A new WaPo-ABC poll out this morning has President JOE BIDEN’s approval rating down to 41%, with 53% of respondents disapproving. That’s troubling for the White House because the poll was conducted Nov. 7-10 — after the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure package (BIF).

— But the numbers for Biden get even worse than that:

• 63% of respondents said Biden has accomplished “not very much” or “little or nothing” so far in his presidency. A full 45% said he’s done “little or nothing” — that’s worse than the numbers for then-Presidents DONALD TRUMP, BARACK OBAMA or BILL CLINTON at comparable points in their presidencies.
• Just 31% said he’s kept most of his major campaign promises — also a worse figure than Trump, Obama or Clinton received.
• 70% rated the economy as “not so good” or “poor.”

— Tsunami warning for Dems:

• 51% of registered voters said they’d vote for the generic Republican congressional candidate if the elections were today.
• That is the highest number ever for Republicans in the 40-year history of this question being asked in this poll — higher than it was ahead of the GOP waves in 2014, 2010 or 1994. Read more from WaPo’s Dan Balz, Scott Clement and Emily Guskin

— But there’s a glimmer of hope for Biden:

• 63% of respondents support the bipartisan infrastructure deal.
• And 58% support “spending about two trillion dollars to address climate change and to create or expand preschool, health care and other social programs.”

Biden will hold a big, splashy BIF-signing ceremony Monday, his first opportunity to begin to turn these numbers around. But despite the bill’s bipartisan support, it looks like it will be an overwhelmingly Democratic affair.

— Several GOP “yes” votes are joining Senate Minority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL in skipping the White House photo op, according to the WSJ’s Lindsay Wise and Eliza Collins — that includes Reps. ANDREW GARBARINO (R-N.Y.), who’s received a death threat, and DON BACON (R-Neb.). That said, Sen. SUSAN COLLINS (R-Maine) and Rep. TOM REED (R-N.Y.) plan to attend.

Speaking of the Trumpists-vs.-everybody war …

— Trump escalated his hostilities against Republican officials who do not do as he wishes in a statement Saturday night, calling on “good and smart America First Republican patriots to run primary campaigns” against GOP House members who voted for the BIF — as well as those who voted against the BIF but supported holding STEVE BANNON in contempt of Congress. Trump’s statement, which IDs his targeted lawmakers by name

— Sen. TED CRUZ (R-Texas), fresh off picking a fight with BIG BIRD, turned his sights on Rep. LIZ CHENEY (R-Wyo.) on Saturday. Quote-tweeting a two-day-old CNN post that asked “Is there a lane for Liz Cheney in New Hampshire in 2024?” the Texas Republican said, “Yes. It’s called the Democratic primary.” Cheney then quote-tweeted Cruz: “I know you’re posturing for the secessionist vote, Ted. But my party, the Republican party, saved the Union. You swore an oath to the Constitution. Act like it.” (These spats benefit both Cruz and Cheney — riling up their supporters and ginning up media attention.)

WHEN I CALLED YOU LAST NIGHT FROM GLASGOW — Negotiators struck a new global climate deal Saturday at the COP26 conference in Scotland. The BBC writes that the landmark agreement takes some historic steps, including making plans to reduce reliance on coal for the first time ever.

— But it goes only so far: Even if countries live up to their pledges, emissions would still likely push the world past the 1.5-degree Celsius mark — which scientists believe will make the most serious effects of climate change unavoidable. (The Guardian says “the goal of 1.5C of climate heating is alive, but only just.”)

— The U.S. stepped up its involvement majorly after the Trump administration retreated from global efforts to fight climate change, Zack Colman reports. The American presence “helped drive the urgency at the talks,” although it failed to attain its most ambitious goals or persuade China to get fully on board.

— India and China almost torpedoed the entire deal at the last minute, relenting only after the U.S. and the EU acquiesced to many of their demands to soften language, Karl Mathiesen reports.

— Daily downer: The Daily Beast’s Thor Benson writes that our failure to come together in the face of Covid-19 — as societies usually do when confronted with crisis — has psychologists and other experts worried: They “have been stunned by this outcome. And they fear it is a stark warning for what may happen when climate change — one of the biggest existential threats humanity has ever faced — becomes a greater threat in our daily lives.”

Good Sunday morning. Thanks for reading Playbook. Drop us a line: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza, Tara Palmeri.

THREE TOP SUNDAY READS …

— Here’s a question: “Can Reaganism rise again?” “For a long time, longer than I’ve held this job, my advice to Republican politicians and policymakers has been consistent: It isn’t the 1970s or 1980s anymore,” writes NYT’s Ross Douthat. “The year 2021, though, is the first time a reasonable Republican could listen to my pitch and answer, but what if history is repeating itself, and we’re back in Reagan’s world?” The U.S. seems locked in a “cold war” with China, crime has emerged as a major political issue, and inflation is defining Americans’ economic fears. But that’s a tad facile: The parallels are complicated and, as Douthat readily admits, it’d be wrong to expect a simple one-for-one repeat of the 1980s. But just because history won’t repeat doesn’t mean it won’t rhyme.

— Setting the stage for a post-Biden party: While Biden says he plans to run again in 2024 (it’s obviously not to his advantage to say otherwise), some allies and a whole lot of pundits assume that he won’t — which leaves the Democrats in need of a standard-bearer. Enter VP KAMALA HARRIS and Transportation Secretary PETE BUTTIGIEG, two history-making figures who may well lead the party in 2024 or 2028, but whose “political fortunes [are] diverging in the first 10 months of Biden’s presidency,” write WaPo’s Cleve Wootson Jr. and Sean Sullivan. They dive into that dynamic in some depth — while noting in the final graf that the Harris-Buttigieg “rivalry” seems, thus far at least, to be mostly a media invention. Related reading: “Pete Buttigieg is about to become the most powerful transportation secretary ever,” by Insider’s Adam Wren and Warren Rojas

— One to watch: USAID Administrator SAMANTHA POWER is cutting a high-profile figure in Washington despite her relatively under-the-radar agency — earning speculation that she might be angling for a more prominent post, Nahal Toosi reports. Her celebrity is also helping USAID gain access to people “who in the past would barely give the agency the time of day,” even as her outspokenness has sometimes stepped on the State Department’s toes. Nahal also writes that Power’s relative silence on Afghanistan during much of the U.S. pullout prompted speculation that she might be trying to avoid association with the mess.

SUNDAY BEST:

— National Economic Council Director BRIAN DEESE on the Build Back Better bill timing, on ABC’s “This Week”: “We’re confident that this bill is going to come up in the House this week. It will get a vote, it will pass, and it will move on to the Senate.”

— Bacon on the backlash to Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill, on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “To say that a bill is right for your district, right for your state, and something that you helped write, but then you’ve got to vote against it because you don’t want to give the other side a victory? That is a sign of what’s broken.”

— Rep. FRED UPTON (R-Mich.) on whether he’ll run for reelection, on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “Well, we don’t know what our districts look like yet. We’re in the midst of looking at maps. Michigan loses a seat. We will evaluate everything probably before the end of the year in terms of making our own decision. We have never made a decision more than a year out.”

— Treasury Secretary JANET YELLEN on whether inflation will be down by the midterms, on CBS’ “Face the Nation”: “It really depends on the pandemic. The pandemic has been calling the shots for the economy and for inflation.”

— Surgeon General VIVEK MURTHY on a potential winter increase in Covid-19 cases, on “Fox News Sunday”: “We should be prepared for the fact that there may be an uptick in cases that we see in various parts of the country with cold weather. But what has held true for the last year is still true, which is that vaccines still give you a high degree of protection, especially against the worst outcomes of Covid like hospitalization and death.”

— New Hampshire Gov. CHRIS SUNUNU on why he sat out the Senate race, on “Meet the Press”: “Unfortunately, too often on both sides of the aisle, doing nothing is a win. And I don’t live in that world. I can’t really work like that. So I’m more of an executive and a manager. And again, you know, we’re still in the middle of the Covid crisis … At some point, maybe there’s an opportunity to go down. But you’re absolutely right. There just needs to be a fundamental change of philosophy on both sides of the aisle to simply start getting stuff done.”

— “Sen. Barrasso declines to condemn Trump over Pence remarks,” by David Cohen

BIDEN’S SUNDAY — The president will return to D.C. from Camp David at 1:15 p.m.

HARRIS’ SUNDAY — The VP has nothing on her public schedule.

POLITICS ROUNDUP

ALARM BELLS FOR DEMS — Republicans made major strides in local elections in Pennsylvania suburbs earlier this month, reversing the Trump-era trend lines in one of the nation’s most pivotal swing areas, reports Holly Otterbein from Philadelphia. Republican candidates successfully downplayed Trump, citing “inflation, education, immigration and crime” as crucial to their victories, while “Pennsylvania Democrats sought to tie local Republican candidates to the former GOP president — and there were few signs that it worked.”

FROM 30,000 FEET — WaPo’s Dan Balz analyzes a couple of recent reports that highlights how much changing attitudes about race over the past decade have polarized the two parties further from each other. The shift was largely the result of white Democrats growing more liberal on race; there were also growing, Trump-fueled partisan divides on immigration and Muslim people. The reports, he writes, show “why the debate over racial injustice is both as politically charged as ever and still seemingly irreconcilable.”

2024 WATCH — In a hypothetical presidential rematch, Trump leads Biden by 11 points in Iowa — a 3-point improvement on his 2020 margin in the state — according to a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll. That includes independents breaking for Trump by 8. One interesting data point: Sixty-one percent of Republicans say they’re more aligned with the GOP, whereas 26% say they’re more aligned with Trump.

— ALYSSA FARAH, former press secretary for MIKE PENCE, told CNN’s PAMELA BROWN on Saturday that she thinks the former VP will run for president in 2024 against Trump (though she noted she has no insider knowledge). “There’s this belief that people are just going to clear the field for Trump. I actually think some folks are teeing up to run.” Watch here

CONGRESS

(IR)RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES — Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER said today that his chamber will likely take up the annual defense policy bill this week as the BBB process drags out longer — though he hopes to make progress on the parliamentarian’s assessment of the reconciliation bill this week, reports Burgess Everett. With so many priorities piling up over the next several weeks, Schumer asked Dems to “keep your schedule flexible for the remainder of the calendar year.” The Dear Colleague letter

— One under-discussed component of the reconciliation bill is a payroll tax credit for local news outlets, which would be “the first time the federal government has offered targeted support in response to the decline of local news,” report AP’s Farnoush Amiri and Tali Arbel. The measure has largely attracted unified support from Democrats in both chambers, though Republicans deride it as a handout.

FOR YOUR RADAR — In a letter going out Monday, GOP Sens. MIKE BRAUN (Ind.), MARCO RUBIO (Fla.), MIKE LEE (Utah), CYNTHIA LUMMIS (Wyo.) and Cruz say they won’t support any fiscal 2022 omnibus spending bill that doesn’t fund the U.S.-Mexico border wall, per Fox News’ Adam Shaw and Kelly Laco.

AMERICA AND THE WORLD

MAJOR INVESTIGATION — A blockbuster story from NYT’s Dave Philipps and Eric Schmitt reveals that a 2019 U.S. airstrike killed several dozen civilians in Syria — one of the worst such incidents in the war against the Islamic State. The military knew almost as soon as it happened, and it was flagged as a potential war crime. “But at nearly every step, the military made moves that concealed the catastrophic strike. The death toll was downplayed. Reports were delayed, sanitized and classified. United States-led coalition forces bulldozed the blast site. And top leaders were not notified.” There was never an independent investigation.

— David Sanger (@SangerNYT): “A remarkable piece of investigative reporting that says volumes about why militaries around the world cannot be trusted to investigate themselves. And to those who argue the press is never justified in publishing classified information – well, read this.”

HAVANA OOH NA NA — Cuba faces a moment of truth Monday, when the opposition movement is planning a “Civic March for Change” (plus corresponding demonstrations in Miami and elsewhere). WaPo’s Karen DeYoung reports that the Cuban government’s response “will play a role in how the [Biden] administration proceeds.” Everyone’s still waiting on Biden to reveal his administration’s long-gestating Cuba policy, but DeYoung reports that it’s likely to fall somewhere in between Trump and Obama on remittances and travel, while the plan to get Cuba wired to the internet “has run into technological and legal problems.”

CONSULTANT CONCERNS — A big NBC investigation from Dan De Luce and Yasmine Salam reveals that McKinsey has advised “Chinese state-run enterprises that have supported Beijing’s naval buildup in the Pacific and played a key role in China’s efforts to extend its influence around the world,” at the same time that the company works with the Pentagon. That’s prompting national security concerns from some in Washington, though the company says it doesn’t view the situation as a conflict of interest.

POLICY CORNER

FED UP — Bloomberg’s Craig Torres examines what we know about LAEL BRAINARD’s views on employment and inflation if she does get elevated to Fed chair: “Some financial market participants have speculated that Brainard, a Democrat, may put more weight on the employment side of the Fed’s dual mandate, which also includes stable prices. … But there is no direct evidence that Brainard, 59, can’t be tough on inflation. … What is clear is that Brainard has been a big supporter of the Fed’s new policy framework.”

BEYOND THE BELTWAY

THE ART OF SELF-DEFENSE — In both the ongoing high-profile trials of KYLE RITTENHOUSE and AHMAUD ARBERY’s killers, the question of self-defense against a victim trying to take one’s guns looms large. NYT’s Shaila Dewan writes that the cases “expose deep fault lines in the legal and moral concept of self-defense, a doctrine that is particularly cherished in America but ill-equipped to handle an era of expanded gun rights, growing political extremism, violent threats and a strong vigilante strain.”

DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS — From San Antonio, WaPo’s Casey Parks tells the story of TERE HARING, the head of an anti-abortion nonprofit working to provide diapers, rent assistance and other help to new mothers. Her center has seen an uptick in clients since Texas’ new near-total ban on abortion helped slash the number of abortions in the state — but, largely thanks to the pandemic, “[h]er coffers had dwindled as the need had risen.”

— In the wake of Texas’ law as well as the pandemic, the use of mail-order abortion pills has increased in many places, reports AP’s John Hanna. But uncertainty surrounding their legality has prevented some people from obtaining medication abortions this way.

THE PANDEMIC

TRENDING THE WRONG WAY — The start of a winter surge of Covid-19 may be descending: Forty-four states are seeing case numbers rise and 20 states are seeing increasing hospitalizations. More from CBS

IN MEMORIAM — “NPR books editor Petra Mayer has died,” by NPR’s Emma Bowman: “She died suddenly at Holy Cross Hospital in Maryland of what’s believed to be a pulmonary embolism … Mayer was a proud nerd with a penchant for science fiction, comics and cats.”

SPOTTED: Susan DiMarco, the wife of Jeh Johnson, in Newport News, Va., on Saturday christening the USS New Jersey, the 11th Virginia Class fast-attack submarine and the very first specially built to accommodate both male and female sailors. Also in attendance: Jeh Johnson, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), Donald Norcross (D-N.J.) and Elaine Luria (D-Va.) Mike Mullen, Erin McPike, Josh Rothstein and Sarah Istel. Video

OUT AND ABOUT — At the Kennedy Center on Saturday night, David Rubenstein interviewed Cappy McGarr, who co-created the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor and recently wrote “The Man Who Made Mark Twain Famous: Stories from the Kennedy Center, the White House, and Other Comedy Venues” ($28). McGarr told the crowd many funny stories about the prize over the years, including how Mel Brooks turned it down three times and how he once had to track down Bill Murray on the golf course to try to persuade him to accept it. Also SPOTTED: Tom Daschle, Evan Bayh, Chuck Robb, Deborah Rutter, Bob Barnett and Rita Braver, Barbie Allbritton, Jeff Nussbaum, Kevin Chaffee, Steve and Jean Case, Daniel Lippman, Sophia Narrett, Margaret Carlson, Patricia Harrison, Todd Gillman, Daniel Strauss and Claire Tonneson, Adrienne Arsht, Janet Donovan, and Steve and Amy Ricchetti.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Reps. Greg Pence (R-Ind.), Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) and Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa) … Condoleezza Rice … Valerie Jarrett … Ben Rhodes … Tony Powell … Jacob Freedman of Albright Stonebridge … Peter Lattman … Frank Kelly … Sarah Binder … John Jameson … POLITICO’s Lauren Lanza … WaPo’s Paige Winfield Cunningham … Rachel Noerdlinger … Courtney Alexander (3-0) … Liz Morrison of No Labels … Randolph Court of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation … Brunswick Group’s Joshua Friedlander … Sally Sterling … P.J. O’Rourke … NBC’s Amy Lynn … Ed Reno … Ashley Yehl Flanagan … Brianna Manzelli … Madeleine Weast … Bloomberg Opinion’s Jonathan Landman … Rutland Herald’s Jeff Danziger … Prince Charles

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