By Paul Waldman
Columnist
Today at 1:22 p.m. EDT
Even as Democrats engage in a vigorous round of breast-beating, recrimination and self-flagellation after their predictably poor showing in Tuesday’s elections, there’s one thing they can agree on: Everything is awful.
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We’re still limping through the coronavirus pandemic, almost two years on. President Biden’s approval ratings are weak. Congress is mired in the unsatisfying slog of legislating.
But what if things are about to turn around — for Democrats, but mostly for the country? What if this is the moment we’ll look back on as a real inflection point?
It feels strange to say so, particularly as someone who has been relentlessly pessimistic for the last five years or so. But let’s consider today’s news.
First, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly jobs report for October, showing that the economy created 531,000 new jobs and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.6 percent. In addition, previous months’ numbers were revised based on more complete data: The BLS reports that there were 235,000 more jobs created in August and September than they had previously reported.
Let me remind you that just six months ago, a monthly report showing that a mere 266,000 jobs had been created in April was greeted as though it was one of the greatest economic catastrophes in American history. Reporters and pundits called it “dismal,” “disastrous,” “a huge letdown” and “a significant slowdown.” But it now appears that while we still have a ways to go before the effects of the pandemic recession are over, the economy is recovering quite nicely.
We’ve been in this position before: Earlier this year, when coronavirus vaccines began to roll out but before the emergence of the delta variant, we thought the pandemic would soon be behind us and the economy would surge back. Now it looks like it may really happen.
Developments on the pandemic front also look extremely promising. While over a thousand Americans a day are still dying from covid, the vast majority of them unvaccinated, the numbers are heading in the right direction: New infections are occurring at less than half the rate they were two months ago.
Other developments suggest that we could — and it’s important to stress could — be at a key point in our efforts to beat back the pandemic.
The Biden administration released details of its vaccine mandate for large private employers, and although it won’t take effect for two months, it promises to accelerate the country’s slow march toward sufficient levels of immunity. We know how this will go because we’ve seen it over and over: A lot of attention will be paid to a small number of refusers loudly saying they won’t take the vaccine, but, in the end, when their jobs depend on it, almost everyone will.
The result will be millions more Americans vaccinated, and thousands or even hundreds of thousands of lives saved.
Meanwhile, Pfizer has announced that a newly developed therapy to be taken early in the onset of covid was shown in a study to reduce hospitalizations by 89 percent; none of the people taking the drug in the study died. The therapy is a set of pills patients take at home, making it easy to administer. If it turns out to be as effective as it appears, the result could be a dramatic reduction in deaths.
All that creates an opportunity for the Biden administration to make a new and powerful argument to the public: If we make this push, we can defeat the pandemic. Not someday, but now.
As Leana S. Wen argues, we can frame the next wave of vaccinations as a way to free ourselves from the need to wear masks all the time, which nobody likes even if most of us do it. It’s important for people to understand that what we do now can be not just something we must suffer through, but a final step on the path to liberation. The message we can take, and the reality it represents, should be not “Suck it up, people,” but “Victory is at hand, if we reach for it.”
Here’s one more reason this could be a turning point: Every day we get closer to Congress passing both the infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better bill, two enormously important measures that will have demonstrable positive effects on the country and individual Americans’ lives.
Yes, they’re not everything many of us hoped for. But they’re still among the most consequential pieces of legislation in decades.
Put all that together, and it starts to seem like the sun may be emerging from the clouds.
That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of reasons to feel that things are still awful. The Republican Party just showed again the eternal power of White backlash. Democracy is imperiled in much of our country. The Supreme Court is yanking our laws to the right. We continue to suffer from historic levels of inequality. Climate change threatens a miserable future for all of us. Donald Trump is probably going to run for president again.
But there are also reasons to think that things might, in some meaningful ways, actually be getting better. It never hurts to hope.
Columnist
Today at 1:22 p.m. EDT
Even as Democrats engage in a vigorous round of breast-beating, recrimination and self-flagellation after their predictably poor showing in Tuesday’s elections, there’s one thing they can agree on: Everything is awful.
Opinions to start the day, in your inbox. Sign up.
We’re still limping through the coronavirus pandemic, almost two years on. President Biden’s approval ratings are weak. Congress is mired in the unsatisfying slog of legislating.
But what if things are about to turn around — for Democrats, but mostly for the country? What if this is the moment we’ll look back on as a real inflection point?
It feels strange to say so, particularly as someone who has been relentlessly pessimistic for the last five years or so. But let’s consider today’s news.
First, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly jobs report for October, showing that the economy created 531,000 new jobs and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.6 percent. In addition, previous months’ numbers were revised based on more complete data: The BLS reports that there were 235,000 more jobs created in August and September than they had previously reported.
Let me remind you that just six months ago, a monthly report showing that a mere 266,000 jobs had been created in April was greeted as though it was one of the greatest economic catastrophes in American history. Reporters and pundits called it “dismal,” “disastrous,” “a huge letdown” and “a significant slowdown.” But it now appears that while we still have a ways to go before the effects of the pandemic recession are over, the economy is recovering quite nicely.
We’ve been in this position before: Earlier this year, when coronavirus vaccines began to roll out but before the emergence of the delta variant, we thought the pandemic would soon be behind us and the economy would surge back. Now it looks like it may really happen.
Developments on the pandemic front also look extremely promising. While over a thousand Americans a day are still dying from covid, the vast majority of them unvaccinated, the numbers are heading in the right direction: New infections are occurring at less than half the rate they were two months ago.
Other developments suggest that we could — and it’s important to stress could — be at a key point in our efforts to beat back the pandemic.
The Biden administration released details of its vaccine mandate for large private employers, and although it won’t take effect for two months, it promises to accelerate the country’s slow march toward sufficient levels of immunity. We know how this will go because we’ve seen it over and over: A lot of attention will be paid to a small number of refusers loudly saying they won’t take the vaccine, but, in the end, when their jobs depend on it, almost everyone will.
The result will be millions more Americans vaccinated, and thousands or even hundreds of thousands of lives saved.
Meanwhile, Pfizer has announced that a newly developed therapy to be taken early in the onset of covid was shown in a study to reduce hospitalizations by 89 percent; none of the people taking the drug in the study died. The therapy is a set of pills patients take at home, making it easy to administer. If it turns out to be as effective as it appears, the result could be a dramatic reduction in deaths.
All that creates an opportunity for the Biden administration to make a new and powerful argument to the public: If we make this push, we can defeat the pandemic. Not someday, but now.
As Leana S. Wen argues, we can frame the next wave of vaccinations as a way to free ourselves from the need to wear masks all the time, which nobody likes even if most of us do it. It’s important for people to understand that what we do now can be not just something we must suffer through, but a final step on the path to liberation. The message we can take, and the reality it represents, should be not “Suck it up, people,” but “Victory is at hand, if we reach for it.”
Here’s one more reason this could be a turning point: Every day we get closer to Congress passing both the infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better bill, two enormously important measures that will have demonstrable positive effects on the country and individual Americans’ lives.
Yes, they’re not everything many of us hoped for. But they’re still among the most consequential pieces of legislation in decades.
Put all that together, and it starts to seem like the sun may be emerging from the clouds.
That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of reasons to feel that things are still awful. The Republican Party just showed again the eternal power of White backlash. Democracy is imperiled in much of our country. The Supreme Court is yanking our laws to the right. We continue to suffer from historic levels of inequality. Climate change threatens a miserable future for all of us. Donald Trump is probably going to run for president again.
But there are also reasons to think that things might, in some meaningful ways, actually be getting better. It never hurts to hope.