By W. James Antle III The Week

The White House fended off numerous questions at Wednesday’s press briefing about blue state governors easing COVID-19 restrictions, especially mask mandates, earlier than President Biden recommended. The answers were always the same: We’re going to follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and parents should too, no matter what their Democratic governor says (but also, when those governors loosen rules, it’s different and better than when Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis does the same).

That messy briefing was emblematic of a larger problem: The Biden administration is struggling with when to ease pandemic safety guidelines. They’ve been burned before, prematurely declaring victory as the vaccines rolled out last June only to have to urge people to remask as new variants emerged and a slice of the population remained stubbornly resistant to the shots.

The problem is that when the administration does lift its endorsement of the restrictions, it will be so far behind everyone else — including most Democratic elected officials — that they’ll receive little political credit for the return to normalcy. And normalcy was a big, if unspoken, part of Biden’s successful campaign pitch.

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