Journalists. They don't make them like they used to.

From The left dreamed of remaking America. Now, it stares into the abyss as Biden’s plans wither. by Jeff Stein.  Stein is contrasting the broad ambition and enthusiasm of the progressive left in the primaries leading up to 2020 with the sense of paralysis and failure today.  

“For those years, there was this real effervescence in what you might call ‘the idea space’ — the space of policy innovation. There was this sense that there were no limits in American policy — it was very vertiginous, almost dizzying,” Hockett said.

“It was a heady and incredibly exciting time for progressives. Now, it’s just watching to see what Sinema and Manchin will do. Deflated seems like the right word — there’s been a damper thrown on it all.”

Stein focuses on the legislative failure to pass much of the Biden agenda but of course the case could be made that the failure is much more comprehensive - economic failure, security failure (the border and policing), international (China and Russia) failure, etc.

Stein's thesis is 1) its just part of the usual cycle of electoral victory versus governing, and 2) really, there have been some progressive triumphs which people are undercounting.

But basically it is one long lament of progressive reverses.  Quite notably, there is no examination about why these dreamed of policies are either being rejected or have failed.  It is easy to lay it at the feet of the opposition, the Republicans, but when surveys are showing most of the agenda being rejected by large majorities, it would have been a question worth asking.  Why, in the primaries, was there so much conviction by progressives about ideas which elicit so little support from the public?

The whole article is not really worth reading except as an insight into the mind of mainstream media employees posing as journalists.

There were a couple of startling items which are in back-to-back paragraphs.

Compounding liberal disillusionment is conservatives’ grip on the Supreme Court, which acts as a backstop against left policy change even if the obstacles to legislation are eventually overcome. The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the Biden administration’s vaccination-or-testing requirement for the country’s biggest firms, a devastating blow to the White House’s efforts to fight covid.

Two points.  Did the Biden administration overcome the legislative barriers to a mandate and then had the Supreme Court overturn that legislation?  Of course not.  It was an agency rule making without authority which was overturned.  The Supreme Court was not the bad guy.  The Biden administration could not muster support for legislation mandating vaccination and so they publicly and explicitly set out to accomplish their goal through the administrative process.  This is what the Supreme Court rejected, despite Stein's twisting of the facts.

Secondly, Is it really the case that the administration was dealt a devastating blow in their effort to fight covid?  Certainly the Supreme Court disemboweled the employer mandate but it did allow the healthcare worker vaccine mandate to proceed.  That's not what I am contesting though.  

Did Supreme Court deal a devastating blow to the White House's efforts to fight covid?  It seems pretty clearly that that was not the case.  The Supreme Court did block the vaccine mandate but even if it had proceeded, would that have made any difference in the fight against covid?  There are plenty of countries, provinces and states with very high, even universal, vaccination rates which have all seen massive jumps in infections owing to the omicron variant.  Universal vaccination has not made a difference so it is incorrect to claim that not being able to mandate vaccinations dealt a devastating blow to the administration's efforts.

We have a journalist claiming something to be true which is apparently not true.  The mandate would have made little or no difference in the White House's efforts to fight covid because, as seems now reasonably widely understood, vaccination neither halts transmission nor does it prevent infection from omicron.  And it is an open case yet as to whether it reduces symptoms and likelihood of hospitalization or death.  

The assertion is slipped in there without any recognition or debate.

Does Stein not understand the current covid data?  Possible, but that seems unlikely.  I am guessing that this might simply be a failure to update priors.  The effort to mandate vaccination gained steam long before the omicron variant spread at lightning speed across the globe.  At that time, it was disputable whether vaccination (given the rapid fade) remained a viable strategy in addressing covid.  Omicron has now answered that question.  Vaccine mandates do not make a difference.

Still, it is jarring to see that unstated assertion made by a journalist.  It is as if they do not read what they are writing.

The second jarring moment is in the next paragraph.  In fact two jarring moments.  

The federal government’s uneven response to the pandemic has also exposed the lack of U.S. administrative capacity to implement new programs. And the reemergence of inflation this year as a defining economic threat — a policy challenge that liberals had not been preparing to confront — appears at odds with the left’s vision to usher in a new paradigm with transformational spending programs.

There is another argument introduced without examination.  Is the Biden administration's failure to manage covid a Biden administration-specific failure or is it, as implied, a lack of U.S. administrative capacity to implement new programs?  I would argue it is pretty clearly the former rather than the latter.  Across a wide range of policies, this administration has failed to administratively accomplish that which has been delivered in the past.  It is not just covid.  

The US government does do some things well.  It does implement some new programs successfully.  But the laboratory of democracy which is our republic, i.e. the states, demonstrates that there is a difference between administrative capacity and just bad policy. 

If you accept that covid was all along going to become endemic, then the proper approach has been to 1)  segment the population at risk (those aged and with co-morbidities) and deal with them separately, 2) develop treatments for everyone, and 3) possibly expand hospital capacity.  In contrast, there is the federal default position of zero-covid and entirely dependent on novel vaccines not thoroughly tested.  

Some states such as Florida pursued the former strategy with some good success whereas the Federal government has failed to deliver the second strategy.  Is this because of administrative capacity or because of bad policy?

I would argue that the federal government pursued bad policy and failed whereas some states (and certainly other nations) pursued better policy with better outcomes.

Again, Stein has slipped in an uncontested argument which is actually highly contestable.  Why all the sub-plots?  Feels like propaganda rather than journalism.

The second jarring element in that second paragraph might only be the product of bad writing.

And the reemergence of inflation this year as a defining economic threat — a policy challenge that liberals had not been preparing to confront — appears at odds with the left’s vision to usher in a new paradigm with transformational spending programs.

What Stein appears to be trying to say is that.  

The reemergence of inflation this year as a defining economic threat is at odds with the left’s vision to usher in a new paradigm with transformational spending programs.

That would be a true statement.  With rising inflation, additional federal deficit spending will only make a bad situation worse.  

But Stein seems to be interjecting an excuse 

 — a policy challenge that liberals had not been preparing to confront — 

which makes his paragraph unclear.  And it would be untrue anyway.

Economists across the spectrum have been warning for the past year that rapidly rising deficit spending would fuel inflation.  When inflation first started showing up in the numbers, it was dismissed as a chimera, a transitory phenomenon.  But here it is and it will be with us for at least a while.

This was never a policy challenge of which liberals were unaware or could not anticipate.  Democratic economists were warning about it.  They simply wished it away as not going to happen this time.  

Once again, Stein is introducing misleading facts and arguments into this supposed piece of journalism.  

Journalists.  They don't make them like they used to.

Biden ran on one set of ideas (return to normalcy, be a uniter not divider, trusted moderate hands, etc.) and has been delivering an entirely different set of ideas (the progressive agenda, transforming America, remaking America, etc.).  The specific policies he has advanced have been bad policies which have failed in the past and have failed in other countries and have never had much support in the US.  Not only has he sought to implement bad policy but he has also implemented those bad policies poorly.  

For Stein, it seems, this has nothing to do with the current failures.  The current situation is just about foregone dreams.