The Biden administration spent the first week of February assuming what has become its default position: bracing for bad news.
When the Bureau of Labor Statistics produced its report on January’s job numbers, the White House warned, the data would be appalling. Reporters were coached to contextualize an unsatisfying report by making note of the fleeting effects of the omicron wave, which it thought had depressed hiring. But President Joe Biden’s team had reason to think that no amount of nuance would paper over what it anticipated would be the second consecutive disappointing jobs number. On Wednesday, the payroll processing firm ADP forecast a decline of over 300,000 private jobs in January — well below the Dow Jones estimate, which expected anemic but nevertheless positive job growth.
When the numbers came in on Friday, though, these fears proved unfounded. The BLS found that private, nonfarm payrolls in January didn’t just fail to contract; they grew by 467,000 jobs. Almost every sector that is supposed to be most affected by the pandemic expanded — from bars and restaurants to professional services, transportation and even retail sales, which tend to suffer in the wake of the holiday spending blitz. The BLS also determined that the number of workers grew by a healthy 1.4 million. More good news: The report also revised December’s job growth from the original estimate of 199,000 to a whopping 510,000 jobs.
In sum, from the omicron variant’s discovery in the final week of November to its present decline, Covid wasn’t the drag on the economy the White House expected. That surprise comes, in part, because the information ecosystem in which consumers of mainstream news marinate maintained a steady drumbeat of pessimism throughout these last eight weeks.
By late December, a consensus had formed around the notion that the surge of omicron infections, though milder, was so infectious that it would disrupt social and economic functions in a way that was indistinguishable from the darkest days of 2020. A Dec. 21 CNN dispatch from America’s dark blue urban enclaves found that city dwellers were once again retreating to the safety of their apartments and that businesses were closing up as their employees called out sick. No one wanted a return to lockdowns, The Atlantic’s Sarah Zhang conceded, but a “voluntary suspension of activity—a soft lockdown, essentially” — would descend across the country whether we liked it or not.
“The growing toll of sick workers — Capital Economics says more than 5 million Americans are in quarantine — is hammering employers that already were struggling to secure enough labor,” The Washington Post reported in early January. “Omicron’s fallout, which is likely to worsen before it eases, shows that the recovery remains vulnerable to the coronavirus’s unpredictable trajectory.” As recently as two weeks ago, The New York Times determined that the millions of people who were sick or caring for someone who is sick or were forced out of work as a result of pandemic-related school closures would have a “cumulative impact” on the economy that would be “larger than at any other point in the pandemic.”
What conclusions can the White House draw from this fruitless exercise in gloominess?
What conclusions can the White House draw from this fruitless exercise in gloominess? First, its members might draw a logical conclusion about their own forecasts. If they believed that the economy was likely to suffer because the public couldn’t persevere through the omicron wave, the fact that the economy has grown and the job market has thrived despite omicron should lead observers to conclude that voters aren’t lying when they say it’s time to close the book on the pandemic.
On Jan. 31, Monmouth University published the results of its latest survey, which found that 70 percent of respondents agree that “it’s time we accept that Covid is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives.” That’s including the vast majority of Republicans and independents, those who have had Covid and those who haven’t. If the economic data prove anything, it’s that these voters aren’t kidding; they are willing to endure what has become a fact of modern life.
That isn’t the case for Democrats, however: A narrow majority told Monmouth pollsters that they are still unwilling to restore the pre-pandemic status quo just yet.
This condition — Democratic pessimism in the face of all relevant data — has become an existential conundrum for the Biden White House. “Democrats now view an improvement in the pandemic over the next few months as the party’s only clear shot at boosting their midterm prospects,” Politico recently reported. The administration will reportedly mount a public relations campaign to “convince people they’ll soon be able to relax after two years ruled by Covid-19.”
Who, exactly, does the White House need to convince? It’s not Republicans or even independents, most of whom told Kaiser Family Foundation pollsters last month that inflation, not the pandemic, has become their chief focus. By contrast, a majority of Democrats (51 percent) still say the pandemic is the biggest problem facing the country. That only makes sense, because the pandemic is increasingly becoming an esoteric feature of life in Democrat-led parts of the country. And if the polling is to be believed, that unhappy condition has contributed to a malaise to which Democrats are uniquely susceptible. Americans are also growing more pessimistic about the pandemic’s trajectory. A January Gallup poll found growing defeatism across the board, but that sentiment was most pronounced among Democrats. Seventy-one percent of self-identified Democratic voters are worried they will contract the disease — an increase of 18 points since late last year. This fear could be excused given the omicron variant’s surge, but it comes in spite of progress this country has made in preventing the worst of a Covid infection’s outcomes. The Pew Research Center also found that Democrats are far more likely than their GOP counterparts to believe Covid is a threat to their health, the macroeconomy and their personal finances. Fewer than half of Democrats believe “the worst is behind us” when it comes to Covid. Accordingly, their views of Biden’s handling of this coronavirus outbreak have soured. The number of Democrats who believe Biden can “handle the public health impact of the coronavirus outbreak” declined by 23 percent in less than a year. Worst of all, only “29 percent of Democrats express satisfaction with the state of the nation, down 18 points since March.” You don’t need a Ph.D. to know what will happen in November’s midterm elections if Democrats succumb to an enthusiasm-sapping malaise. This jobs report provides the White House with an offramp away from a state of permanent pandemic restrictions and the despondency they encourage. To take it, the party and the president need to develop a vocabulary around optimism and a set of policy prescriptions that reflect the seriousness of their intention to pivot away from an emergency footing. You can already anticipate the objections to such a pivot. The pandemic is still on, they’ll say. The threat to overstress hospitals is still there; there are still too many unvaccinated people; the immunocompromised, the elderly, the children — all are at risk. How can we engineer such a sea change when the virus won’t cooperate? Some of these fears are more well-founded than others, but all of them are now in competition with Democrats’ basic political survival instincts. A psychology dedicated to risk aversion above all else has contributed to a condition in which the brunt of the pandemic’s remaining restrictions on social and economic life are borne primarily by Democrats, and that is imbuing in them a sense of hopelessness. If the party remains committed to this course, the political consequences it will suffer at the polls will be profound.
Noah Rothman
Noah Rothman is the associate editor of Commentary Magazine. 
