After a harsh winter in which the death toll of COVID-19 in the U.S. has increased to more than half a million, President Biden will seek to promote – and benefit from – a national wave of optimism about the pandemic, the economy and the condition of the country in a White House speech Thursday night.
The president must say that, by May 1, all adult Americans will be eligible to register for a vaccination appointment and receive their first injection by the end of that month, a senior government official told reporters. By July 4, Americans should be able to meet in at least small groups, the official said, speaking under rules that do not allow identification by name.
About 4,000 additional soldiers will be sent to help with the vaccination campaign, and the federal government will launch a website and a call center to help people find appointments, the official said.
The president’s optimistic tone will mark a notable pivot for Biden, who in December warned that “the darkest days of the battle against COVID are ahead of us” and has since repeatedly minimized expectations for his government’s progress.
Biden is expected to speak hours after signing the $ 1.9 trillion recovery package law that his government says will speed up the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations, help reopen schools safely and deliver significant amounts of financial aid to low and middle income families. The speech, the first in prime time at the White House, will also mark the one-year anniversary of the declaration by the World Health Organization of COVID-19 as a pandemic.
In a brief signing ceremony for the Oval Office – a bigger celebration will take place on Friday – Biden said the aid package was about “rebuilding this country’s backbone”.
The bill will provide payments of $ 1,400 to most Americans in the coming weeks, with the first wave crashing into bank accounts as early as this weekend, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Thursday.
It will also achieve a list of Democratic goals, including the creation for one year of an almost universal child benefit that experts project that will cut the child poverty rate by almost half.
The law will reduce the overall poverty rate by more than a third over the next year, according to a new analysis by the Washington-based Urban Institute. This would be by far the biggest drop in poverty in a single year in the past decade and one of the biggest in modern United States history.
The enactment of the law marks a significant victory for Biden – the package came out of Congress almost the same size he proposed in January, its main components intact, with the exception of an increase in the federal minimum wage, which the Senate rules required it to be. treated separately.
It happened on the 50th day of his presidency, as the White House was also able to celebrate the approval of most of Biden’s office – Atty. General Merrick Garland, the 16th official confirmed by the Senate, took the oath of office on Thursday afternoon – and a rapid increase in the number of vaccinated Americans. Approximately 1 in 4 American adults has already received at least one injection.
The speech marked the beginning of at least a week of events in which Biden and other officials will seek to highlight elements of the new law – something he said last week that President Obama did not do enough in 2009 after his economic stimulus was approved. law.
Biden is due to travel next week to the suburbs of Philadelphia – a traditionally Republican area where he has had strong appeal among moderate voters, while Vice President Kamala Harris reaches the undecided states of Colorado and Nevada. The two have a joint presentation scheduled for the end of next week in Atlanta, another politically crucial location.
At each stop, government officials must emphasize how Americans can access the help provided by the new law and also supply a commodity that was in short supply last year – optimism.
Biden hopes to “give some hope for what is to come,” said Psaki. “We are still in the middle of a war against the pandemic.” But, she added, he “wants to give people a sense of what is possible” and “what can we expect”.
The hopeful tone contrasts sharply with his presidential campaign, in which Biden took a sober approach designed to draw a stark contrast to President Trump’s minimization of the disease, which many voters found arrogant. Biden also lowered expectations, allowing him to promise less and deliver more, a classic path to success that his predecessor often did not follow because of his tendency to over-sell.
In the past few weeks, however, Biden and his government have increasingly taken a sunnier note. The move began just over a week ago, when Biden announced that the country would have enough vaccine to give vaccines to all adults by the end of May.
“Every day the number of vaccines goes out, and when you have that kind of visible progress, it’s hard to argue with that,” said Donna Edwards, a former Democratic member of the Maryland Congress.
On Thursday, ahead of Biden’s speech, Rochelle Walensky, her appointed head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also seemed more optimistic in a statement about the anniversary of the pandemic.
“Vaccinating millions every day gives me hope,” said Walensky. “I hope that we can overcome this pandemic. And I hope that we can return to be with our family, friends and community. And so on.”
This change is something that several Democratic strategists have insisted on.
“They have been too negative,” said Democratic researcher Anna Greenberg. “Some optimism from him would be good.”
The approach corresponds to the growing mood of the audience. While Americans remain cautious about how quickly the country can return to normal, new Gallup research has shown that the share of Americans who express satisfaction with their lives is recovering almost to pre-pandemic levels.
Republican strategist Sarah Longwell saw this shift in focus groups she conducted with voters who supported Donald Trump in 2016 and then moved to Biden last year.
In 2020, “when I asked the question, ‘How do you think things are going in the country?’ the responses were brutal, ”said Longwell. People talked about friends or relatives dying and not being able to visit them or people being fired, she recalled.
In contrast, in their last group, six people in a row “said, ‘I’m feeling really good. I think things are going in the right direction, ‘”she said.
“There is a feeling of being on the edge,” added Longwell. And while voters remain skeptical of political promises, “checks that reach people’s mailboxes” are the kind of things that are likely to attract attention.
Biden’s promotional task is in many ways easier than what Obama faced a decade ago. In the case of Obama, the Great Recession was still deepening for much of his first year in office – unemployment did not peak until October 2009. Voters at the time were also extremely concerned about risk, said Joel Benenson, who was the Obama researcher.
That caution significantly limited the size of any program the country would support, he said. It also gave Republicans the ground to attack Obama’s proposals.
In contrast, Biden’s path has been facilitated by the Republicans’ inability so far to develop effective attacks against his legislative package.
That will change over time, said Greenberg. “You can see Republicans struggling,” but with a legislative package of this size, “there will inevitably be something.”
For now, however, the bill “has simply not sparked the kind of opposition that Obama’s stimulus did,” said Republican strategist Alex Conant.
All of this is reflected in surveys that show legislation supported by about 70% of the public. Biden’s own approval rating is not at such a high level and will probably never be, given the country’s intense political polarization.
“The 57%, 58%, 59% approval rating days are probably over,” said Benenson. “Social media served to completely balk the country.”
But Biden maintained a steady majority of the public in his favor. A poll released on Thursday by the non-partisan Pew Research Center found 54% of the public approving Biden’s performance so far, with 42% disapproving.
The poll also showed 65% of the public confident that Biden can effectively deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden’s approval rating is very similar to that of Presidents Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush at this point in their terms. In contrast, Trump’s approval rating at this point was 44% and never exceeded 50%.
The president’s approval rating is important, giving him greater influence in Congress and shaping the political landscape for the mid-term election in 2022. It is not yet known how much further Biden’s approval may go up, but the approval of the help gives you a strong starting point.
“Biden is betting on shots in people’s arms and checks in people’s mailboxes,” said Longwell.
For the young president, this could be a winning combination.