Why Biden’s Spending Bills May Not Matter In 2022

Jonathan Bernstein: “There’s no reason to expect passage or rejection of these bills to have strong electoral effects, and if it does matter in November 2022 or November 2024 there’s no guarantee that success would help Democrats.”

“Perhaps the most obvious comparison would be the aftermath of the Democrats’ failure to pass health-care reform in 1993-1994, and then of their triumph in passing the Affordable Care Act in 2009-2010. While those efforts were the most prominent legislative initiatives in both cases, they were surrounded by other fiascos (during the first two years of Bill Clinton’s presidency) and successes (when Barack Obama was president). In both cases, the electoral results were more or less the same — a disaster for the party in the midterms, followed by re-election for Clinton and Obama two years later.”

“That’s hardly the only relevant historical example. The most successful and productive Congress since the New Deal was the one following the huge Democratic landslide of 1964. The electoral fallout? Big Republican gains in 1966 and a Richard Nixon presidency two years later. It’s not that voters hated what that Congress did. It’s just that voters are willing and able to take even brand-new programs for granted and ask, in effect, what have you done for me lately? And if the answer isn’t peace and prosperity, it doesn’t matter what else has happened.”