After getting their clocks cleaned in last Tuesday’s election in Virginia and a big scare in New Jersey, Democrats are suddenly realizing they are caught in a trap of their own: inaction.
That is a fact that White House chief of staff Ron Klain acknowledged during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, saying that disappointing election results last week for Democrats were a wake-up call for lawmakers to act urgently to implement President Joe Biden’s agenda, including a bipartisan infrastructure bill that is now set to become law.
“I do think the voters sent a message on Tuesday. They wanted to see more action in Washington,” Klain said, Politico reports, citing the interview. “They wanted to see things move more quickly, and three days later, Congress responded, passing the president’s infrastructure bill.”
On Friday, three days after the surprising defeat, House Democrats passed the $550 Billion infrastructure bill Friday, sending it to Biden’s desk after months of infighting on Capitol Hill.
Klain argued the election loss in Virginia alone didn’t “put it over the line,” instead touting months of work by Biden and congressional Democrats and Republicans.
But many Democrats think the passage of the bill came too late and its unnecessary delay affected president Biden’s job approval rating.
Asked about the decline in the president’s approval, Klain admitted it has been a difficult year, but touted the infrastructure package and an improving economy.
“In my opinion, it’s been a rough and tough year. And we knew it would be,” Klain said. “President Biden has said this all the time. We’re in a yearlong effort to dig out of the holes we were left in.”
“I understand that voters are tired, Americans are tired of how long it’s taken to get the economy moving, to get Covid under control,” Klain said. “They are in a ‘show me, don’t tell me’ mode. I think we are going to show them in the weeks and months ahead that we have made this progress on Covid. We have made this progress on the economy. We are past, now, the infrastructure bill.”
He also said he’s thankful Democrats got the message.
“That we — thank God, and I think that the Democrats in the House got this message very loud and clear — pass the bill, right?” Granholm said .”And pass the second part too, because these contain things that everyday people care about.”
Watch the interview below:
.@WHCOS on @MeetThePress: “As long as this show has been on the air, people have come on the show and said, ‘We should make a massive investment in infrastructure to grow the economy…’ We finally did it on Friday. That’s the bottom line.”pic.twitter.com/BAUbFFRVkQ
— marielsaez46 (@marielsaez46) November 7, 2021
