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18 Mar, 6 tweets, 1 min read
This is well said.
"The appetite for larger-scale governmental action could not be more different in 2021. Think of it this way: the Recovery Act was twenty points less popular than Obama. The American Rescue Plan is twenty points more popular than (a pretty popular) Biden."
We can't run the counterfactual but I wouldn't underestimate how much of a role race played in how these bills were seen. Obama was very popular personally, but we know that his presidency led people's views on race to drive their views on all kinds of policy questions.
Biden is governing at a different time, in a different context, but I think one reason he can propose a $1.9 trillion spending bill is that he doesn't have to fear the politics of "free stuff" or quell concerns about who gets the money in ways Obama did.
Republican attacks landed on the stimulus in a way they're not landing on the ARP for a bunch of reasons, but I suspect that's one of them. The ARP escaped racialized concerns about "deservingness" — and bad design meant to respond to those concerns — in ways worth considering.
For more on this, tune into my podcast with Bernie Sanders on Tuesday...

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More from @ezraklein

Ezra Klein Profile picture
18 Mar
I want to recommend this thread, and also to say: I think it would be *good* if Republicans felt forced to come up with a real legislative agenda.

The way politics should work is parties win power, bass agendas, and the public uses the consequences to inform future votes.
Part of the GOP's collapse into symbolic politics is that so little gets done in congress, and there are so many excuses for why nothing gets done, that they can afford to indulge all kinds of ideas they know will never pass, and focus on issues with no legislative content.
But it'd be better if politics was a contest between actual legislative agendas, and politicians were disciplined by the knowledge that they may have to pass, and stand by the consequences, of the ideas they claim to favor.
Read 4 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
16 Mar
Lots of symbolic progressivism and operational conservatism in Europe's vaccine debacle. So much emphasis on process and solidarity and equity and regulatory deference in ways that made action easy to slow or veto, with disastrous results. nytimes.com/2021/03/16/bri…
Trump's Warp Speed program really does deserve credit, but you can also see the different in how the Biden admin (and various states) have acted: A real emphasis on speed, on pushing government to find ways to get new doses, on adding flexibility even amidst uncertainty.
In crises, government needs to be able to *act*, even at the cost of some other values. There is nothing more progressive than actually having government deliver vaccinations that save people's lives, as fast as possible.
Read 4 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
12 Mar
Hope feels like an unsafe emotion lately. Personally and professionally, I don’t want to wax optimistic only to be crushed as deaths rise. Pessimism is safer.

But in the US, at least, the reality right now is pretty damn hopeful. nytimes.com/2021/03/12/opi…
Let me back up: On Jan 28th, I published a column that began like this:

“I hope, in the end, that this article reads as alarmism. I hope that a year from now it’s a piece people point to as an overreaction.”

Good news: Six weeks later, it does!

nytimes.com/2021/01/28/opi…
The column was all about the new variants, and the way experts thought we could have a truly hellish period as super-contagious strains exploded before mass vaccination took hold.

But — thankfully — that’s not what happened.
Read 11 tweets
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

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