Great article! Thank you for pointing out the two different ways Biden is going to push his infrastructure policies through and the reasons for each. This is something I haven’t seen reported anywhere else as clearly as you did it... great job!

-Russ

i can't imagine how someone who has been in the senate for over 50 years might be good at politics...

https://youtu.be/86yzWmrR3Hk

JL

It appears that Joe is rewarding our, er, faith/cautious optimism/Never Trumpism. Yes, the MSM will keep beating the "Dems in Disarray" drums -- the tired "politics as blood sport" shtick -- but I think (hope!) Joe is maneuvering the Repugs into a corner.

In short, Joe seems good at politics.

The only thing I would add is that the Dems from Biden on down are missing the opportunity to point out how other countries in the "Americas" have better infrastructure and roads (not all of them, mostly the well established ones, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador...).

Just heard my favourite president say that this time will be remembered by historians as the moment that America, ah, won the future.

I remember what happened to the Obama/Biden slogan, Win The Future - it became my Poker Stars moniker, number one and, number two, that administration stopped using it around the time they figured out what the acronym was ... Heh.

anyone who thought that about andrew cuomo doesn't know him.

JL

And, Biden is just really getting started. I may have mentioned that this presidency thing is in his blood and rushes through his veins, all in a very good way. He is truly the peoples' politician.

There's more than enough trouble ahead for his administration but there is no one on the planet more capable of dealing with whatever comes his way than Biden.

Some other commentary I've been reading has been focusing, not on Biden's political mastery as here, but on already-evident Democratic squabbling about this and that in the bills, each squabble representing peril to the eventual use of budget reconciliation for passage, not to even mention a deal about the filibuster.

Another angle that occurred to me, as I read your piece, was that the split infrastructure bill may also be bait to force the Republicans to prove that they will block any bill coming from this Congress, period - so that the Senate leadership and the president can reasonably demand that the Senate hold-outs must agree that the filibuster has to go.

And in the to-do about all that, the infrastructure bill may go down the tubes, or half of it as you say. But the result will be that S.1, the voting rights bill, will be the first to soar past the corpse of the filibuster. And in my opinion, if Biden or the Senate leaders were to pick which bill it is absolutely necessary that they pass this year, it would be the voting rights bill, not the infrastructure one.

Because without the voting rights bill passed and getting past the Supreme Court challenges, the Democratic Party is going to have a heck of a time winning future Congressional majorities, and passing future re-tries on infrastructure, climate, healthcare, Court reform, new states, etc.

Because I've been so into US politics for so long and so hoping to see Biden in the Oval Office for the better part of the last two decades, I haven't paid a lot of attention to what he's doing since becoming president, mostly because I don't have to! Not with these excellent pieces and knowing that Biden is now where he should be for the next eight years and no one on the planet knows more about how to get good things done in this role than him, so ...

Call me an extremely happy camper!!! :-)