I continue to predict that at some point prior to New Year’s Day, 2022, Biden and the various Democratic players, including leadership in both the House and Senate, the Progressives, and the recalcitrant Senators Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) will reach a compromise agreement.  The media focus will at that point not be on what Biden has given up, but rather the historic level of spending on both brick-and-mortar and social infrastructure and the unprecedented increased level of federal activity in all areas of the domestic economy and the safety net.

Once both infrastructure packages are enacted and shovels are in the ground, Biden’s popularity ratings will massively increase.

All this will be too late for Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former governor Terry McAuliffe.  The trend has been running against McAuliffe and in favor of Republican Glenn Youngkin for months now, and Terry desperately needed a bill signing on or before Election Day, enacting either one, or preferably both, infrastructure packages.  He didn’t get it, and the outlook now is for a Youngkin victory.

– My InsiderNJ column, October 31, 2021

I stand by my predictions above.  I was proven accurate in my statements that Congressional failure to enact the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, (BIF) consisting of both new investments and maintenance of brick-and-mortar infrastructure would result in the defeat of Terry McAuliffe.

I have no doubt that the increase in the Biden popularity ratings will occur once both the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework and the Build Back Better social infrastructure packages are enacted and shovels are in the ground.  And at long last, the House of Representatives enacted the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework this past Friday and sent the bill to the President for his signature.

Within the next few months, the shovels resulting from the passage of the BIF will be in the ground- and the Biden popularity ratings will be headed skyward.

Yet there may be an even more politically impactful victory on the near horizon for the Biden administration.

This past Friday, we learned for the first time that the end of the Covid Pandemic is now in sight.  Specifically, the former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Scott Gottlieb forecast the following:

“By Jan. 4, this pandemic may well be over, at least as it relates to the United States after we get through this Delta wave of infection. And we’ll be in a more endemic phase of this virus.”

Gottlieb based his prediction upon the Biden COVID mandates, child vaccines, and booster shots.  The Biden mandates, issued on November 5, required that companies with 100 or more employees must ensure their staff has received the shots necessary for full vaccination by Jan. 4.  The administration also required that health care workers, and employees of federal contractors must be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4. According to the White House, these mandates will cover two-thirds of all workers, with more than 84 million employees and 17 million health care workers impacted.

Gottlieb further stated that being able to vaccinate children will also help move the U.S. from a pandemic to an endemic. An endemic virus is one that is still circulating, but at a relatively low frequency, like the seasonal flu.

On Saturday, November 6, 2021, three judges of the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, all Republican appointed, issued a temporary restraining order blocking President Biden’s Covid vaccine and testing requirements for private businesses of over 100 employees, just a day after they had officially gone into effect. The case will now proceed to a permanent injunction hearing.

The fact that the restraining order was issued by an all-Republican panel of judges has given the COVID issue a partisan political framework, with Biden being the ultimate protector of public health – and with a far more powerful message than the Republicans.

This Biden public health message is simple and readily understandable:

A person has a right to sit at home and drink alcoholic beverages to his or her heart’s content.  But he or she does not have the right to take his or her car out on the road in an inebriated state and endanger the lives of others.

Similarly, a person has the right to refuse to take a COVID vaccination and endanger his or her own life.  But he or she does not have the right to enter a crowded workplace in an unvaccinated state and endanger the lives of others.

This COVID message clearly puts Biden and the Democrats on the side of sound science public health – and the Republicans on the side of anti-science, nihilistic rejectionism when it comes to the major public health danger of this era.

And a Joe Biden resurgent in the polls due to his enacted historic legislation on infrastructure and the social safety net, together with his having the upper hand on COVID messaging, could be a powerful asset to the Democrats in the midterm 2022 Congressional elections.

Indeed, reports of the political demise of Joe Biden have been greatly exaggerated.

Alan J. Steinberg served as regional administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as executive director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.