Biden got his infrastructure bill; now he has to sell it
Joe Biden is selling. But is anyone buying?
The president, a used-car salesman’s son who sees himself as a consummate political pitchman, is stepping up efforts to promote his hard-won, $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package to the public, in hopes of branding it is as his apex achievement, reversing his recent plunge in the polls and boosting Democrats’ chances in the 2022 midterm elections.
Among Democrats, however, concerns are growing about whether the White House — hurtling from crisis to crisis — can mount the sustained campaign necessary to reframe a sprawling bill that was gridlocked for months into a triumph that will help them hold Congress.
The package is already popular, with a solid majority of voters saying they support its funding increases for rail, roads, ports, water systems, broadband and the power grid. But the president and his allies are under no illusion about what they are really selling — Biden himself, and his theory-of-the-case for American politics, that delivering on concrete campaign promises is the only way to transcend the rage and culture-war messaging of Trump-era politics.
“When you do fundamentally helpful things for people, and you make sure they know about it, you will get credit for it,” said Jared Bernstein, a longtime economic adviser to the president, summing up the Biden brand, and the plan for his comeback in the polls.
Yet the challenges facing
Biden — who, as President Barack Obama’s vice president a decade ago, had some success serving as a traveling salesman for the stimulus and health care bills — are formidable.
The infrastructure bill is intended as a long-term solution to decades of neglect. Many of the projects will not be selected, much less completed, for years — so many Americans might not immediately see the windfall. And Biden, for all of his Amtrak gusto, is not an especially consistent messenger.
Moreover, the initial enthusiasm about the bill has been sapped by months of intraparty squabbling that trapped the president “in the sausage-making factory,” as a senior White House aide put it. And a new fight over the unresolved $1.85
trillion social spending plan threatens to send him right back into the legislative grinder. Rising inflation and pessimism about the economy, coupled with the lingering pandemic, and the hangover from the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, have soured the public mood and pushed Biden’s once-robust approval rating to the low 40s.
While 32 Republicans — including Sen. Mitch Mcconnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, voted for the package (he called it a “godsend” for his state this week) — the party is already trying to dilute its political impact. Some Senate conservatives have even cast its passage as a victory of sorts for former President Donald Trump, whose halfhearted push on infrastructure became a running joke.
On Tuesday, Rep Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, who heads the campaign committee for House Democrats, warned the White House not to squander the moment, saying that Biden “needs to get himself out there all around the country” before “the next crisis takes over the news cycle.”
One of the president’s closest allies, Rep. James E. Clyburn, D-S.C., sees it as a race against time to brand the victory as a Biden accomplishment. Clyburn said his biggest worry was that Republicans would simply start showing up at ribbon cuttings to celebrate projects many in their party opposed.
Clyburn pointed to one example he encountered back in his home state this week: Gov. Henry Mcmaster, a Trump-allied Republican, appeared at a groundbreaking for a popular $1.7 billion highway project that was funded, in part, by a state tax increase he had initially vetoed.
“Democrats have never done a good job of telling people what we have done,” said Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House. “We’ve got to do the work, sure, but then we’ve got to go back and tell people that we’ve done it. We got to get off our duffs.”
White House officials are also eager to make a quick sale on infrastructure. The Build Back Better Act, which includes a dizzying array of social spending programs, is also popular but is likely to face unanimous opposition from Republicans.
Recent focus groups conducted by Democratic pollsters indicate that swing voters might be swayed against the new package by messaging that depicts it as “socialist” overreach.
Biden’s team argues that both bills are a political boon, and say they are intent on taking full advantage of his infrastructure win as quickly as possible. The president has participated in strategy meetings, impatiently instructing aides to simplify their descriptions of programs so voters can more easily understand them, according to a Democratic official who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.
Biden scheduled a White House signing ceremony Monday that will include legislators, mayors and governors from both parties, followed by trips around the country over the next week to sell the plan.
In addition, the administration is turning back to an infrastructure sales force of sorts in dispatching Cabinet members, led by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, to promote infrastructure investments in cities, towns, rural areas and tribal communities. Vice President Kamala Harris will also play a role, according to Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson.
The administration is also preparing a messaging blitz on television and media outlets targeted at Black and Hispanic communities, the Democratic official said. The White House digital team is developing social media explainers and videos to promote the benefits of the infrastructure plan to different constituencies.
“You can have surrogates both span out across the country and talk about your policies, but at the end of the day, it’s the president’s agenda, it’s his vision, and he’s got to be the one selling it,” said Mike Schmuhl, who managed Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign and now serves as the chairman of the Indiana Democratic
Party.
But Biden does not have the luxury of focusing exclusively on selling the bill. His appearance Wednesday at the port of Baltimore, for example, was not strictly an infrastructure event: It was intended to address growing concerns about the supply chain bottlenecks, in addition to publicizing the $17 billion allocated in the bill for improvement at ports.
In many ways, Biden’s current challenge echoes the task he confronted in 2010 and 2011 when he was dispatched to states and cities to sell Obama’s stimulus and health care plans, which were unpopular at the time, and passed with virtually no Republican support.
At the time, Biden pressured Obama, with little success, to spend less time in Washington focusing on governmental process, and more time on the road explaining his policies to voters — the same request Democrats are now making of Biden.
“We have a great opportunity to go out and sell a bill that genuinely has an impact on people’s real lives,” said Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., who is likely to face a serious challenge next year. “But everyone has to really go out and make the case for it — and celebrate it — if it is going to be helpful for Democrats in seats like mine in 2022.”
But Biden’s centrist strategy, rooted in his desire to revive a bygone era of bipartisanship, is also providing a safe haven for a handful of moderate Republicans who are betting that delivering results for their constituents will offset the damage of a fleeting alliance with a Democratic president.
“It is a difficult time to act in a bipartisan way, and some of the phone calls I’ve gotten to my office are a reflection of that,” said Nicole Malliotakis of New York. She was one of 13 House Republicans to vote for the package.
“Sadly, you have a lot of people who are more concerned with the optics of giving the president some credit,” she added. “But it’s my job to serve the people who elected me, and they want me to deliver real infrastructure because we’ve got real problems here — we’ve got constant flooding, and we have got to deal with our inadequate sewer systems.”