The country is recovering from a pandemic and an economic crisis, and its former president is in legal and financial peril. But no political realignment appears to be at hand.

In another age, the events of this season would have been nearly certain to produce a major shift in American politics — or at least a meaningful, discernible one.

Over a period of weeks, the coronavirus death rate plunged and the country considerably eased public health restrictions. President Biden announced a bipartisan deal late last month to spend hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding the country’s worn infrastructure — the most significant aisle-crossing legislative agreement in a generation, if it holds together. The Congressional Budget Office estimated on Thursday that the economy was on track to regain all of the jobs it lost during the pandemic by the middle of 2022.

And in a blow to Mr. Biden’s fractious opposition, Donald J. Trump — the dominant figure in Republican politics — faced an embarrassing legal setback just as he was resuming a schedule of campaign-style events. The Manhattan district attorney’s office charged his company, the Trump Organization, and its chief financial officer with “sweeping and audacious” financial crimes.

Not long ago, such a sequence of developments might have tested the partisan boundaries of American politics, startling voters into reconsidering their assumptions about the current president, his predecessor, the two major parties and what government can do for the American people.

These days, it is hard to imagine that such a political turning point is at hand.

“I think we’re open to small moves; I’m not sure we’re open to big moves,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster. “Partisanship has made our system so sclerotic that it isn’t very responsive to real changes in the real world.”

Amid the mounting drama of the early summer, a moment of truth appears imminent. It is one that will reveal whether the American electorate is still capable of large-scale shifts in opinion, or whether the country is essentially locked into a schism for the foreseeable future, with roughly 53 percent of Americans on one side and 47 percent on the other.

Mr. Biden’s job approval has been steady in the mid-50s for most of the year, as his administration has pushed a shots-and-checks message about beating the virus and reviving the economy. His numbers are weaker on subjects like immigration and crime; Republicans have focused their criticism on those areas accordingly.

 Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/04/us/politics/biden-infrastructure-trump-republicans-democrats.html

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The New York Times sparked fireworks with an Independence Day report on the political implications of displaying the American flag — just weeks after being forced to defend an editorial writer who said she was “really disturbed” to see Old Glory flown by supporters of former President Donald Trump.

The Times article — with the online headline “A Fourth of July Symbol of Unity That May No Longer Unite” — suggests that Trump supporters have embraced the flag “so fervently” that liberals have “all but ceded the national emblem to the right.”

“Today, flying the American flag from the back of a pickup truck or over a lawn is increasingly seen as a clue, albeit an imperfect one, to a person’s political affiliation in a deeply divided nation,” the Times tweeted on Saturday, with a link to their piece, “A Fourth of July Symbol of Unity That May No Longer Unite.”

In the piece, author Sarah Maslin Nir quotes a few individuals who believe that the flag has become so politicized that they now think twice about flying it outside their homes or businesses.

“What was once a unifying symbol – there is a star on it for each state, after all – is now alienating to some, its stripes now fault lines between people who kneel while ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ plays and those for whom not pledging allegiance is an affront,” Nir wrote.

She also quotes a Long Island farmer, Peter Treiber Jr., describing how he had to reveal his “liberal leanings” to strike a deal with a greenmarket customer who was leery because his family farm is marked by an old truck emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes.

“She said, ‘Oh, whew. You know, I wasn’t so sure about you, I thought you were some flag-waving something-or-other,’” Treiber said.

Read more:

https://nypost.com/2021/07/04/nytimes-claims-american-flag-alienating-to-some-on-july-4/

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