Immediately after taking office, President Biden called on the government to do better. “We have to prove that democracy still works,” he told Congress. “That our government is still working – and that we can provide for our people.”
According to FiveThirtyEight average opinion polls.
In today’s newsletter, I want to use Covid as a case study of how Biden failed to convince Americans of how the government delivered and instead reinforce the perception that it can’t.
Polls show that Covid – not the chaos of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan – has given rise to Biden’s political problems. His approval rating started dropping in July, weeks before the withdrawal.
That time coincided with the emergence of the Delta variant and it was reported that the vaccine’s protection against infection was not maintained. Both came after Biden suggest for months as Covid’s “Independence Day” drew near, disappointing Americans as it became clear his administration would fail to deliver on its biggest supposed promise.
Examples of Covid
At first, the Biden administration’s pandemic response helped highlight how the government can tackle a big problem. Millions of Americans received shots each day – a campaign that Biden compared to the wartime campaign.
But then things go awry, culminating in disappointment Many Americans Now feel for Biden’s handling of Covid.
The Biden administration has delivered mixed messages about boosters and masks that sometimes appear to contradict data and experts. As we have covered beforeUS officials often distrust the public with the truth about Covid and its precautions.
Congress is also lagging, with pandemic funding catch in infighting and partisan infighting – the kind of stalemate that has often kept lawmakers from getting things done in recent years.
“The U.S. government is slow and very incremental,” said Julia Azari, a political scientist at Marquette University. “That makes it very difficult to respond.”
Perhaps Biden’s biggest mistake, as Azari put it, was “inflating prices too high.” At the beginning of last summer, he suggested that a vaccine would soon make Covid a thing of the past – a view that some experts also shared at the time.
Biden cannot control what comes next, as the virus persists. But he might set more realistic expectations for how a notoriously unpredictable pandemic will play out.
Another problem ahead of Biden’s presidency: the political polarization of the pandemic. It makes the vaccine red-green-blue problem, with many Republicans refusing to shoot. However, vaccines are still the best weapon against Covid.
Given the high polarization, Biden’s options against Covid are now limited. His support for a vaccine may even turn Republicans against attacks, a study found.
“More could be done, but the impact is probably marginal, rather than transformative,” said Jen Kates of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Even if Biden can’t do much, the public will likely hold him accountable for future Covid spikes; voters expect the president to solve difficult problems. Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, said: “People blame the government for problems that are beyond the control of the government.
Disbelieve
Biden sees the call as a test of American democracy. He compared the 1930s – “another era when our democracy was put to the test”, followed by the threat of fascism. He points to new threats: Donald Trump challenges the legitimacy of US elections and the president of China, Xi Jinping, Betting that “democracy can’t keep up with him.”
There is also a historical element. Since the Vietnam War and Watergate, Americans’ trust in their government Collapsed. If Biden succeeds, he could help reverse this trend.
But Covid, and the government’s response to it, has done the opposite. Confidence in the CDC has dropped throughout the pandemic: from 69% in April 2020 to 44% in January, according to NBC News.
Distrust of government can become a vicious cycle. The government needs the public’s trust to get the job done – like a mass vaccination campaign. Without that support, government efforts would be less successful. And when government is less successful, the public loses more confidence in it.
Given the polarization surrounding Covid and the government’s mixed record, skepticism seems a more likely outcome than the confidence renaissance Biden has called for.
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Parents fear it. Children love it.
With vivid colors, catchy songs, and simple animations, the “CoComelon” animated series has an almost hypnotic effect on toddlers. The show is the second largest channel on YouTube and holds a solid spot in the Netflix top 10.
It’s all by design – “CoComelon” is the product of Moonbug Entertainment, a London company that produces some of the world’s most popular online children’s shows.
Moonbug treats children’s shows like a science, where every potential aesthetic choice or plot point is data-driven and rigorously tested against the target audience. Should the music be louder or more mellow? Should the bus be yellow or red? The answer is yellow – babies seem to be attracted to yellow buses, as well as minor injuries and things covered in dirt.
A Moonbug executive said during a company story session: “The trio to a child would be a dirty yellow bus with boos. “The fender is broken, the wheel is broken, the face is contorted a little.”
