Evan Vucci/AP Photo
President Biden talks to reporters before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, January 11, 2022, in Washington.
It is just sickening to watch the media pile on Biden. OK, Manchin and Sinema are holding the administration hostage. The signals from the CDC on COVID have been mixed, and Biden stepped on some of his lines at his recent press conference. The man doesn’t walk on water. But compared to … what?
Here is a scenario for a Democratic comeback.
Within the next month or two, my sources indicate that Biden will get about $1.5 trillion of his Build Back Better program. The reconciliation process cannot be filibustered, and Manchin will eventually support a lot more than zero.
At that point, Democrats-in-Disarray stops being the slow-drip, day-after-day headline. And the herd-instinct, echo-chamber press has to find a new story.
One leading candidate is Republican cannibalism, which has been proceeding right on schedule.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis broke the unwritten norm that nobody challenges Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination, by suggesting that Trump is a wuss for urging people to get vaccinated. This in turn made Trump predictably apoplectic.
If DeSantis can hint at a presidential run, others will follow. Trump will do more damage to his party by running lunatic unelectable MAGA candidates in primaries. And then the story becomes Republicans in disarray.
Just in case the public needs another reminder of just how deranged the Trump and congressional Republicans are, in February and March the January 6 Committee investigation of the attempted coup will reveal more and more details. All of that will also dominate the headlines.
And a massive election-year grassroots mobilization of Democrats will take shape this spring. Pundits, seeking a new morning line, will start remembering the larger stakes for our democracy and start writing about Biden as the comeback kid.
Needless to say, I can’t guarantee that this will happen. But don’t rule it out either.
