Year: 2021

A Backlash Against the Unvaccinated Is Beginning

Buck Banks

“While most state and national GOP leaders are focused on defending the rights of unvaccinated Americans, new polling shows that the large majority of vaccinated adults—including a substantial portion of Republicans—support tougher measures against those who have refused COVID-19 shots. … These new results … reveal that significant majorities of people who have been vaccinated support vaccine mandates for health workers, government employees, college students, and airline travelers—even, in some surveys, for all Americans or all private-sector workers. Most of the vaccinated respondents also say that entry to entertainment and sporting arenas should require proof of vaccination, and half say the same about restaurants. … All of this suggests that as the Delta variant’s ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’ disrupts the return to ‘normal’ life promised by the vaccines, a backlash may be intensifying among those who have received the shots against those who have not.”

— Ron Brownstein

Booker Praises Tuberville Sidestep

Buck Banks

“I am so excited. This is perhaps the highlight of this long and painful and torturous night. This is a gift… because there’s some people who have said that there are members of this deliberative body that want to defund the police, to my horror.”

— Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), quoted by CNN, praising an amendment by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) which allowed every Democratic senator to symbolically vote against defunding the police.

Trump — The Opposite of Helpful on Vaccine Front

Buck Banks

“It’s been more than six months since Donald Trump left office and, despite pleas from multiple friends and advisers, the former president has kept refusing to mount anything resembling a real effort to get his supporters vaccinated …. According to four people who’ve independently spoken to Trump about a potential pro-vaccine campaign, the former president has shown little interest in tying his name to broader efforts to get people inoculated.”

— Daily Beast

Dems Are Acing the Tests, but What About the Midterms?

Buck Banks

Jonathan Last: “The universe keeps setting up tests for the Democrats, daring them to show they’re not a normal political party:

  • Are you going to nominate a socialist as your presidential candidate?
  • Are you going to defund the police?
  • Are you going to pack the Supreme Court?
  • Are you going to blow up the filibuster?
  • Are you going to tolerate a sexual abuser as governor of New York?

“And every time—every single time—the Democrats have passed.”