LogFAQs > #952866861

brestugo posted...

The legislative strategy has been to do popular stuff first. Build momentum and approval ratings. The COVID response, $1400, and Infrastructure bill poll well and Biden is polling well.

Taking on something like packing the courts whatever it's merit is controversial and will erode political capital that could perhaps be used for a court packing bill or something otherwise in the future. Now is not the time.

I'm sure a lot of you complaining were in the "money where?" crowd.

Some of you guys just don't know shit about about how legislation works.

Political capital doesn't exist. Voters like it when you do things they like, they don't like it when you do things they don't like.
But the popularity of ideas is not some fixed constant that constrains policymakers. In fact, politicians(especially popular ones like President Biden) can move the needle on specific ideas(for example, Biden declaring his support for fracking at a debate caused approval of fracking among Democratic voters to improve considerably). This doesn't mean they can completely reshape public opinion - far from it - but that they do have some control over how the public views a given issue.
This country will simply not survive as a democracy without difficult reform efforts that will not always be immediately popular. And Democrats are reluctant to do even the things that *are* popular, like passing new voting rights legislation.