Thread by @BenjySarlin

. @Nate_Cohn is right lack of resistance to Biden's economic agenda is a big deal. But I think even he undersells the scale of the policy, which may also affect the politics. It isn't just "infrastructure," it's climate, health care, education, taxes... nytimes.com/2021/07/20/us/…

In Obama era, the theory was presidents have a unique ability to focus on ONE big sweeping reform, barn storm the country gathering support, and tell Congress to hammer it out. That's how ACA worked. Biden is different....

D's seem to be almost borrowing from Trump's playbook of doing too many controversial things at once for opponents to focus on anything. Items that individually would be career-defining in past WH's like universal pre-K are afterthoughts right now that barely even get discussed.

Basically, the new formula seems to be to shove absolutely everything in one big bill at once and, rather than draw as much attention as possible to it, try to get it quietly across the finish line AND THEN sell the individual items in the midterms.

There are other factors, of course, it's hard to ignore one VERY glaring biographical difference between Biden and Obama. R's are in a bit of an existential crisis on policy in the Trump era, which makes attacks harder to figure out. And Trump means they're distracted.

There's also a massive post-Obama shift, which is the collapse of fiscal conservative politics, especially after the pandemic. The one thing that you might expect to unite opposition to Biden plan is the topline size, not the details, but even that seems to not be doing it.

But I think it's worth considering whether Biden figured out a different approach. Pass a lot of items that individually are harder to focus on, but together add up to a lot, and emphasize the ones with most bipartisan crossover.

This is also critical. Despite the ongoing infrastructure drama, D's are much much much much more likely to support going big without bipartisan cover now after witnessing how Obama's agenda turned out

https://twitter.com/awprokop/status/1417876899582423044?s=20

FWIW, there's still a significant chance D's stack one too many items on top the pyramid and the right backlash shows up later. One looming issue is immigration, for example, which still could activate conservative media in a way other issues in the Biden plan so far have not.