Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The Repercussions of the Bannon Indictment Are Still Being Felt

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David Frum/Atlantic:

Steve Bannon Knows Exactly What He’s Doing

The fight over January 6 is about much more than the law.

Does anyone still remember the Chicago Seven?

They were a disparate group of radicals—some who knew each other, some who didn’t—who went to the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968 to spark trouble. Trouble did indeed erupt, although maybe not the exact trouble they had wanted. They were indicted and prosecuted. And then things went terribly wrong for the government.

The prosecution thought it was running a trial, a legal proceeding governed by rules. The defendants decided that they would instead mount a new kind of media spectacle intended to show total contempt for the rules, and to propagandize the viewing public into sharing their contempt. The prosecution was doing law; the defense countered with politics.

The indictment of Steve Bannon for contempt of Congress is the opening bell of a similar kind of fight over law, justice, and authority. 

David Leonhardt/NY Times:

How Does This End?

Thinking about Covid and normalcy.

Among the Covid experts I regularly talk with, Dr. Robert Wachter is one of the more cautious. He worries about “long Covid,” and he believes that many people should receive booster shots. He says that he may wear a mask in supermarkets and on airplanes for the rest of his life.

Yet Wachter — the chair of the medicine department at the University of California, San Francisco — also worries about the downsides of organizing our lives around Covid. In recent weeks, he has begun to think about when most of life’s rhythms should start returning to normal. Increasingly, he believes the answer is: Now.

Not well received:

Joel Mathis/The week:

Biden’s bill isn’t a celebration of bipartisanship. It’s the funeral.

When President Biden signs the infrastructure bill into law on Monday, it will be pitched to the public as a bipartisan accomplishment. In fact, the bill is probably the dying gasp of cross-party cooperation for the foreseeable future.

The hints are already there. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) helped pass the bill, but he will skip the signing ceremony on Monday. The bill might bring some dollars home to Kentucky — and probably averted the destruction of the filibuster — but McConnell won’t allow himself to be seen on camera cooperating with a Democratic president. Politics is politics.

Steve Vladeck/MSNBC:

Steve Bannon’s indictment reveals a dangerous congressional dependency

Real reform requires more than just periodic indictments from the president of the moment.

But whatever happens in Bannon’s criminal case — he is reportedly expected to appear in court next week — what the indictment really underscores is how dependent Congress has become on the executive branch to carry out even the most basic aspects of its oversight function and how dangerous that dependency can be when the oversight is directed toward, or even near, the executive. If the Biden administration really wants to make congressional subpoenas effective broadly, it should not just indict in the obvious cases like Bannon’s; it should support statutory reforms like the Protect Our Democracy Act — which includes provisions to make it easier for Congress to enforce its own subpoenas.

Del Quentin Wilber/LA Times:

She helped her husband start a far-right militia group. Now the Oath Keeper’s wife says she has regrets

With congressional committees and federal investigators examining the threat posed by domestic extremists and their contribution to the insurrection, Adams has been conducting an exploration of her own life and culpability in the forming of the Oath Keepers. Her journey provides behind-the-scenes insights into how a Las Vegas car valet transformed into the leader of an organization that sought to overturn a presidential election.

Catharine Richert/MPR news:

A Twin Cities doctor spread misinformation about COVID-19. Then he died from it

The circumstances of Foley’s life and death reveal a problem that’s vexed the medical profession throughout the pandemic: some licensed practitioners are fueling COVID’s spread, seeding doubts about widely accepted research and medical practices, including vaccinations, that have been saving millions of lives for decades.

Doctors can be particularly potent sources of misinformation, said Rachel Moran, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public.

“Vocal opposition is especially damaging when it comes from these medical professionals because we ask the general public when they’re feeling hesitant about the vaccine to go and discuss their concerns with a doctor,” she said.

Patients, she said, trust their doctors with their lives.

John Harwood/CNN:

Can Biden revive his popularity in time for midterm elections?

Now the coronavirus has plateaued, job growth has picked up, Afghanistan has fallen from headlines and Congress has passed a major infrastructure bill. It all hasn’t boosted Biden’s standing yet, but political advisers predict it will in the next few months.

“When the bell rings for the 2022 election season,” says his pollster John Anzalone, “things are going to look a lot different than today.”

The kinds of voters who’ve grown disaffected give Biden some hope. Comparing CNN polls from April to November, his largest declines in approval came among Democrats and Democratic-leading independents.

But Democratic inclinations hardly guarantee those voters will swing back in Biden’s direction. Regaining the allegiance of former supporters may be tougher than winning them over in the first place; presidential approval ratings fall more easily than they rise.