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4 Mar, 7 tweets, 2 min read
Biden is getting less than half the media attention and search interest Trump did. But he's 10 points higher in the polls, pursuing a far more ambitious agenda, and the Rescue Act is even more popular than he is.

There's something to learn here.
I suspect Biden’s quieter approach to political communication is opening space for bolder bills. His theory seems to be that if you can dial down the conflict, you can dial up the policy.

Call it the "Speak Softly, and Pass a Big Agenda" strategy. nytimes.com/2021/03/04/opi…
Also, this study is fascinating. Negative partisanship rules all!
To just add to this thread: I really don't think people -- or media coverage -- has caught up to just how aggressive the Biden administration has been so far. The speed and scale of policymaking right now isn't normal.
Keystone XL was a multi-year fight in the Obama administration! And Biden just walked in and...ended it. And it was barely even a story that day!
Part of why this is working for Biden is that the GOP has gotten obsessed with cultural issues and just can't muster energy to fight on economic policy anymore. There's way more heat around Dr. Seuss than the Rescue Act.
That reflects their base — while the Rescue Act won't get a single Republican vote in Congress, it has huge support among actual Republicans. When asked if it should be abandoned for a smaller, bipartisan bill, half of Republicans say no! vox.com/2021/3/3/22310…

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More from @ezraklein

Ezra Klein Profile picture
6 Mar
I'm angry about the cut to UI and the absence of *any* minimum wage increase in the bill.

At the same time, I'm ELATED the Child Tax Credit is moving through unscathed, and same for EITC, school infrastructure, state and local aid, $1,400 checks, Obamacare boost...
And then there's the coronavirus funding itself, which is huge. Vaccinations are already above 2m a day. Add in tens of billions for distribution, and $50 billion for a national testing infrastructure, and we could really beat this thing.
I'm open to counterexamples, but this still looks like the most ambitious and progressive economic package Congress has passed in my lifetime. It will do more to cut poverty, and push full employment, than anything else I've covered.
Read 4 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
5 Mar
It's going to be hard to change, but I think Cal Newport is right. We've screwed up how we work digitally, adopting a ton of software that promised productivity and delivered distraction. There are huge gains to be made by firms that can find a new way. nytimes.com/2021/03/05/opi…
"We’re at a point now where it’s completely common in a lot of knowledge ware companies that not only do you spend a lot of time doing things like email and meetings, you now spend all of your time doing that, every working hour."
"And actual work has to get done in these hidden second shifts that happen in the morning or happen in the evening, which creates all of these unexpected inequities. I mean, the fact that that is happening now should be alarm bells ringing, but instead, we’re like, 'it’s busy.'"
Read 4 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
4 Mar
So I was just on a conference call where Dr. Mark Ghaly, CA's HHS director, explained how the vaccination/covid plan is changing. The short version is:
They're doubling vaccine allocation for communities in the lowest quartile of the Healthy Places Index.

Those communities have 25% of the population, but 40% of deaths/cases.

But they're seeing half the vaccination rates of communities in he top quartile (16% vs 34%).
They're also tying restrictions to vaccination rates.

When they get to 2 million doses in these communities, the threshold for being in the less restricting "red tier" moves from 7 cases per day to 10.

At 4 million, orange and yellow tiers shift, too.
Read 10 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
2 Mar
New podcast!

CPAC was full of debunked election conspiracies, warnings about “cancel culture” and fealty to Donald Trump.

What it was missing was much in the way of policy ideas to raise wages, improve health care or support families.
This is the modern G.O.P.: a post-policy party obsessed with symbolic fights and uninterested in the actual work of governing.

But wouldn't Trump have won if McConnell had passed a final round of stimulus in the fall? Is abandoning governance actually working for Republicans?
I don't think so — it's bad for them, and worse for the country. But the GOP doesn't listen to me. Maybe they'll listen to @RameshPonnuru though: nytimes.com/2021/03/02/opi…
Read 4 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
2 Mar
I raged about this at the time but New York's early COVID response was poor. There were better governors and better state policies but the media is based in New York and NYC was a disaster so Cuomo's news conferences got media attention no other governor could touch.
Cuomo wasn't uniquely ahead-of-the-curve on COVID and so got lionized, and now is falling from grace. It was always a weird convergence of where the media was and where he was, and it overwhelmed the obvious, even then, fact that he wasn't the right protagonist for this story.
(And also Cuomo had a known national name, and a brother with a CNN show. That helped, too. )
Read 4 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
2 Mar
Lots of good stuff in this @mattyglesias post on schools and COVID and worker power, but I want to highlight this section, as it gets to a broader problem in COVID response: slowboring.com/p/school-closu…
There's been a weird literalism in public health communication wherein policymakers ignore substitutions. If you close indoor gathering spaces, people go outdoors. But then some places closed outdoors spaces (beaches, parks) too, so people just gathered in homes!
You really see this with kids. We've gone through long periods with playgrounds and schools closed. But parents still need to work and toddlers will still light the house on fire if they don't get taken outside.
Read 8 tweets

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