Michael Grunwald in Politico on avoiding the problems that resulted when Dems failed to message their 2009 economic stimulus that saved the auto industry, etc.:
"Democrats seemed to have learned a bunch of lessons from the backlash against the Obama stimulus—that it’s important to sell your own product, that it’s even more important not to trash your own product, and that it’s supremely important to make sure your product works as well as possible. Even though the Obama White House pushed for the biggest possible stimulus it could get out of a bailout-weary Congress in 2009, most economists believe the $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act would have produced a stronger recovery if it had been even bigger. Biden was determined to make sure his relief act didn’t undershoot as well, even if that meant he would face criticism for ignoring the budget deficit and failing to attract Republican votes. [snip]
So far, though, political history is not repeating itself. The approval rating for Obama’s recovery plan dropped more than 20 points from his election until he signed it into law three months later, even though Obama himself remained quite popular at the time. By contrast, the Biden stimulus is polling in the 70s, while Biden himself is polling in the fifties. If the pandemic ends and the economy roars, as independent forecasters like J.P. Morgan are predicting, the rescue plan could get even more popular, and the strategy of No could get even more difficult." (our emphasis)
The full-court press that the White House and Dems need to mount in the months ahead to publicize how the American Rescue Plan will improve lives without Republican support, while ignoring or defusing Republican and Beltway media efforts to change the subject, will be critical to our democracy surviving the next anti-democratic electoral assaults in 2022 and 2024.
