Jonathan Bernstein

On Tuesday, the US finally reached President Joe Biden’s goal of having at least 70% of adults receive their first vaccination shot — except that Biden back in May had set the goal for July 4, and Tuesday was the second day of August. That seems like a clear loss for Biden. But it turned out…

Republicans who have been hoping that former President Donald Trump will somehow just fade away got a glimmer of hope Tuesday. In a House special election in Texas with two Republicans competing in a runoff, the Trump-endorsed candidate was defeated. Now, measuring the effects of endorsements…

How is Donald Trump, six months out of office, able to wield so much influence within the Republican Party? A man who was solidly defeated for re-election; who was unpopular throughout his four years in office and ended those years at a low point; who subsequently, in his second impeachment trial,…

This week’s events in Washington have been a good case-study in why the tradition of analyzing a presidency when it reaches the 100-day mark is just a silly media norm. Because here we are, 75 days after that supposed benchmark, and there’s still no way to guess whether President Joe Biden’s…

I wouldn’t want to be a political strategist for US business right now. The natural position of business in US politics is to be an independent interest group, aligned with neither party. That allows business interests to lobby whichever party is in office. And in theory it’s a viable strategy;…

Joe Biden’s approval rating fell to its lowest point during his presidency last month, and he exits the July 4 holiday weekend at just 51.9% approval, close to that June low (as usual, I’m using the excellent FiveThirtyEight estimate, based on an adjusted average of all the reputable polls). At the…

President Joe Biden traveled to Florida on Thursday to comfort survivors of the condo collapse in Surfside and to hear from local officials, who in this case were quick to praise the administration’s response. This is normal presidency stuff. It’s also something that was mostly missing during the…

Reportedly, there’s a deal on an infrastructure bill, which may or may not have the votes to defeat a filibuster in the Senate and may not even have enough votes to clear the House and at any rate will be vetoed by President Joe Biden unless a different bill including other portions of his…

Way back when, I made three predictions about the Affordable Care Act, which survived another brush with death on Thursday in yet another court case. The one I was right about was that Obamacare would survive. That was relatively easy. The US political system has a strong status-quo bias, and…

We can retire the idea that President Joe Biden doesn’t do press conferences. With one more overseas on Wednesday, Biden has now done four solo news conferences, already matching George W. Bush’s first year and three ahead of Donald Trump in 2017; if he keeps up the pace, he’ll be mid-pack on that…