| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Let's talk presidential reputation. Charlie Cook suspects that President Joe Biden may have made a serious mistake by pushing ahead with a highly ambitious relief bill. By including several Democratic priorities and using the Senate's reconciliation procedure — which did not require (and, in the event, did not receive) any Republican votes — Biden may have harmed his future legislative prospects: Biden may have, in the early moments of his term, crippled his ability to do grand bargains. When the histories of the Biden presidency are written, there's a fair chance that this will be looked upon as a serious error of judgement—one that may plague this administration for a good while.
It's certainly possible! In particular, I'm not sure that the sequence of rolling out a bill, then holding a meeting with 10 Republican senators and then basically moving on without them really worked. Still, it's not clear if the mistake was moving on too quickly as opposed to making it more explicit from the beginning that he wasn't interested in a bare-bones bill. It's also not clear that there were 10 Republican votes for even the much smaller bill they were talking about, or that such a bill could've passed the House. At any rate, what have Democrats and Republicans learned — provisionally, to be sure — about Biden? To begin with: He won. The bill will pass the House and be signed into law. Biden wound up getting almost everything he asked for; the one big exception, a minimum-wage increase, was something he signaled early on that he didn't expect to get. That's a real plus! It should help him with congressional Democrats, who won't fear that he'll push them to vote for something that unexpectedly falls apart. It may even help him with congressional Republicans, who won't be able to assume that he's bound to be defeated. Biden also demonstrated that he's willing to wield partisan weapons (such as reconciliation) and not afraid of centrist criticisms such as Cook's, which means that Republicans can't hope to derail his plans by taunting him with the possibility of bipartisanship if he abandons them. Perhaps that means they'll reject working with him. But it's also possible that standing firm on the relief bill could produce the opposite reaction: Republicans choosing to make deals with him, knowing they're unlikely to defeat him. As for the Democrats, it's clear now that they're willing to use reconciliation for their priorities, and they're probably more confident than they were six weeks ago that Biden would back a majority-imposed Senate reform to eliminate or modify the filibuster. If Republicans really wanted to avoid that outcome, they might be willing to back down or cut deals on upcoming bills, or even allow them to pass with simple majorities, rather than filibustering everything. But I don't expect that. The history is clear: Most Republicans would much rather lose policy ground than compromise. That's why they were unwilling to accept any obvious deals in 2013 to retain the filibuster on nominations, even though it cost them their ability to block Barack Obama's executive-branch picks. But if that's true, then Biden and the Democrats aren't costing themselves any opportunities by acting aggressively on the relief bill. If it's not true — if many Republicans are willing to participate in grand bargains — then Biden's willingness to act without them should increase, not decrease, their incentives to negotiate. At least, that's true so long as Democrats retain their slim majorities. If Republicans flip one or both chambers in 2022, then the context obviously changes. But that's still a long way away. And the Democrats are in the middle of scoring one substantial policy win that wouldn't have happened if Biden had insisted on finding 60 votes in the Senate. 1. Sarah Binder at the Monkey Cage on how Democrats handled the relief bill. 2. Dan Drezner on the new administration's foreign policy. 3. Jamelle Bouie on the chances of a Republican crack-up. I've argued that this is up to dissenting current elected officials, and therefore unlikely but not totally impossible. 4. Matt Yglesias on copyright law. 5. And Kevin Drum on the likely outcome of Republican efforts to make voting more difficult. It's certainly possible that they'll stumble on something that really helps them. But the peak period in which groups that leaned Democratic were also the groups least likely to vote was a decade or so ago, and there's evidence that crude attempts to keep Black voters away from the polls can backfire. As Drum says, that doesn't excuse the anti-democracy Republicans, but it's not clear this round of laws will make much difference. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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