Biden’s Uncertainty Principle

The “return to normalcy” in American life is starting to look something like the horizon: It recedes whenever you approach it. For President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats anxious about the November midterm elections, nothing could be more ominous.

Last summer’s Delta wave dashed hopes that the deployment of COVID vaccines would quickly carry the United States back to a pre-pandemic stasis. The persistence of inflation undermined expectations from the Biden administration and Federal Reserve Board that high prices would be a temporary inconvenience. The Omicron wave that surged over the winter defied any expectation that the country was past high caseloads, crowded hospitals, and pitched battles over masking, school closings, and other public-health protections. Each time social and economic normalcy seemed imminent, it dissolved.

[Read: How to reclaim normal life without being ‘done’]

Now that may be happening again. With the Omicron wave rapidly receding in the U.S., many forecasters had projected a sharply reduced health threat and a strong economic performance through 2022, including a steady decline in the inflation rate that looms as a paramount danger to congressional Democrats in November.

But the war