ABC’s Steve Roberts - January 17, 2022 - KRDO’s Morning News

Some major political setbacks have befallen President Biden in the last week: from an unfavorable Supreme Court ruling over his proposed vaccine mandate, to Russian troops remaining massed near Ukraine’s border, to criticism his administration was caught flat-footed by a worsening surge in the pandemic, to inflation, to a speech on voting rights that appeared to inflame both sides of the aisle. Plus, efforts in the Senate to pass voting rights legislation this week appear doomed. According to FiveThirtyEight's aggregation of public polls, Biden stood at a 42% on Friday - a far cry from the 53% he saw when he first took office. The 50-50 Senate gives any Senator effective veto power over any new law, and moderates Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have demonstrated that they have no qualms about standing in the way of the president’s agenda. And the absence of some high profile Democrats like Stacey Abrams at Biden’s voting rights speech last week appears to show wavering support among the progressive wing of the party. With the midterms bearing down, can Biden extricate himself from between a rock and a hard place?