Special: President Biden’s Challenges

- Good evening, and welcome to "The Washington Week Extra". I'm Yamiche Alcindor. We're continuing our conversation on the President's first year in office. Joining me tonight to discuss all of this, Laura Barron-Lopez, a White House correspondent for Politico, Carl Hulse, Chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, and Mike Memoli, White House correspondent for NBC News. Thank you all of you for being here. Now, Laura, I want to start with you. You wrote last week, President Biden was forged in the Senate, and now he's burning political capital trying to change it. Talk a bit about that, and what we've sort of seen happen here with President Biden understanding it and learning about modern politics and the modern way that D.C.'s working.

- Yeah, so in that story, we were talking a lot about this big voting rights push, which the President really tried to get Senators Manchin and Kirsten Sinema to be on board with changes to the filibuster. It was a big deal that President Biden endorsed himself changes to Senate rules because as we all know, the President for a long time was a defender of these very same Senate rules, a defender of the filibuster, and now, given the way that politics has changed, given the fact that the Senate really is constantly at a stalemate, he decided that it was time for these rules to change, and that was a big step for him to endorse that. He's also talked a lot about, when he was meeting with Senate Democrats in recent weeks, that he feels as though the chamber doesn't operate the way it used to at all, that people just don't talk to each other, and that that was a big frustration for him that he wasn't anticipating heading into the presidency.

- Yeah, that is in some ways very interesting, when you think about sort of how his experience has worked against him in some ways. I also want to ask you, Laura, another question. According to NBC News, President Biden had several themed events, and they sort of counted them up, 61 events on the coronavirus, 39 events on BBB and infrastructure, and two events, they count, on voting rights. What's this sort of tallying up of his events and sort of the themes that the White House put out there? What does it tell us about the President's focus in his first year, and also sort of why he might be getting some backlash from Democrats?

- Well, what it really tells us is that the pandemic is still front and center. As we all know, we're virtual right now, and the President and the White House are very aware that come 2022, that election is going to be about the pandemic. It's going to be about what the White House's response was to it, and how effective it was. And so that's why the White House knows, and Biden knows, that the rest of his economic domestic agenda is still incredibly important. And so you're gonna see the President start to move back towards the rest of that social spending plan that has not been able to pass in the Senate. He's gonna probably stay away from getting totally bogged down in day to day conversations with law makers, but they do want to see big pieces of that passed, and they know that it's key, not only to his climate change promises, but also they argue it's key to helping America come back from the pandemic.

- Yeah, and Mike, Laura's talking about President Biden not wanting to get bogged down in back and forth with law makers, but when you look at his agenda, police reform didn't happen, voting rights legislation is stalled, BBB is stalled. What's the conversation inside the White House about the President maybe trying to focus on things that don't have to go through Congress, even though, of course, laws have to go through Congress?

- Yeah, typically when you see a presidency dealing with an uphill battle on Capitol Hill on a number of fronts, they start talking about executive action. But I think, as we look back at sort of the first year of the Biden presidency, it's really been a test of the ways in which he practices politics and how it's changed since he became President. We just laid out, Laura did so well, how his views have changed revolving around how you work in the Senate. I think the other part of this that's so interesting and one of the most revealing answers he gave at that news conference the other day was about his frustration that because of COVID, because of being President, he is limited. He is not practicing politics the way he used to, which is getting out, talking directly to the American people, having them be able to hear more directly from them. So that's why you see, as the inevitable conversation of a reset happening, some real conversations as well about the ways in which this White House has been operating. I know Laura has some great reporting on this as well. Some of the focus is turning to Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, and perhaps whether he is responsible for some of these strategic decisions which may have not have panned out. But as we know, this is also a classic Washington game. When things are in trouble, you often look for a scapegoat, and often that is the Chief of Staff. No one thinks that Klain himself is in jeopardy at this moment, but there are some real decisions about why and how to change course moving forward.

- Well, I wanted to ask you about that story, because you wrote that great story about the Chief of Staff with your colleagues at NBC News. Specifically, there are some people who are saying that the White House Chief of Staff is focused too much on social media, that the President, President Biden, that he has sort of strayed away from his pragmatic sort of brand of politics as a unifier. Talk a bit more about what you're hearing. And my sources tell me that Ron Klain, of course, is still very close to the President. But what are you hearing?

- Yeah, that's absolutely the case. President Biden is surrounded by a team of advisors who have been with him for so long, and they really did come out to defend him, I must say, in response to our reporting this week. Klain, though, has become a favorite target because he is so ubiquitous on Twitter, because he is seen as sort of the whisperer to the progressive wing of the party. And what the White House says in pointing to why this is incorrect, is look at the President's agenda. What he is trying to do through Build Back Better, which many people are now saying is too far to the left of what Biden is, is actually what he proposed in the campaign. They point out that because of the negotiations that have been happening over the course of the year, it's actually to the right of what the President proposed in the campaign. And so it's more about, I think, a stylistic aspect that the President, because they feel like he has not been able to practice politics in the way he used to, and they blame Klain for his sort of heavy-handed management style, keeping him in Washington, more traditional speeches when they think he needs to be more innovative, more interactive with the American people. But because this is a White House that has a very sort of central decision making operation, it's collaborative, officials say, as well, it's not something that this is going to be talked through where Klain is in jeopardy at any point.

- Yamiche, could I add one thing very quickly?

- Yeah, go ahead.

- We also reported on the issues around Ron Klain, and two things, very quickly, in our reporting was that a number of law makers, more centrist law makers, told us that they weren't happy with Klain at all. In fact, some said that he should be replaced, and their main grievance was what happened around passage of the infrastructure bill, as well as the Build Back Better and how it stalled, saying that they felt that Klain was one of the main reasons that when President Biden came to the Hill twice last fall, he didn't make a direct ask for a vote on the infrastructure bill. He kind of left it pretty ambiguous saying he wanted both bills to pass. Now, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell said that sometimes one of Biden's strengths is that he listens to everyone, but that it's also a weakness that he wants to listen to everyone, because she thinks that he needs to come to the Hill and just very directly say what he wants to see passed, and the timeline that he wants to see it passed on, and that she also hopes that in the future, his staff will have a more united voice when they come and brief law makers.

- Yeah, and talking about party dynamics, at the press conference earlier this week, President Biden sought to distinguish himself specifically from progressive members of the Democratic party.

- I'm not Bernie Sanders. I'm not a socialist. I'm a mainstream Democrat, and I have been.

- Carl, talk a bit about sort of the reaction on Capitol Hill here, and sort of why he feels the need to so directly say what he said about Bernie Sanders, saying he likes Bernie Sanders, but I am not Bernie Sanders.

- Well, I mean, Republicans have been hammering the President for embracing the socialist agenda. Going back a little bit, just to the Klain discussion, it's never the President's fault, so it has to be someone else's fault. So this is a traditional thing, and the Chief of Staff is often a target. But he also, Ron Klain, has a long history with Joe Biden, so that one's gonna be pretty hard to shake. But I think the President, the Republicans, and Mitch McConnell has been articulating this. They look at Biden, they heard his inaugural speech, I'm gonna be a uniter, it's time to put a lot of this serious partisanship behind us. And to them, he just hasn't done it, that he embraced what they think, certainly portray as these big spending bills, he's driving up inflation. So I think the President needs to say this, but I don't think that folks on the Hill are convinced. I think that they think the Democratic party has moved quite a ways left from where Joe Biden was, and they say Joe Biden kind of got elected by running in the middle, but he's not governing in the middle. Well, he might have to now because their agenda is in such trouble, Build Back Better. I have to say, from my reporting in the past few days, there's a long way to go in trying to figure out how to get back on track with Build Back Better. It depends who you talk to. Everybody has a different idea. You hear the President say, oh, we're gonna break this up into smaller things. Well, they have to do this as one bill in reconciliation to get it through, so it's not so easy to break up and pass a bunch of little bills. They've been caught up in this voting rights fight now for a couple of weeks, and I'm not sensing any consensus at all on how to get ahead and get back on Build Back Better.

- Yeah, well, as you said, agenda being in trouble. During his press conference, President Biden also emphasized, in particular talking about voting rights bills, which he said were blocked in the Senate late Wednesday. He said that Americans of color, despite the bill's failing in the Senate, will still show up at the polls.

- No matter how hard they make it for minorities to vote, I think you're gonna see them willing to stand in line and defy the attempt to keep them from being able to vote.

- Laura, I want to come to you. What have you been hearing about sort of the reaction on this? I've heard both from sources who say, yes, it's true. People of color, black people in particular, they're gonna do all that they can to vote. But also, it's tough to hear, yes, we might have to do that again. African-Americans might have to do that again because Democrats can't get anything else passed.

- Yeah, when I've been to Georgia recently, the thing that I hear the most is how tired a lot of the organizers are. And many of the organizers in Georgia are black women, and they are people that are responsible for turning Georgia blue for Democrats. And they say that they are pretty exhausted and that they can't out-organize voter suppression, that they can't out-organize these restrictions that have been placed on them, as well as attempts at election subversion, which you're seeing a number of Republicans run in states like Georgia on platforms, David Perdue is one of them, on platforms where they're saying that they would not have certified the 2020 election results. Implicit in that is that they may not certify future election results. And so that's the reaction that I'm hearing. You know, moving forward, what civil rights leaders are telling me that they want to hear, that they want to see from Biden, is executive actions, which Mike mentioned. Again, how far can executive actions go on issues like this? The President is very limited on what actually he can do on voting rights through executive actions. And they also want to see more from the Justice Department on this front.

- [Mike] Yeah.

- And Carl, someone was jumping in?

- Yeah, well, I was going to say the Department of Justice.

- Okay, Carl, go ahead.

- No, the Department of Justice does have some power here, and I think people want them to get more aggressive, but that takes time. I think, you know, she mentioned David Perdue. David Perdue is now backing the idea of a special police force for elections. I think that's also being discussed in Florida. That's alarming to a lot of people. You know, what are these new police powers? What does that actually mean? I think the Democrats are looking at this and saying, well, now that this failed, if these states get even more aggressive in taking action to suppress voting, that one, it's gonna be a big problem. Two, maybe it could motivate more people in the Senate, and particularly two people that we've talked about quite a bit, to get more serious about putting in some federal standards.

- And talking about those two people, I want to talk specifically about Senator Sinema. She lost one of her larger supporters, Emily's List, which backs female candidates. She also lost an abortion rights group's support. Are there gonna be consequences for Senator Sinema, maybe even Senator Manchin?

- I mean, there's definitely consequences already for Senator Sinema. We had heard rumors that Emily's List was talking about pulling out, and then for them to come out so aggressively and say that she was gonna be on her own in the election if she didn't change the filibuster. I've heard of other donors who are telling her that the people who have been significant donors in the past telling her that they're not going to contribute to her campaign. And she's in a different situation than Joe Manchin. Joe Manchin's in a super conservative state. He can survive without progressive Democrats really giving him huge support. In Arizona, it's a different situation. So yeah, I think there is fallout, and there's probably going to be more fallout to come as the year goes on and we see the real ramifications of some of these voting changes that are going on in the states right now.

- And Mike, we only have a couple of seconds left, but I want to come to you. The President says he's gonna try to be out there more. What are you sensing when you talk to your White House sources about what year two will be like?

- So the big question with any midterm year, and we saw the history with President Obama so starkly, is a lot of Democrats ran away from the President when his approval rating was not great. But the White House is really starting to sketch out a strategy in which maybe President Biden isn't out there campaigning with Democrats in a lot of these swing districts, but he is gonna be flying with them on Air Force One to their districts to talk about infrastructure. That's sort of a twist on the traditional strategy. Increasingly, Democrats recognize that you can't necessarily separate yourself from a President, so they're gonna try and campaign with him on the issues that they think have some popularity to them still.

- Yeah, well we'll definitely be watching it closely. Thank you so much. We'll have to leave it there tonight. Thank you to Laura, to Carl and to Mike for sharing your reporting. And make sure to sign up for "The Washington Week" newsletter on our website. It will give you a look at all things Washington. Thank you again for watching. I'm Yamiche Alcindor. Good-night.