President Joe Biden is in the midst of a blitz of salesmanship. He's got every right to do so, after Congress finally moved the bipartisan infrastructure bill to his desk after months of delays. And Biden has long been aware that one of the biggest mistakes Barack Obama ever made as president was failing to properly whip up public support for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which would have been easy to do since Republicans were already (derisively) calling it "Obamacare." Biden saw the dynamics of this failure play out, as Obama's veep. So he has long said he's not going to repeat the same mistake during his presidency. Which is why seeing him out in the country selling the various parts of his infrastructure plan was entirely predictable.

Still, it is nice to see it happen. Biden's not just "spiking the football" -- that will happen when Congress returns to Washington next week, when the expectation is that Biden will have at least a few Republicans standing behind him while he ceremoniously signs the bill. What Biden is doing now is more education of the public -- which is an absolute necessity.

Both Biden and his fellow Democrats have already really failed at this task once this year. They passed the COVID-19 relief bill early on in Biden's tenure, but then absolutely dropped the ball on selling it to the public. How many of the tens of millions of American parents who are now receiving $300-per-child-per-month checks in the mail are fully aware that Democrats did this for them -- without a single Republican vote in Congress? How many of them are aware of any of the other provisions of the American Rescue Plan? How many of them would even recognize that name? I have no real idea what the qualitative answer to those questions would be, but I'd bet that both would fall into the category of: "far fewer than should know." This failure of salesmanship can be traced directly to Biden and the other Democrats.

But that was an emergency bill, after all -- this one took a lot more time and effort. So maybe Biden will do a better job this time. He certainly should be aware that a major portion of his legacy will depend on how good a sales job he now does.

Fortunately, he's got a pretty good product to sell. Not only is infrastructure wildly popular with just about everybody, Biden can rightfully brag that his vision of "bringing Washington together again" actually bore fruit. Over a third of the Republicans in the Senate wound up voting for the bill, and while the proportion was a lot lower than that for House Republicans, at least Biden got into the double digits in that vote as well (in fact, if no House Republican had voted for it, the bill would not have passed).

Mitch McConnell is actually out there vocally supporting the bill, but his House counterparts aren't feeling as sanguine. The MAGA-hatted crowd is now excoriating them all for their "treason" (their word, not mine) and calling for all 13 of them to be stripped of all committee assignments -- for daring to vote for something that will help their own constituents. Infrastructure, after all, used to be wildly popular not just with the public but with politicians on both sides of the aisle -- infrastructure bills used to be approved in Congress with overwhelmingly bipartisan votes, in fact. And then they'd all go back to their states or districts and brag about the local freeway improvements or the new bridge, for obvious reasons. But this is simply not the case anymore.

At least -- unlike with Obamacare -- the Republicans haven't really come up with any succinct way to demonize a bill which will fix roads, bridges, airports, ports, and lead pipes. There has been no equivalent of the "death panel" lie, to put this another way. All the rabid voices in the GOP have been able to come up with so far is that it is all a "socialist" or even "communist" plot. No, really. The ghost of Dwight D. Eisenhower (the father of the Interstate Highway System) might have a thing or two to say about that concept, one assumes. But from Donald Trump on down, Republicans have been using both terms almost interchangeably in an effort to turn public opinion away from the simple concept of fixing roads and bridges.

The real question at this point is how good a job Biden does selling it and how far this salesmanship will spread. He'll be at an event in Baltimore today, speaking of how the bill will help America's ports respond to the supply chain crisis. It will be interesting to see how the media covers it. Will they yawn and give it a few seconds on the evening news, or will they actually show a soundbite or two? One almost wishes Biden would utter an amusing gaffe or two, just to assure a little coverage....

Kidding aside, however, the next few weeks are critical because Biden's job now is not just to sell the infrastructure bill which made it through Congress but also to build public opinion for the companion Build Back Better bill that is still grinding its way through both chambers. A vote has been promised in the House next week, but there's no telling when Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema will allow the Senate to act. Educating the public about what is in this bill will help, since all of the various provisions are already popular (in the abstract). But at this point, nobody really knows exactly what is in the Build Back Better plan, which is why Biden's got to both take his victory lap for the infrastructure bill as well as informing the public what is coming next.

We'll see how good a salesman Joe Biden proves to be. If he successfully does get his message out, it'll probably be reflected in his poll numbers over the next few weeks or so. If he can even get people excited about Build Back Better, it might force Manchin and Sinema to allow the bill to pass before the end of the year, too.

So get out there and sell it, Joe! As you already know, the only way you will politically benefit from such legislative success is if the public is made aware of it in the first place. So do your best to raise awareness of both what you've accomplished and what is to soon to come.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant