This irks me. It irks me that David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel,  Valerie Jarrett, et al are irked that Joe is doing things a different way than Obama did. 

Obama writes that Biden himself told Obama that Mitch McConnell would obstruct anything he did. McConnell said publicly that his Job One was to see to it that Obama was a one-term POTUS.

In the 111th Congress Obama had a 261-180 majority in the House, and 57-41 majority in Senate. Biden would KILL for majorities like that! Yet he got more stimulus with a 50-50 Senate split. Now, Biden looks the transformational president, not O.

Obama’s—rational!, reasonable!, exactly what I would have done—reliance on process DID take too long, that’s the problem with process-centered policy formulation. The product WAS watered down in a fool’s-gold pursuit of bipartisanship. It was NOT sold, or sold well, to the public. Obama entirely missed, and so let rise, the Tea Party movement. As a result D’s lost the House in the 2010 elections. And Obama’s recovery was Chinese water-torture-painful and drawn out.

All of this Obama writes in A Promised Land! 

Now, Axe and Rahm and Jarrett are “stung” that Joe, Schumer, AOC, et al, are implicitly criticizing O for his tedious process, “modest” response, for seeing unity in bipartisanship, for a failure to communicate as FDR did, by being breathtakingly ambitious, working at lightning speed, getting more done with less through budget  reconciliation to avoid the filibuster, seeing unity in 70% public approval of the stimulus—the party split in Congress be damned—as FDR did, and selling like mad? Nah-ah. That dog won’t hunt. 

D’s may still lose the House and Senate in ‘22 (but those who are whispering that they might not may be right) but they are damn well not going to lose 62(!) seats in the House and SIX Senate seats like they did in 2010. The maneuvering of POJO and his team have gotten more done than could have been dreamt with their comparatively narrow margins. and they have the Republicans running scared. Who’s going to oppose a policy that has 70% approval? Let whoever wants to challenge an incumbent president in 2024 who has ended a pandemic and has the economy roaring like mad.