President Joe Biden has proposed a very ambitious agenda, after he already successfully passed the equally-ambitious American Rescue Plan (to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic). The next two legislative initiatives Biden has now unveiled -- the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan -- are also just as breathtaking in scope. Republicans, at least so far, have been caught rather flatfooted in their response. And it is up to the mainstream media to start pointing this out, by zeroing in on questions of actual policy rather than getting distracted by the GOP's attempts at demonization and misdirection.

Biden's pandemic plan is, so far, extremely popular with the public. It's even more popular when the individual items are broken out and asked, one by one. This is also true of almost everything that is in his second and third plans as well, and yet so far the Republicans have been allowed to object on the weakest of grounds. Their reaction to the American Jobs Act was to parse and hairsplit exactly what they considered was proper "infrastructure" and what was not.

To date, I have yet to see any journalist interviewing any Republican politician ask a rather basic question: "Do you really think the public really cares what category you put it in, or are they just going to support or oppose the initiative on its merits?" This would then lead immediately to much more pointed queries: "Do you support the idea? Why or why not? If you oppose it, please make the conservative case against the idea, because that is all the public really cares about."

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President Joe Biden has achieved one rather monumental task since he took office, at least to me: in his first 99 days as president, Biden has successfully made the presidency boring again. This sounds like a joke, but it isn't. The previous president was the one to make the presidency itself a joke, in fact -- Biden is just returning us all to the normal state of things. And the public -- even a lot of Republicans -- are relieved at this development. Joe Biden is not an egomaniac nor is he a megalomaniac. The difference is striking. Biden does not crave seeing his face on the news each night, so he has no need to deliberately cause a mini-crisis just to get everyone to pay attention to him during that day's news cycle. Biden also does not communicate like a petulant pre-teen on social media. He's downright boring, and that's an enormous relief to us all.

Part of this transformation has happened because his predecessor got kicked off social media, for fanning the flames of political violence. If this hadn't happened, Biden might have had a tougher time making the presidency boring again. But for whatever reason, Joe Biden made being boring cool again for politicians.

Tonight, Biden gave his first big speech, an address to Congress -- the "don't call it a State Of The Union" State Of The Union speech (the technical term isn't used until after a president has been in office for a year).

President Biden's speech was boring in parts, animated in others, but delivery aside it was a consequential speech that not only celebrated a portion of what the Biden administration has already achieved but also called on Congress to act on a rather large laundry list of agenda items. In other words, pretty standard as these things go.

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Democratic strategist James Carville is getting a little attention right now as a result of an interview just published in Vox. As is his wont, he uses some rather indelicate language to identify a number of problems plaguing Democratic efforts at messaging and getting elected. But I have to say, I largely agree with what Carville says. He's essentially right on his three main points. And other Democrats should take heed at what he's saying instead of complaining about it or denouncing it.

The biggest overarching point Carville makes is that the right way to craft a modern political message is to base your argument in emotion, not reason. More specifically, he derides what he calls "faculty lounge politics," or using the language from the ivory tower rather than speaking to people in the language they use. And finally, he makes what seems to me to be an almost-permanent complaint about Democrats -- they just don't fight as hard as Republicans, and that's why they lose a lot of messaging battles they really should win.

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This Sunday, I watched some political malpractice take place. The ABC morning political chatfest had their usual duelling roundtable, although for some reason Rahm Emanuel was missing from the lineup. This allowed Chris Christie to demonize the idea that President Joe Biden will be proposing (officially, on Wednesday) to tax upper-income capital gains at the same rate as wage income. The two liberals on the panel just weren't a match for him, and got drawn into the weeds of the debate rather than framing it correctly for the American public. Because not once did they use the phrase: "millionaires' tax."

That's what the new tax plan would be. Plain and simple. Cut and dried. If you make less than one million dollars per year in income, then your taxes will not change at all (at least not on capital gains -- there are reportedly other parts to Biden's proposal, but none of them was even part of this discussion so they can be treated separately). Got that? Only millionaires will pay. And not just millionaires in the traditional sense of the word ("those who are worth more than a million dollars"), but annual millionaires, since the tax rate wouldn't even kick in until you make that much in one year's income (no matter what your actual overall wealth may be). That's an even smaller slice of the public than "millionaires," but the label is still a useful one. In fact, it isn't even the "one percent" -- it is instead only the top three-tenths of one percent.

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President Joe Biden just had a pretty good week. And next week's going to be even better for him. Especially considering how far we've come since this time exactly one year ago.

In the past week alone, Biden and his administration chalked up the following achievements or milestones:

Biden has already reached his (doubled!) goal of 200 million vaccine shots into people's arms in his first 100 days in office -- a week early.

Over 41 percent of the American population has been vaccinated at least once, including over 51 percent of all those currently eligible (age 16 and up).

The average number of new infections has actually started to come down once again, and is once again lower than the peak of the second wave. It is still too high, but at least it is heading in the right direction once again. The average deaths per day seems to have plateaued at just below 750 -- again, too high, but a lot better than the peak of almost 3,500 deaths per day.

We are very close to -- and in some areas, already beyond -- the tipping point for vaccinations, where the supply of vaccine suddenly becomes greater than the demand. Once this point is reached (it will arrive at different times in different states), anyone who wants a shot should essentially be able to get one on the same day, with no (or very little) waiting. This is much earlier than most experts had predicted, which is a positive sign indeed.

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Senate Republicans today released their "framework" document on infrastructure, in response to President Joe Biden's $2.3 trillion proposal. To say the GOP's document is lightweight is somewhat of an understatement, in two distinct ways. First, the Republicans had earlier indicated that they were considering a package somewhere between $600 and $800 billion, but their opening bid doesn't even clear the lower end of that range, coming in at only $568 billion. Second, the bill isn't just lightweight on crucial details, they are, in fact, non-existent. Only the vaguest of language addresses how the bill will be paid for, for instance. The entire document is only two pages long, and even that is overstating its heft, because it is really nothing more than a couple of graphics-heavy slides than an actual legislative proposal.

This document was originally supposed to be released a week ago, but the Republicans apparently couldn't agree among themselves over key portions of the package. So they spent an entire week negotiating with each other, and as a result the bill is smaller and incredibly vague on how the revenue would be raised. And as an opening bid for serious negotiations, it's nothing short of a joke. Republicans are starting by offering less than 25 percent of what Biden is asking for -- a smaller percent than they were willing to give him in their COVID-19 relief bill proposal. More on that in a moment.

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Yesterday, America largely breathed a giant sigh of relief. For once, a jury had found a police officer guilty of murder for what was obviously criminal and deadly force. For once, the "blue wall of silence" had cracked, and police officers (including high-ranking officials) testified for the prosecution instead of closing ranks to protect one of their own at all costs. For once, justice was served.

The reason Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd was that there were multiple videos of him doing so, all of which were publicly available. The evidence was incontrovertible. For nine and a half minutes, Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck, choking his body of the oxygen it needed to live. He ignored the dozens of times Floyd pleaded: "I can breathe!" and just pressed the life out of his body. Which we could all clearly see, from multiple angles.

And so America was spared an outpouring of rage from citizens upset at cops walking free, since for once one of them didn't. This is such an exception to the normal outcome that people will be talking about it for years to come, I would venture to predict. Something has indeed changed, and George Floyd did not die in vain.

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Three years ago, I wrote an article titled "Marijuana Legalization Has Passed The Tipping Point." Now, we seem to be at the moment after the tipping point where momentum starts to quickly build, until the whole effort is speeding downhill and nothing can stop it at all.

Chuck Schumer just announced today -- on 4/20, of course -- that he would not only be drafting legalization legislation in the Senate but actually moving it to a floor vote. This bill would permanently get the federal government out of the War On Weed forever. Here's how the Washington Post reported it:

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Starting today, any American age 16 or older should be able to schedule an appointment to get their first COVID-19 vaccine shot. President Joe Biden originally set a goal of the first of May for this milestone, but was able to move it up a few weeks due to the overwhelming success of his vaccination program so far. Biden's first 100 days won't be up until next week, but he has already met or is on track to meet every pandemic-response goal he set for his administration -- including getting an astounding 200 million shots into people's arms in his first 100 days. This was actually a doubling of Biden's original stated goal, but he'll still hit the increased target he set for himself. It seems probable, at this point, that Biden's first year in office will largely be judged on the overall success America ultimately sees in the fight against the deadly disease. And up until this point, Biden's been doing a pretty stellar job.

Of course, in politics, nothing is permanent. So this could change in a number of ways. Some other crisis could appear after the threat of COVID fades even further, which pushes everything else out of the public's consciousness. Or the remainder of the vaccine rollout might not go as well as the initial phases. This could, in the worst-case scenario, leave the public short of the crucial percentage vaccinated necessary for herd immunity. That would be a blow to the Biden administration, without doubt.

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Some Republicans have apparently decided that political dog whistles are just no longer even necessary. After the bombast of Donald Trump, they're now quite comfortable just openly saying exactly what they mean -- no matter how racist it might be.

We refer to the formation of a new congressional caucus: the "America First Caucus." Normally, this wouldn't be all that big a deal -- just some group of extra-Trumpy GOP members getting together to figure out what their Dear Leader would want them to do in Congress. But their founding document was leaked, and it goes a wee bit further in laying out the founding principles of the new caucus. Here are their first few paragraphs on immigration, for instance:

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