Like a lot of congressional votes, this is primarily performative. The House isn’t about to repeal Biden’s vaccine mandate and there aren’t enough votes to survive a veto anyway, but the fact that Republicans got a Dem Senate member whose last name isn’t Manchin to vote for it (Manchin also voted for it) shows the same unease that’s getting Dem state governors to come out against the illegal mandate.
For every Senate Dem who votes against it, ten are slowly backing away from it. That’s how things work in Washington D.C.
So this isn’t a catastrophic failure but between the courts blocking it, state Dems backing away from it, and the Senate vote, the linchpin of Biden’s COVID strategy is collapsing, not just in functionality, but in popularity, and not just in the country, but in his own party.
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