Should Democrats Go Hard and Fast?

 Part of Ezra Klein's argument in this New Yorker interview is Democrats should push harder than they did in the Obama administration to fulfill their promises.

I've just completed Obama's  "A Promised Land".  Part of the criticism is that the stimulus package should have been bigger and more obvious--issue checks rather than changing deductions for example. Part of the argument is don't let the filibuster stop you.

I'm not sure I buy that. Go too far too fast and you don't get Joe Manchin and Jon Tester reelected, you don't get Doug Jones elected, etc.

But it seems each administration is trying to avoid the mistakes of the last administration (of the same party). For example:

• Clinton administration designed a healthcare package without consulting Congress and it failed.  Obama administration spent (wasted?) a lot of time and energy dealing with Congress on ACA
• Biden administration is aiming to improve healthcare fixing Obamacare's problems.
• Bush administration had an aggressive foreign policy trying to restructure Iraq and Afghanistan.  The Obama administration backed away from that.  

Of course today's progressive wing of the Democratic party reminds me of the McGovern wing of the party 1968-76, which led us to defeat and long years out of power in the White House.

And my attitudes towards the $1.9 trillion Covid bill are swayed by memory of the the inflation of the 1970's.

We will see.

A Test of Masks and Social Distancing: House of Representatives

 The NYTimes had a graphic on the Representatives and Senators who contracted covid-19 virus.  I was interested because at the Powerline blog one or more of the bloggers had expressed skepticism over the efficacy of face masks and social distancing in combating the disease. I think enough time has passed for a fair evaluation.  I also think the members of Congress are roughly similar so a comparison by party is valid.  The outcome: 44 Republicans and 17 Democrats have contracted the disease.

I don't know whether that's statistically significant, but it impresses me.

The Democratic Debates Start

Reps. Spanberger and AOC seem engaged in an early debate over the course of Democratic politics.  Spanberger said Dems should deep-six talk of "socialism" and "defund police", blaming that for the defeats of some Democratic representatives who gained office in 2018, and the failure to take new seats.

AOC has a twitter thread countering that position, arguing that some new progressives won (my comment--I think they won safe seats by winning the Democratic primaries) and that many candidates were lousy in their digital campaigns.

I suspect both are right.  It's a big country, but politics is often local.  So positions which are popular in one place, like NYC and its suburbs, and not in another area, like southern Virginia, or southern Florida. Appeals which work with one voting bloc may well turn off another bloc. [Updated: and people are complicated and react differently to different stimuli.]

Hopefully the different parts of the party can mostly reconcile under (probable) President Biden's leadership.  His task will be quite difficult: he's likely to be considered a one-termer, and therefore have less clout than otherwise.  I'm reminded of 1976 and President Carter's job--he too had liberals on his left, still smarting over the failure of their dreams in 1972,  and led by a Kennedy.  That didn't work out well for him.