Good morning. I’m Walter Shapiro, staff writer for The New Republic, playing the role of New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia reading the comics to children on the radio during a 1945 newspaper strike. OK, there is a minor difference—LaGuardia got to read Dick Tracy and Little Orphan Annie, while I am stuck (along with the rest of us) regaling you with tales of Covid and Joe Manchin.

But first, for music this morning, I want to recommend Maureen McGovern singing that 1970s disaster classic, The Morning After, from the shipwreck movie The Poseidon Adventure. You can imagine how Joe Biden must have felt, five months after declaring victory over the pandemic (“The virus is on the run, and America is coming back,” he said at the time), when he announced Thursday at the White House, “We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death.” He added: “Omicron is here. It’s going to start to spread much more rapidly at the beginning of the year, and the only real protection is to get your shots.”

The New York Times adroitly captures things with its lead headline in the print edition, “Omicron Spread Certain, but Its Full Threat Is Not.” The medical quotes in the stories in the major newspapers tend toward the chilling: S. Wesley Long, a microbiologist at Houston Methodist, told The Washington Post, “It’s breathtaking to watch the rate at which everything is increasing right now.” The Times quotes Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, as saying, “I think we need to be prepared for the possibility that this could be at least as bad as any previous wave we’ve seen.” In contrast, the Los Angeles Times takes a more upbeat approach, arguing in a front-page online story, “If cases tended to be more mild and Covid-19 vaccines could still protect the most vulnerable people from dying, a kinder, gentler omicron—even a highly contagious one—could be the break health officials and scientists have been waiting for.”

The truth is, of course, there is so much we still don’t know about omicron and its implications. In political terms, everyone should remember that the pandemic colors all polling, regardless of the question, since it dominates the national mood. Before anyone ventures 2022 political predictions, remember that everything will pivot around where we are with Covid-19 next fall. If the pandemic is finally and truly on the run, then it is easy to imagine the buoyant national mood that will follow. In contrast, a nation reeling from a sixth or seventh wave will be an angry, roiled place.

Meanwhile, in a tale as familiar as Lucy and the football, Joe Manchin once again put the kibosh on Senate Democratic efforts to pass Biden’s $2 trillion spending package this year. Democratic Senate Whip Dick Durbin described the mood to reporters on Thursday as “frustrated and disappointed.” Then Durbin added, in a triumph of hope over experience, “We missed an opportunity, but I’m not giving up.” The damage that Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are doing to Democratic hopes in 2022 is beyond reckoning. At this point, the loss of faith from agonizing months of frustrating negotiations is probably greater than the possible political gains from actual passage.

Kamala Harris, buffeted by high-level staff departures, gave an interview to The Wall Street Journal that inadvertently highlighted one of the roots of her political problems. This rare Harris interview was breathtakingly boring. A sample: “Asked if she planned to manage her office differently, she said in the interview that she valued her team’s work and would remain focused on policy issues.” Or talking about her work with Biden, the vice president said, “We’re building back up our economy, and we are re-establishing America’s role in the context of our allies and partners around the world.”

Part of this is the vice president’s curse—a V.P. can’t make policy and can’t upstage the president. That leaves room for little more than banalities. True, other Democratic vice presidents adroitly managed to transcend this bind: Al Gore by taking on major responsibilities as part of “Reinventing Government” and Joe Biden through the force of his irrepressible personality. Harris, in contrast, favors making implausible claims, such as when she responded to a question from the Journal about whether Biden would run in 2024 by saying, “I’ll be very honest: I don’t think about it, nor have we talked about it.”

Here at New Republic.com, Grace Segers pinpoints the real-life harm that Joe Manchin is doing with his obstinacy. The first casualty, unless Congress passes the Biden package by December 28, will be the child tax credit payments that families will be expecting in mid-January. But no Manchin, no payments, with all the hardships attached. Tim Noah has a fascinating piece about the original West Side Story, pointing out that the storyline of a white gang versus a Puerto Rican gang makes no sense against the demographics of 1950s New York and that both the original film and the current one airbrush African Americans out of the neighborhood. Molly Osberg offers a sad-eyed look at how tragedies are almost inevitable at Amazon facilities: “The company has built a workforce of contract and short-term laborers operating in massive buildings vulnerable to disaster.”

Doing my part in the War Against Christmas, I wish you Happy Holidays,

—Walter Shapiro, staff writer

Every day, our journalists are exposing the right’s assaults on our democracy—and pushing the Democrats to go bold to preserve the republic. Here’s a special offer from The New Republic so you won’t miss their scoops and sharp analysis.

Yesterday’s political question: Thirty-one House members have announced they won’t run for reelection in 2022. How many are Democrats and how many Republicans? Bonus question: How many senators have announced they won’t run for reelection, and what’s the party breakdown?

Yesterday’s answer: Currently, 20 House Democrats and 12 Republicans. Bonus answer: In the Senate, five Republicans are not running for reelection, and the only Democrat opting out of another term is Pat Leahy in Vermont.

Today’s question: Too many political junkies overreact to polls by assuming that nothing will change between now and the 2022 elections. But history is littered with October Surprises, most notably the Cuban Missile Crisis just before the 1962 midterm elections. Thanks to JFK preventing nuclear war, the Democrats gained three Senate seats while losing four in the House.

There were not one—but two—major foreign policy crises at the end of October in another post–World War II election year. Name the twin (and unrelated) crises, the year, and the electoral result that November.

Holiday question: No holiday song more infuriates the War Against Christmas Brigades than Frank Loesser’s 1947 hit, What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve? In a shocking triumph of secular humanism, Christmas isn’t even alluded to. But Loesser, who wrote Guy and Dolls, hated the way that his New Year’s Eve tune was played regularly in December. Why was Loesser irked? (Hint: The answer has nothing to do with royalties.)