NO, DEMOCRATS SHOULD NOT WORRY ABOUT THIS

Politico Playbook reported this today:

With President JOE BIDEN set to sign the bipartisan infrastructure bill better known as BIF in a few hours at a splashy ceremony, a new poll shows voter support becoming less and less bipartisan.

Our latest POLITICO/Morning Consult survey found 50% support overall for the legislation. That’s down from 58% when Morning Consult first asked the question in mid-August, shortly after the Senate passed the bill.

While support among Democrats (roughly 80%) and independents (45 to 50%) has remained relatively steady, there’s been a striking drop among Republicans. In mid-August, 40% of Republicans supported the bill; now, just 22% do. GOP support dropped 10 points over the past two weeks, when Morning Consult surveyed voters after the House approved the bill.

I have a few thoughts about this.

First, Democrats shouldn't worry. The Republicans who once supported it and no longer do have obviously been fed propaganda telling them that the bill is bad because it's the work of the evil Democrats. If these people can be turned around that easily, they're obviously people who are extremely responsive to right-wing messaging and would never vote for Joe Biden or any other Democrat. So who cares what they think? They're a lost cause.

My second thought is that the drop in Republicans' approval suggests that more people are paying attention to the bill. Maybe it just means more Republicans are paying attention -- but if not, it means that Americans might have begun to discover that there is a real infrastructure bill and it passed. (Until that ceremony today, Democrats weren't doing a very good job of selling the bill, or even making clear that they'd passed it.) The bill clearly favored by a solid majority of non-Republicans. So it's good if more people know it's the law now.

And finally: The bill has the support of 22% of Republicans. That's actually a lot of Republicans. Can you think of anthing else Democrats have done that's supported by that much of the GOP? Republican support for Democratic officeholders and candidates is usually in the single digits. So this has stratospherically high Republican popularity, relatively speaking. Take a victory lap, Democrats.