The U.S. Senate on Sunday afternoon passed the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, which came with a price tag of $750 billion. The mainstream media was quick to celebrate such a victory, which included this lengthy piece at The Washington Post, "Inside Biden’s hot streak, from the poolside to the Capitol." The piece by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Tyler Pager speaks glowingly of President Joe Biden throughout, early on writing that he's had a "remarkable three-week stretch." What's really getting attention is an admission from former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, buried in the eighth paragraph.
Psaki is quoted as saying that "Sometimes the best things happen in the dark, away from the public." She was speaking in the context of Senate negotiations. "One of the lessons learned — a big lesson learned — was that letting the negotiations with senators dominate the public conversation was a mistake, because it made it so that disagreements about minutiae became what the public consumed, instead of how pieces of legislation were going to impact people’s lives," she had also said.
Such a quote not only speaks to the Biden administration's lack of transparency, but, as many pointed out on Twitter, also to the slogan from The Washington Post, "Democracy Dies in Darkness."
Actually, democracy thrives in darkness says Jen Psaki pic.twitter.com/pseQb0cFxC
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) August 9, 2022
As Lindsay Kornick for Fox News highlighted, that slogan showed up online on February 22, 2017, during the Trump administration. The slogan appeared on print copies a week later.
The piece also closed with pointing out that the president is being kept out of such negotiations, which is framed as being about Biden owning up to "mistakes" made:
In some sense, the groundwork was laid several months ago. When Biden held a news conference last January to mark his first year in office, his final answer to a reporter’s question signaled a recognition that he’d made mistakes and was determined to take a different approach.
“The public doesn’t want me to be the ‘President Senator.’ They want me to be the president, and let senators be senators,” Biden said. “If I’ve made a mistake, I’m used to negotiating to get things done, and I’ve been in the past relatively successful at it in the United States Senate, even as vice president. But I think that the role of president is a different role.”
It's worth reminding that Biden last year had tried to involve himself in negotiations for the the so-called Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in the Senate--which ultimately passed without him having a role--and in trying to convincing the U.S. House of Representatives to pass Build Back Better.
The so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which even Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) acknowledged won't reduce inflation, still has to pass the House. It is expected to do so on Friday, as this piece mentioned.
Just about anything would be considered an improvement for Biden in the polls, considering he was at around an average of 36-38 percent in recent weeks, according to RealClearPolitics (RCP) averages. RCP still has him at just below 40 percent, though, at 39.8 percent.