Attention to the Unseen

Jamelle Bouie writes: Last year, as he steamrolled his way to victory in the Democratic presidential primaries, Joe Biden told CNN that the pandemic was “probably the biggest challenge in modern history, quite frankly.” “I think it may not dwarf but eclipse what F.D.R. faced,” he added. Biden referred to Franklin Roosevelt again in an interview with Evan Osnos of The New Yorker. “I’m kind of in the position F.D.R. was,” he said. And a week before the election, Biden…

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Rebecca Traister writes: Joel Wertheimer took a job in Andrew Cuomo’s administration in February 2017, straight from his position in Barack Obama’s White House. He came on alongside almost 30 other new hires, many of whom had also worked for the outgoing president or on Hillary Clinton’s campaign and were seeking a progressive professional path through the Trump years. Some saw New York State government as a bulwark against what they feared Trumpism would bring. Others hoped it could be…

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Philip Bump writes: When he was running for president last year, one of Joe Biden’s pitches to voters was that, if he won, they would be able to stop paying attention to the White House all the time. “Remember when you didn’t have to think about the president every single day,” one ad from Biden’s campaign began, “and instead there was someone in that office who thought about you?” After four years of President Donald Trump dominating the country’s attention…

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Eric Levitz writes: The Republican Party has won the popular vote in just one of the six presidential elections held this century — but has nevertheless held the White House for 12 of the past 20 years. Since 2000, the GOP’s Senate caucus has never represented more voters than their Democratic colleagues. Yet Republicans have controlled the upper chamber for more than half of the past two decades. Meanwhile, for the entirety of this millennium, the median House district has…

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Chye-Ching Huang writes: With the passage of a deficit-financed $1.9 trillion relief bill just hours away, Democrats in Congress may soon pivot to new agenda items, including President Biden’s Build Back Better plan for infrastructure and other critical investments. And those lawmakers will inevitably face intense pressure from fiscal moderates to include tax “pay fors” in spending legislation. One of the best ways to raise plenty of revenue — and help honest taxpayers — is to effectively battle tax cheats….

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