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Biden watched the Senate vote on March 6 from the Treaty Room in the residence. He was working on a statement with Anita Dunn. Other aides made jokes that what was going down was a “big effing deal,” a nod to his famous comment when Obamacare was passed.
Biden was ecstatic. He called up the Senate cloakroom and asked the attendant to put on any Democrat who was around. Bring them to the phone.
He called Schumer. “Took a genius to say wait until Friday to land the plane,” Biden said. “Not forcing a final outcome, letting it play out.” No rush. Sequencing the amendments with Portman and Carper. That solved the mess.
“Look, Chuck,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of this in my day. I’ve been around a long time. But what you’ve done here is about as masterful as anything I’ve ever seen.”
He called Bernie Sanders.
“We need to take the time to sell this, do a tour around the country,” Sanders said. Once rivals, now fellow salesmen. “Do some events, drive home what we have accomplished here.”
Biden thanked Sanders for the advice and for sticking with him. Sanders’s imprimatur had been critical in keeping progressives from fleeing.
The rest of the Senate Democratic Caucus was invited to join Biden on a Zoom call. Biden’s camera was not working. Audio only. Schumer’s video was on. He was emotional. He said he was proud they stuck together, called it one of the most historic bills they’ve ever passed.
“You should be very proud,” he said.
The final vote was scheduled for the following week. The revised Senate version passed the House on March 10—220 to 211. Biden and Harris, and a small group of aides, watched that vote in the Roosevelt Room.
“Under ordinary circumstances, we’d have the entire staff watch this together like we did with the Affordable Care Act,” Biden told them.
The next day, Biden delivered a nationally televised speech on the anniversary of the Covid-19 shutdown. “A year ago, we were hit with a virus that was met with silence and spread unchecked,” he said. “Now because of all the work we’ve done, we’ll have enough vaccine supply for all adults in America by the end of May. That’s months ahead of schedule.”
Biden did not give Trump even passing credit for the vaccines, a slight that seemed ungracious and unlike him. Zients felt that the credit belonged to the doctors and scientists who developed the vaccines, not Trump.
“It’s truly a national effort, just like we saw during World War II,” Biden said from the East Room. “Because even if we devote every resource we have, beating this virus and getting back to normal depends on national unity.”
Biden’s mood lifted after he signed the rescue bill. His presidency was off to a strong start. He was now 1–0 on big-ticket legislation.
He seemed pleased, but did not view the legislation as a personal accomplishment as he might have when he was a younger politician. He was 78 years old and his perspective had shifted.
I’m just doing what’s right, he told aides. “It took me a long time to get here. I’m here to do this job.” He said he was at ease with the rough and tumble of politics, but he did not have the same obsession he had in, say, 1987. He had watched too many other presidents zoom up and down. He was going to keep that sense of fate, take it all as it comes, day by day.
Mike Donilon remained close to Biden but stayed out of the news. When he went to a busy coffee shop in Alexandria one weekend to meet an old friend, no one noticed him. While Klain had a significant Twitter following, most Biden staffers were not becoming celebrities. In terms of intrigue, it was the opposite of Trump’s first year.
Many of the Biden staffers on the press and policy sides were younger, and Pete Buttigieg, now in the cabinet as secretary of transportation, was just 39. Biden loved to be seen as a promoter of the next generation. But Donilon, Dunn, Ricchetti, Klain, along with Jill Biden, they reflected Biden’s seasoned sensibility and politics.
On March 12, Biden held a celebration event in the Rose Garden. “It changes the paradigm,” Biden said, standing with Vice President Harris.
“You got to tell people in plain, simple, straightforward language what it is you’re doing to help,” he said. “You have to be able to tell a story, tell the story of what you’re about to do and why it matters because it’s going to make a difference in the lives of millions of people and in very concrete, specific ways.”
Leader McConnell was blasé about Manchin’s “yes” vote on the rescue plan. He told associates that Manchin, as well as Senator Sinema, knew “it was not smart for them to get off the reservation” on Biden’s first major initiative. Biden was too new, too popular.
McConnell wondered if Democrats’ pressure on Manchin had soured Manchin on doing much more for Biden in 2021. Maybe he felt a little burned. Progressives assailed him daily, frustrated with his red-state politics.
“Mad as hell,” McConnell told others about Manchin’s mood on March 5, although some Republicans and Democrats thought it was wishful thinking.
Schumer made Manchin and his side look like fools, McConnell said, with the back-and-forth on the Carper and Portman amendments. He could see the campaign ads already. He said it would be remembered like when the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, then Senator John Kerry, had voted for intervention in Iraq then voted against it.