When shutting down the virus doesn’t work, there’s not much of a Plan B. Just a political Plan B. 

Democrats bet last year that they could ride a reopening to expanding or retaining a majority and then winning in 2024. And then the strategy of betting everything on vaccines turned out to be less than they promised. Then they hoped to ride the tide of anger against the unvaccinated, but Americans are increasingly growing tired and angry of the whole thing. 

Plan B then is shedding responsibility. 

Democrat governors in Colorado and Connecticut have shrugged at mask mandates. The new message, which even reached the Biden administration, is that we will have to go on with our lives, the unvaccinated will die, but that’s their problem, and everything will be fine.

That’s an easier sell for governors than the White House, and so we’ve got Biden pushing soft federalism and agreeing, “There is no federal solution. This gets solved at a state level.”

Why not dump testing down to the state level? And then everything else.

Having exhausted all the other options, federalism starts looking good. While Dem governors are happy to dump it on the White House, Biden pushes it back to the states and to Republican governors who are all too eager to claim responsibility. Then it becomes their problem.

History gets rewritten and before too long, Ron Klain will be retweeting Jennifer Rubin pieces explaining why the White House can’t really do anything and it’s up to the states anyway.