Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Biden Looks to Make History By Naming First Black Female Justice; U.S. Warns About "Horrific" Invasion As Ukraine Urges Calm; Trump Says If He Wins in 2024, He Might Pardon Jan. 6 Rioters; Democrats Struggle to Find a Culture War Counter Message; Higher Inflation Canceling Out Wage Gaines for Many; Frustrated Parents and the Midterms. Aired 8-9a ET

Aired January 30, 2022 - 08:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(MUSIC)

[08:00:26]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST (voice-over): A vacancy on the Supreme Court. President Biden promises a historic pick to fill it.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: That person will be the first black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court.

PHILLIP: Plus, the U.S. warns Russia is ready to invade.

GEN. MARK MILLEY, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: Given the type of forces, if that were unleashed on Ukraine, it would be horrific. It would be terrible.

PHILLIP: And the pandemic economy, it's growing at a record pace, but voters are laser-focused on inflation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You go to the grocery store and reach for something and you go, my goodness, this is much more than I used to pay for.

PHILLIP: INSIDE POLITICS, the biggest stories sourced by the best reporters, now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIP (on camera): Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY. I'm Abby Phillip.

And after weeks of setbacks for his domestic agenda, President Joe Biden has a barrier-breaking opportunity to put the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity, and that person will be the first black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court. I will nominate a historic candidate, someone who is worthy of Justice Breyer's legacy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: With a razor thin margin in the Senate, Democrats are pushing for a swift confirmation and they're citing the 27 days that Senate Republicans took to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett in 2020.

Whomever he picks, though, Biden will have twice played a key role in filling this seat. Nearly 28 years ago you see it there, then Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Biden led Justice Breyer's confirmation hearing.

And joining me now with their reporting and their insights, Hans Nichols of "Axios", CNN's Manu Raju, Jackie Kucinich of the "Daily Beast" and CNN's Jasmine Wright.

Welcome to the INSIDE POLITICS table. Thanks for being here this morning.

So, look, Hans, President Biden made this promise, it's a big one. Nominate the first black woman on to the court. I want to put up -- this is not the short list. This is the long list --

HANS NICHOLS, AXIOS POLITICAL REPORTER: Yeah, that could be the more accurate list.

PHILLIP: And it may very well be. This is the long list of a slue of more than a dozen black women who are potentially under consideration and Biden wants to be deliberative about this. This is the guy of the Senate. What is his process?

NICHOLS: The process will be deliberative, there will be a lot of people giving input and there will be official people like White House counsel, Dana Remus, but also his outside cabinet. Joe Biden picks up the phone, he will talk to people, talk to senators, people that Manu talks to.

You know, yes, it's a big list but doesn't it all feel -- and I hate to say feel and I'm not going to say that we have firm reporting on this, but doesn't it feel like it's going to be Ketanji Brown Jackson? Doesn't it seem like -- I hate to make this about the Fed, because it's obviously it's not about the Fed, but it doesn't seem like the Fed, where everyone had this big back and forth but it was always going to be Jerome Powell. Smart Democrats I talk to were like, she's really the only option. I'm not --

PHILLIP: You say that, but this is an important point.

NICHOLS: Okay.

PHILLIP: All right. She has a lot of things going for her, checks a lot of boxes for the White House, got bipartisan support, she was recently confirmed so a lot of the legwork has been done, but take a look at some of the other people on a little bit of a shorter list. And some of those individuals also were recently confirmed, some have gotten Republican support from people like Lindsey Graham, Collins, McConnell even.

In 2021, Tiffany Cunningham on the end of this list, she got support from a slew of Republicans. So, is this maybe a little bit more open than we think?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We don't know. I mean, the bottom line is Hans is right. I think Ketanji Brown Jackson seems to be the front runner here. But it was only, one person is going to make the decision. Biden is probably not going to tip his hand to members of Congress. He will try to make them seem like they are a part of this process.

One of those people Michelle Childs, she was not on that list, she was confirmed to a district court judgeship in 2010, she's been nominated to sit on the D.C. court of appeals. They have delayed that hearing for next week for this coming Tuesday because the fact that she's on the short list and they don't want her to be subjected to senators questions in that.

Now, she could potential alleys also get bipartisan support. South Carolina Senators Lindsey Graham, also Tim Scott have suggested openness to her nomination.

[08:05:02]

She's been pushed by Jim Clyburn, the Democrat.

So, we'll see how this ultimately plays out. Yeah, Democrats want to move quickly but Chuck Schumer will only be allowed to move as quickly as support will allow him in the Senate. If one Democratic senator, say, if Joe Manchin says we need to put the brakes on this they will have to slow it down. And Manchin I'm told is okay with that timeline about that month timeline to get this done.

But we'll see. Once the process plays out and who it is, if they need more vetting, perhaps they need to hit the brakes.

PHILLIP: On the front end of this, though, Joe Biden himself has already indicated that he's going to slow down the process. He wants to take about a month to even select a person and Democrats are saying, you know, Stephanie Cutter, former Obama administration official who was dealing with nominations in the Obama years says, why are you doing that? We should be moving as quickly as possible.

This 50/50 split in the Senate for the Democrats is so, so tenuous.

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, right. And they're looking at some of their members and their -- mortality is a thing and there is -- and that they're also looking at what Republicans did. Just, you know, a few years ago with Amy Coney Barrett or a year ago, my gosh. They're looking at that and saying, look, now there's precedent. Now, there's precedent to go a bit faster. In terms of Biden slowing down the process, I think you guys are

right. When was the last time Biden surprised us where we were like, oh, that was left field?

NICHOLS: Or that was fast, right? He's said he was going to make it December, December means January, January means February.

KUCINICH: With the nominee, he could slow this down. But once this gets in Chuck Schumer's hands, there is a lot of pressure outside and internally to get this through. Take the W because they need it.

JASMINE WRIGHT, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: And I think that once it gets into Chuck Schumer's hands that's a whole different ball game and it's going to be about the White House wanting to defend the nominee who we know have gotten attacks based on race and qualifications not because we know who the nominee is but because Biden has pledged to nominate a black woman.

We're starting to see this coalescing around the supposed unknown nominee from black women, from those outside Democratic advisers that have a lot of influence on the White House saying that we are here, we are here to rally and we are really here to put up fences around this probable nominee in case of this kind of Republican push back and some of that already racist language that we're starting to hear right now.

PHILLIP: To that point, this is what Republican Senator Roger Wicker had to say about Biden's pledge.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ROGER WICKER (R-MS): The irony is that the Supreme Court is at the very same time hearing cases about -- about this sort of affirmative racial discrimination.

HOST: Yes.

WICKER: And while adding someone who is the beneficiary of this sort of quota.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: So a couple things on this. He represents the blackest state in the Union, Mississippi. But on top of that, I don't recall hearing anything about Ronald Reagan campaigning on nominating the first woman to the Supreme Court. I don't remember hearing anything about Clarence Thomas who replaced the first black justice on the court. I don't remember hearing anything about President Trump saying it's going to be a woman and then picking Amy Coney Barrett.

So Republicans are trying to -- well, I mean, we shouldn't be surprised by this, right?

RAJU: Look, they're going to have to settle on what their message is and in talking to Republicans last week it was clear that that message they haven't quite formulated that yet. We do know that the Supreme Court confirmation process has become so

viciously and intensely partisan, no matter how qualified someone is, it's going to come down almost along party lines these days. That is the way that it has become, which is why it is almost certain that if they're going to get someone confirmed they're probably only going to pick up a handful of votes no matter how qualified any of those nominees on the list. Most of those were extremely qualified, probably all of those are extremely qualified to get the job.

So, they have to figure out how they're going to approach this historic pick. When I was asking senators about this last week, we were not moved by the fact that this will be a groundbreaking pick. Instead, they are painting this as a left wing extremist no matter who it is.

PHILLIP: When you veer into outright racism, let's be honest, I mean, isn't there a risk this could backfire?

WRIGHT: I mean, I think that you already see kind of the mechanisms in place trying to create that push back momentum, push back machine. I talked to a White House official after those comments from Wicker surfaced and they pointed out exactly what you said, Abby, that the president's pick -- decision to nominate a black woman, his pledge fits in line with bipartisan former presidents in line, with Ronald Reagan, with Amy Coney Barrett's selection.

They mentioned wicker's comments during that confirmation process of Amy Coney Barrett where he said that my granddaughters -- I hope that Amy's confirmation will be an inspiration to them, right?

[08:10:07]

So they are using Republicans' own words when it comes to the picks and confirmation processes that they have already put.

Yeah, I think it's going to backfire because, again, it goes -- flies into the face of the Republican, you know, requests, trying to expand the base of who they want to call Republican and trying to expand that into black and brown voters.

PHILLIP: Let's be honest in terms of extremism or picking from some sort of prescribed list. Again, President Trump picked a Supreme Court nominee from a list that was vetted by the Federalist Society. So that is not exactly something new in politics.

But coming up next, a war of words between allies. Are the U.S. and Ukraine just playing into Putin's hands?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:15:07]

PHILLIP: Ukraine's president is urging world leaders and specifically the U.S. to tone down the rhetoric.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PRES. VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, UKRAINE (through translator): I'm the president of Ukraine. I'm based here and I think I know the details much deeper than any other president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Despite more than 100,000 troops on the border, Russia claims it won't start a war with Ukraine, and Pentagon leaders say that they hope diplomacy will prevail, but warn what will happen if it doesn't.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MILLEY: Ground maneuver forces, the artillery, the ballistic missiles, the air forces, all of it packaged together, if that was unleashed on Ukraine, it would be significant, very significant, and you can imagine what that might look like if dense urban areas along roads and so on and o forth. It would be horrific.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Joining us now from Moscow is CNN's international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson.

Nic, that's an incredibly grim assessment of the situation and it may be very much accurate, but how is Ukraine feeling, Ukrainian leaders feeling? Zelensky seems to be deeply frustrated that the United States continues to publicly state that this could be really bad and really bloody.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yeah, I mean, one of the things we hear a lot in Moscow from politicians here and from other people is that we on the outside we don't understand Russia or Ukraine or the mentality or the history or the disputes between the two nations and also the sort of sense between the peoples of sort of a brotherhood between the two nations. We don't understand that.

I think what we're hearing from President Zelensky is in part a reflection of that, that there's a sense that we outside don't understand the nuance of this. Of course, the worry and the tensions that it creates inside Ukraine have an economic impact on the country, he's worried about that, it will have a psychological impact as well, and this is something -- the situation of the fear of aggression from Russia is something that the Ukrainians have lived with since 2014 so they are in part more adjusted to that.

And I think there's another part of the puzzle as well and that is that, you know, President Putin could play out this current tension, this really heightened tension, and the realistic threat of war, though he says he's not going to do it, could play it out for some time. President Zelensky recognizes that.

So that heightened level of tension on the Ukrainian population is going to undermine his ability to govern, therefore, weaken his leadership and that's exactly what President Putin wants. So there's a lot of mention in play, but it's a subtle way of saying, look, you know, we kind of got this for now. We need your help. We understand it better than you do. We get a more blunt version of that in Moscow that you don't understand it.

PHILLIP: You don't blame Zelensky for not wanting to panic his population but I think you got to something really important which is what is Putin's timing here? U.S. officials said this weekend that the Russians are moving blood supplies to the border, they have those 100,000 troops.

What is the thinking about when something can happen and even though Russia is obviously saying they're not going to do anything at all?

ROBERTSON: Yeah, so there's the military buildup that's going on in Belarus, the joint Belarus-Russian military training exercises. When this was conceived at the end of last year, Putin and Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, said that the training exercises to be sort of February-March. Well, we're going to be getting into February pretty soon.

I think the assessment is over the coming weeks the Russians will have the troops that they were planning for these training exercises inside of Belarus, so they will be close to the capital Kyiv from the north. They've got a heightened state of alert on their troops in Crimea and the Black Sea in the south of Ukraine and of course their troops to the east. Militarily they will be poised. If they wanted to a full- scale ground invasion, the military assessment is that they would need the marsh areas north of Kyiv to freeze more than they are now.

It's heavily cold here, but it takes a while for the ground to really get hard enough to run tanks and heavy artillery over it. So that's the military timeline. Speaking to analysts here who try to also, like we do, understand what the Kremlin and what Putin is thinking say they think he's got a couple of months here before he will need to make a decision to pull his troops off and put them back in barracks. In essence, that moment in a couple of months the gun that he sort of has pointed to the head of NATO, the United States and Ukraine, ceases being as loaded.

In the immediate term, his response to letters from the United States and NATO, he seems to be taking his time.

[08:20:03]

And the indication was a couple of days ago that it took the United States and NATO to get him a month to get him written answers, he is going to take his time. He's expected to be in Beijing for the opening of the Winter Olympics there at the end of the week.

It's quite possible he will let this play out. I think we all know but it's worth stating again, he likes this moment where the world and even his own country are waiting for him to decide what to do next. That puts him as one of the globally most important figures at the moment and that is a position he likes. He still has to make a decision, though.

PHILLIP: We could be in limbo for some time. As you pointed out in the Olympics back in 2014, he waited until after the Olympics to invade Crimea.

Nic Robertson in Moscow, thanks for your great reporting.

We will bring it back into the room here. Hans, there is this disconnect and the White House doesn't seem to be deterred by Zelensky repeatedly saying that he's frustrated. Why?

NICHOLS: The White House simply thinks they're telling the truth. The intelligence suggests that this is going to happen and it would be malpractice not to be honest about it. So that's the sort of White House line is that they're doing this because that's what they see. That's true up to a point.

I mean, when you listen to Milley and you listen to some of the spin on the wall that you hear from the Pentagon, they're really leaning into this, right? They're using colorful language, talking about dense urban areas. And their overall goal there appears to be that they want to wake up the world that this could happen, they want to be on record that this can happen and they want to pressure the Europeans and by the Europeans they mean the Germans.

So, that's why they're seeing this hot language come out of the pentagon, partly pressure, but partly accurately reflecting what's going on in the ground.

KUCINICH: I think that 2014 is definitely looming large here where the Obama administration and European leaders were behind the ball when Putin invaded Crimea. So that is -- Joe Biden disagreed with Obama and the approach that he took after the fact.

So, that -- I mean, you can't -- I don't think you can underestimate how much that is very much in play here as they're making these decisions and saying what they're saying.

PHILLIP: And meanwhile, on Capitol Hill a lot of Republicans and Democrats are clamoring for more, more to be done proactively. So what's on the table?

RAJU: There are serious bipartisan talks that are happening right now to impose sanctions and potentially a deal could come together in the next several days to actually have legislation. What the Democrats are calling for the mother of all sanctions. That's one of the authors Bob Menendez who's working on this with Republicans.

There seems to be a likelihood they will get agreement, a disagreement about when to impose the sanctions. Ted Cruz wanted to impose sanctions over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. They're trying to figure out exactly when to impose the sanctions.

So, ultimately, there appears to be a deal, it will be interesting who see who opposes it. Who on the Republican side opposes it? Who on the Democratic side and liberal side oppose it? Perhaps it will make odd fellows opposing it.

But, likely, there's going to be enough support to get something into law.

PHILLIP: This is going to be just a persistent -- you can't underestimate how persistent this crisis level could be for the Biden administration. Deeply frustrating I'm sure for them, not just for international relations but also their domestic agenda that's caught up.

Coming up next for us, the next big political fight, what's taught in our classrooms?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:27:51]

PHILLIP: If you're wondering where the Republican Party is headed, look no further than the states where politicians are aggressively leaning into the culture wars. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis is targeting schools and workplaces that make people feel, quote, discomfort or guilt based on their race, sex or national origin. In Virginia, Glenn Youngkin is creating a tip line for parents to report grade school lessons that they don't like.

Meanwhile, the whitewashing of January 6th and insurrection that day and the Trump's big lie are also part of the agenda. Just last night, the former president defended the insurrectionists at a rally in Texas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6th fairly. We will treat them fairly. And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: He just continues to up the ante and, you know, I will add one more thing to this, Jackie. In addition to what you just heard there, here is what he said about what he wants to happen if there are prosecutions that he doesn't like. Let's put it that way.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: If these radical vicious racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: So we all know what happened the last time there were huge protests, it resulted in a bloody insurrection at the Capitol. What is going on here?

KUCINICH: He doesn't want to take responsibility for what happened on January 6th. PHILLIP: I mean, not just that, he's running on it.

KUCINICH: He's -- throughout last year, Republicans were having trouble talking about January 6th, figuring it out, and now they've gone full on embracing it, which I guess we should have expected.

[08:29:48]

However, I do wonder -- I do wonder if this works. There's also something else at play. There's a lot of investigations going on about -- dealing with the president and dealing with all of the people around the president. So this is -- this sounds like a very defensive crowd (ph).

MANU RAJU, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And this is just classic Trump. I mean --

KUCINICH: Yes.

RAJU: -- there's something that's such an obvious liability to him that everybody sees. It is his responsibility, his role in the riot that happened that day, that led to death. The officers, police officers, died as a result of this. Some because of suicide that was PTSD that was linked to it. Brian Sicknick the officer died in the aftermath of what happened on January 6th.

He was -- without a doubt had played a major role if not directly responsible to what happened. Now he's trying to make it in some ways him and his people being a victim. This is how Donald Trump has always run, tried to become the victim himself and somehow make that a political asset.

Now, will that actually work, that's another question.

PHILLIP: And just so people are aware of what's going on here, in the upside down world that we are in here, the president's supporters are actually mad at him because he hasn't paid for the defense of some of these January 6th insurrectionists. So he is offering pardons instead -- really just unbelievable statement about where things are right now with Trump's base.

HANS NICHOLS, POLITICAL REPORTER, AXIOS: Yes. I don't suspect they will stay mad at him for long, right. I mean if we think that Donald Trump is not going to win the Republican nomination because he didn't pay the legal bills of some of his associates, I'm not going to make that prediction here but I don't suspect that's what he's going to lose the nomination for if he does.

To me the big headlines, it's just so obvious that Donald Trump is running. It's so -- like none of us should be surprised. And it's also obvious that we are going to have so many different turns of this story between now and 2024.

So right now, what are we doing right now? We are all talking about Donald Trump and a rally he had north of Houston, right. Think of how many more conversations like this we are going to be having between now and the primaries in 2024.

PHILLIP: Let's talk about something else just -- you know, in the interest of talking about something else that's just as important but related.

Just south of us in Virginia Glenn Youngkin, just elected, he is now being called Trump in a red vest. That's what Republicans are calling him -- I didn't make that up. And he ran as a moderate but what he has been doing as we mentioned earlier is putting, you know, critical race theory and, you know, this surveillance of American classrooms at the heart of his campaigning.

I mean Virginia is a state that we all believed was really trending blue, purple at the very least. Could this all backfire?

JASMINE WRIGHT, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: I mean, that's a great question and I think that Youngkin will have to go down this route really to know whether or not it's going to backfire. But yes, right, we all assumed that Virginia had really shifted closer towards being blue and that it was there for a long time and now we see Youngkin moving -- moving further and further to the right, doing things that we really didn't think that he would necessarily lean into.

So I think one question, especially the White House is going to answer is how they approach this, how they respond to that. We've seen White House press secretary Jen Psaki attack DeSantis from the podium during press briefings on COVID when he went too far what they thought was into kind of going against these mask mandates.

And we saw of course President Biden attacking the big lie of Republicanism when it comes to the election. So I think it's going to be a real question to see how the White House responds, whether they actually attack it head-on as it comes forward.

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIP: Before you jump in, Jackie, you know, one of the interesting things about where this kind of -- the offense on this is coming from, from the White House, it actually came from a very unusual place. Chasten Buttigieg, the Transportation Secretary's husband who pushed back on a Florida law that he says would make life dangerous for LGBT youth.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHASTEN BUTTIGIEG, LGBTQ ADVOCATE: I don't really think this is about parents' rights. Parents' rights to do what? To tell LGBTQ kids that they don't belong? To push LGBTQ families away and into the closet.

This hurts kids. This will hurt families and this isn't about education or parent's rights. I think it's about using the LGBTQ community as a scapegoat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Taking it on head-on. He's going to go down to Florida to lobby on this issue. Is that the strategy?

KUCINICH: This does seem like just a new extension of the culture wars, particularly on LGBTQ issues the far right wing has lost. Gay marriage is the law of the land, the Supreme Court has verified that. And so this is just a way that they can expand the culture wars into not a new arena, this is an old arena, talking about what kids should be learning in school.

But I will say one thing, one indication we've seen from this Glenn Youngkin mask mandate on the front end.

[08:34:53]

KUCINICH: I think (ph) that the "Washington Post" did a survey last week, 53 percent of schools in Virginia or school districts still have mask mandates.

PHILLIP: They're basically ignoring him.

KUCINICH: They're ignoring it. They're fighting it. They are not all suing but they're fighting it or they're ignoring it. So that in and of itself kind of is an indication of just how popular or not popular this is.

RAJU: The one thing also not to discount is more broadly the impact of the cultural war issues could have on House races in particular. I mean look back in 2020 --

KUCINICH: Yes.

RAJU: -- the House Democrats really had a really terrible night in a large part because they could not find the message of pushing back on issues such as defunding the police, even though most of them, if not all of them, opposed the issue of defunding the police but they were hammered by it and they sort of ignored it. They didn't have it quite -- they didn't really have a message to push back.

This could be a similar case if some of these culture war issues really take hold in some of these key House races.

PHILLIP: It's such a good point. I mean I just want to put this up, the "New York Times" had a quote from Brendan Buck who's a former Paul Ryan adviser. He says, "Republicans have a lot of significant deep problems but Democrats have been so bad that it made it really easy to overlook them."

So you know, I mean it could be a case where things are just so bad that Republicans just coast even while some of these things are really not that popular frankly.

But coming up next for us, blockbuster economic growth, low unemployment and rising wages. President Biden wants the focus there. And he may be frustrated that voters are worried about something else.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you think inflation is a political liability ahead of the midterms?

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: That's a great asset. More inflation. What a stupid son of a bitch.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[08:36:33]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: We learned this week after my first year as president, the United States had the fastest economic growth in nearly four decades. Along with the greatest year of job growth in American history, 6.4 million jobs created in one year.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: And President Biden has a point. The U.S. economy is by many traditional measures the strongest it's been in decades. GDP growth is at the fastest pace since 1984. The unemployment rate is near its lowest level since the 1950s. And wage growth is at a historically high clip.

But the reality is voters are focused on this number, inflation hasn't been this high since 1982.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. SUSAN WILD (D-PA): The fact of the matter is, I'm not going to sugarcoat it, people have seen increases in their wages but we know that those increases in wages have not kept up with the higher price of goods.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: So the White House moved quickly to pump money into the economy, but the pandemic has also caused some, you know, negative consequences. Inflation, supply chain problems, labor shortages.

And by the way, on the pandemic, we're all sitting at this table, we have all been tested just before coming on here, so we are not just playing games with our lives, we have been tested.

NICHOLS: We're going to get the results after the show.

RAJU: That's a joke.

PHILLIP: The pandemic is still here and it's causing some real economic pain for voters. The White House seems to say or seems to think that if Biden can just get out there and tell Americans what he's done for them lately, that they will start to feel better about the economy. What's the strategy?

WRIGHT: Yes, that's right. Look, they want the president to take the message that this White House is working for them straight to the voters.

So for the last two weeks when you talk to officials they talk about this grand plan to kind of change the strategy. Have Biden go places that he doesn't traditionally go, get into crowds that he doesn't traditionally see, trying to bring that message that we have done x, y, z to make you feel more comfortable.

But the bottom line here, Abby, is that Americans just don't feel the change that the White House has made in their pockets. And that is a key thing that this White House is going to have to contend with between now and midterms that are already looking kind of dim and gray for them.

And so the White House wants the president to do more, wants him to travel more, wants him to be less of that president senator that he talked about, less in the halls of Congress or in the Oval Office behind doors negotiating those deals and more up in their -- up in America's face basically telling them that --

KUCINICH: To get in their faces.

(CROSSTALK)

WRIGHT: -- look, we are working around the clock for you.

PHILLIP: But he would not be the first president to think that if you just tell them that things are good that they might start to feel good. You know, take a look at this Fox poll from recently. These are some of the issues that could be on the battlefield, let's say, for the midterms.

The economy, education, coronavirus. It's the economy where Republicans have a 15-point advantage over Democrats and that has grown in the last two years.

NICHOLS: So I'm glad you have the comment up from Representative Wild. I think the shift that everyone here at the table has probably picked up in the last six weeks, maybe just the last -- certainly around the Christmas area, is that Democratic lawmakers are increasingly warning about inflation. And it used -- I mean, Republicans have been on this because they obviously saw the political virtue, the political benefit of hitting Democrats and Biden on inflation.

They've been talking about that really since the Summers -- maybe even before Larry Summers, right. The change is that lawmakers on the frontline are hearing it from their constituents and their warnings. And we're going to hear a lot more of that.

PHILLIP: I want to raise the issue, though, one thing that I think we've been talking about since it expired at the end of the year was the child tax credit. Democrats maybe they didn't get very much credit for giving it to people but now that it's gone people are starting to wonder where is that extra money that reduced poverty for children, affected millions of families and there seems to be really -- I mean you tell us, Manu, like what's the prospects on Capitol Hill? RAJU: Virtually none of getting the expanded child tax credit. But

you're right, they passed that expansion of the child tax credit in the American Rescue Plan and Democrats hoped they would get a big political win out of it. But there were a lot of complaints from House Democrats in frontline districts that it was just not showing up in their polling they were not messaging it effectively.

[08:44:56]

RAJU: And now that that expiration happened at the end of last year they may get hit for a potential tax increase that families -- after they had gotten essentially a cut last year and that is the real concern.

Joe Manchin has made clear that he does not support the way the Democrats have structured it in the Build Back Better Plan. He believes it needs to have work requirements. He believes that it should not be just a one-year extension, it should be ten years if they're going to do it and that would, of course, explode the price tag and probably be too expensive for him to ultimately support.

So essentially this means that they're going to have to campaign on, ok, elect more Democrats and we can bring it back, even if you're feeling a pain in the pocketbook right now.

PHILLIP: I mean what are the prospects of that working?

KUCINICH: Depends on who you are, I guess. I think that the -- I mean I think all you need to do is look at the warnings that you're hearing particularly from front line Democrats which you were hearing even last year because they were seeing prices raise and hear from their constituents. So if they are to be believed, not great.

PHILLIP: Yes, absolutely.

Well coming up next for us, the pandemic parents are sick of school closures and mask restrictions. Will they take it out on Democrats come November?

[08:46:07]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIP: We've entered the third year of this pandemic and Americans are tired. Parents are growing increasingly angry about COVID-related disruptions to schools and to daycares. And as Republican governors target school mask mandates, a growing rift among public health experts on the issue is leaving families caught in the middle.

This is one of those situations where we're at year three and people are wondering at what point is normal going to actually happen.

A recent NBC poll found that about 65 percent of Americans are a lot more concerned about their kid falling behind in school than transmitting the virus. So it's not necessarily that schools are shuttered, but the disruption to their lives, to their education, to the economy.

RAJU: Yes. No question about it. And look, I think that's one of the things that a lot of Republicans when you talk to in the capitol, they believe the midterm is going to be dictated in large part about what is happening with COVID, how things are doing with COVID which is why you're hearing such pushback to all the mandates that's been the big Republican message.

The Democratic message on that they recognize also that this potentially could turn the elections as well. But what is the Democratic message on this issue?

Rather than say follow the science or let's listen to the science, a lot of Americans agree with that but those polls clearly show Americans are weary about everything that's happening here.

So what is -- how are Democrats going to respond to all this weariness? Their hope is that cases will subside by summertime as a lot of experts expect, and then come fall then things -- American's views about how this is being handled maybe different.

(CROSSTALK)

RAJU: -- that can help them politically.

KUCINICH: And there is though -- follow the science, you even hear from Democrats some frustration about what they're hearing coming from places like the CDC because some of the advice has been really confusing, has at times been contradictory.

And the adage that, you know, we followed all the rules and yet we still can't get back to normal. And I mean -- which -- I mean yes, there's all these other variables with omicron and everything. But I think the fact they feel like the science isn't really telling them what to do means nothing.

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIP: I want to read -- yes, I mean I want to read this quote from a parent interviewed by -- this parent lives in Silver Spring, Maryland as we know in the D.C. area. Not exactly a conservative part of town. She says, "As soon as you question is it a good idea to put a 2-year-old in a mask all day, you're suddenly psychotic, an anti-vaxer right-ringer which couldn't be further from the truth. The fact that high risk people can protect themselves with vaccines and boosters, now it's fantastic indeed that they should do that. We should stop burdening little kids with protecting other people."

It's an interesting situation happening here where even some, you know, maybe -- I don't know this woman's politics, but she is basically pushing back on the idea that that is a view that is only reserved for conservatives.

NICHOLS: Look, we're all parents here, right. We've all had dozens of conversations off-line. The number of conversations I've had with people who kind of preface this. They say I'm not a Trumper. You know, I voted for Biden. I actually like were in the primaries.

But -- and then the plot is where -- that's coming back to the NBC poll. And the Republican theory of the case -- 65 percent seems like a big number, right, in an NBC poll. The Republican theory of the case is why so low? They actually think it's closer to the 70s, the 80s, there's a much more silent people that feel this strongly about it who think we should prioritize and protect kids, make sure they're learning, make sure they're in schools and then worry about the rest later.

And you saw a little bit of that in the Youngkin race. And Republicans are convinced and I mean Manu spends more time than I do now on the Hill -- talking with them.

You almost feel it, just how confident they are that this is going to be a political winner for them.

PHILLIP: Yes. We are in the middle of a big wave. When this wave subsides, the question for the Democrats who are in the administration elected on the issue of handling the pandemic is how do they get ahead of this issue before voters start to look around and ask themselves, ok, so when are we allowed to relax pandemic restrictions.

We're out of time, thanks, Manu.

[08:54:50]

PHILLIP: But that's it for INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY. Join us back here every Sunday at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time and the week days show as well at noon eastern. And don't forget, you can also listen to our podcast. Download INSIDE POLITICS wherever you get your podcast.

Coming up next on CNN, "STATE OF THE UNION" with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. Dana's guests this morning include Senators Bob Menendez and James Risch -- the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Don't miss that conversation.

Thank you again for sharing your Sunday morning with us. Have a great rest of your day.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:59:54]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: United front? As the U.S. warns Russia is ready to invade Ukraine --

BIDEN: It's a little bit like reading tea leaves.

BASH: -- a bipartisan group of senators is trying to prevent war. I'll speak exclusively to the two top members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democratic -- Are we done yet?