vote Wednesday on his $1.9 trillion stimulus plan.
With Republicans united in opposition, the package is on track to be the first major round of pandemic relief not to pass on a bipartisan basis. Powerless to stop it, House Republicans on Tuesday tried to slow the process with a series of unsuccessful procedural requests to bring up legislation that would reopen schools.
CNN:
Biden and his Covid-relief bill prove popular in new CNN poll
In the new poll, 61% support the $1.9 trillion economic relief bill proposed by Biden and expected to pass in the House Wednesday, and several key provisions of the bill are even more popular. A broad majority of Americans (85%) say they support policies in the bill that would provide larger tax credits for families and make them easier for low-income households to claim, including majorities across party lines (95% of Democrats and 73% of Republicans support it). Around three-quarters favor provisions to provide funding to facilitate a return to the classroom for K-12 students (77%), and sending stimulus checks worth up to $1,400 per person to most families and individuals (76%). Both of those policies also have majority support across party lines (55% of Republicans support each, among Democrats, support tops 90% for each one).
A smaller majority, 59%, say they back providing $350 billion in aid to state and local governments. That policy sparks the sharpest partisan divide among the four tested, with 88% of Democrats in favor vs. just 28% of Republicans.
New Politico/Morning Consult poll has Biden at 59% job approval. On COVID relief, “three-quarters of respondents said they support that package, with strong backing across the political spectrum: ninety percent of Democrats, more than seven in 10 independents and nearly six in 10 Republicans.”
51% strongly support the bill (p. 7).
LA Times:
Republicans call the COVID-19 relief bill a ‘liberal wish list.’ Democrats are owning that
Republicans call the massive COVID-19 relief package making its way through Congress a “liberal wish list.” Increasingly, Democratic lawmakers and the Biden administration have decided to own that.
One measure of the bill’s sweep is a host of provisions Democrats have long sought — on topics including health insurance premiums, child care and pensions — that would amount to major pieces of legislation on their own. As part of the nearly $1.9-trillion package, however, they’ve gotten little public attention, overshadowed by debate over who would receive $1,400 direct-relief checks and whether the bill would increase the minimum wage.
For weeks as the bill moved through Congress, officials emphasized President Biden’s openness to bipartisan negotiations. Now, with the congressional journey almost finished — the House is expected to vote on final passage most likely on Wednesday — the White House tone has shifted. Officials are more willing to crow about Democratic goals achieved.
NY Times:
At least 37 states have expanded vaccine eligibility to include certain health conditions. A new battle has emerged over who will go first.
States, which are not bound by the C.D.C.’s recommendations, have set widely varying rules amid a dearth of definitive evidence about how dozens of medical conditions may affect the severity of Covid-19. The confusing morass of rules has set off a free-for-all among people who may be among the most vulnerable to the virus as they seek to persuade health and political officials to add health conditions to an ever-evolving vaccine priority list.
Hilda Bastian/Atlantic:
The Differences Between the Vaccines Matter
Yes, all of the COVID-19 vaccines are very good. No, they’re not all the same.
There’s a problem here. It’s certainly true that all three of the FDA-authorized vaccines are very good—amazing, even—at protecting people’s health. No one should refrain from seeking vaccination on the theory that any might be second-rate. But it’s also true that the COVID-19 vaccines aren’t all the same: Some are more effective than others at preventing illness, for example; some cause fewer adverse reactions; some are more convenient; some were made using more familiar methods and technologies. As for the claim that the vaccines have proved perfectly and equally effective at preventing hospitalization and death? It’s just not right.
These differences among the options could matter quite a bit, in different ways to different people, and they should not be minimized or covered over. Especially not now: Vaccine supplies in the U.S. will soon surpass demand, even as more contagious viral variants spread throughout the country. In the meantime, governors are revoking their rules on face masks, or taking other steps to loosen their restrictions. It’s tempting to believe that a simple, decisive message—even one that verges on hype—is what’s most needed at this crucial moment. But if the message could be wrong, that has consequences.
Zack Beauchamp/Vox:
The stimulus shows why the left should stop worrying and learn to love the suburban voter
Contrary to the left’s fears, the road to redistribution runs through the suburbs.
Democrats passed an unapologetically progressive stimulus bill through the Senate this weekend, one that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has called “the most significant piece of legislation to benefit working families in the modern history of this country.”
This bill would not be on the brink of becoming law if Democrats did not have a governing trifecta in the White House, the Senate, and the House. And that trifecta in turn would not have been possible were it not for the defection into the Democratic column of a particular, and perhaps surprising, demographic: suburban whites with college degrees.
These voters, once a reliably Republican constituency, switched in large numbers in 2018, handing Democrats decisive House seats in places like California’s Orange County. In 2020, they helped elevate Joe Biden to the White House by turning out for him in places like Pennsylvania’s Montgomery County.
Despite the obvious political benefits of the suburban shift, some on the broader left see it as a Pyrrhic victory, one that will produce a Democratic Party that is inhospitable to working-class voters and that, as a result, embraces a policy agenda that favors the interests of the wealthy.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
The GOP scam is getting worse — for Republican voters. A new study shows how.
“Red America is falling farther behind, but the politicians who represent it at all levels have gotten more unified on an economic agenda that hurts the people who live there,” Jacob Hacker, the Yale political scientist who co-authored the analysis, told me.
…
For decades throughout the 20th century, it notes, the industrial economy — combined with large federal expenditures, particularly in the South — drove a “great economic convergence,” in which poorer states steadily caught up with better-off ones.
But more recently, the development of the knowledge economy, whose benefits are largely concentrated in cosmopolitan hubs, has reversed this trend. Meanwhile, in many red states — mostly in the South — the model of weak unions and low wages, which made them competitive for business inside the national market, is faltering in the face of globalized production.
“Blue America is increasingly buoyed by the knowledge economy,” the analysis concludes, while “red America is struggling to find a viable growth model for the twenty-first century.”
How did this happen? A big part of the problem, the authors argue, is conservative governance.
Daily Beast:
Inside Team Trump’s New Plot to Suppress the Vote Under Biden
Donald Trump has made it clear that he wants election crackdowns to emerge as one of the defining legacies of his post-presidency, having failed to cling to power during Republicans’ anti-democratic blitz during and following the 2020 race. And various GOP lawmakers and some of the ex-president’s most prominent allies are lining up to assist him, as Democrats watch in horror and strategize their counter-offensives.
These national and state policy battles have rapidly developed into one of the most critical partisan fights of Joe Biden’s young presidency, with both parties viewing the outcomes as increasingly vital to their survival and future dominance at the ballot box.