Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Tina FLASH: President JOE BIDEN has canceled a planned Wednesday trip to Illinois, the White House confirmed this evening. The cancellation comes as Biden finds his domestic agenda on the line this week, with an uncertain House vote on his infrastructure bill planned for Thursday. Biden had planned to stop by Chicago construction firm, Clayco, owned by one of his bundlers, BOB CLARK, to talk about the businesses promoting vaccines. The White House on Tuesday evening said Biden will stay at the White House to continue working on advancing legislation. The White House official said the trip will be rescheduled. NOW, FOR YOUR REGULAR NEWSLETTER: Amidst the final days of the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, the White House’s comms shop went on the hunt for its favorite weapon to beat back critical press: polls. “They reached out and they were like ‘Hey, anything good on Afghanistan happening?'” said SEAN McELWEE, the founding executive director of the progressive Data For Progress, which the White House regularly turns to for polling they can share publicly. “We do intake directly from the White House. [Executive office of the president], VP’s office, rapid response office, [Domestic Policy Council], etc. have all sort of had different asks at different times.” Sometimes, McElwee’s team will add questions to their regular surveys on the White House’s behalf. The numbers buoy the White House’s argument that their legislative priorities are popular even as the president’s approval slips. But those polls aren’t just validators. They have become a key part of the sales job the Biden team is using to pass their multi-trillion dollar “Build Back Better” agenda to lawmakers and reporters. A scroll through the White House’s various messaging memos, social media feeds, and slide decks are full of polling data. McElwee said the White House hopes that as the information cycles through the political ecosphere, it can almost make the polls self-fulfilling prophecies. “I think that there is a perception in the White House that bad polling can create sort of spiral effects, and good polling can create sort of positive spirals,” he said. “If voters are always hearing about how everyone, including independents and Republicans, supports the Build Back Better agenda, they're like, ‘Oh, you know, I don't have strong opinions on the Build Better Agenda, maybe I should support it.’” In a statement to West Wing Playbook, White House deputy press secretary ANDREW BATES wrote: “Proof that the American people overwhelmingly endorse that agenda is inherently relevant, especially at a time when dialogue inside the beltway is too easily dragged toward superficiality and process at the expense of substance and what matters in the lives of real people.” It’s a PR strategy the Biden team honed successfully during the Democratic primary, when they ran ads showing Biden’s strength in a general election matchup against President DONALD TRUMP. Biden aides also considered polls a tool to puncture the political media bubble, which it considers disconnected from the majority of voters. “The pundit class has always lived in a bubble, but social trends have made that even more pronounced in recent years,” said a former Biden campaign aide. “[A]s a result their takes almost never aged well when reality crashed into their twitter feeds.” They added: “You see those same tendencies now.” Every politician and modern president has pushed out favorable polls. The Trump administration would often disseminate polls that were of dubious quality. Early in the Obama administration, many officials publicly bragged that they didn’t care about the polls, just getting the policy right—even as they spent gobs of money on polling. In the Biden White House, however, polling data has become almost a currency they spend lavishly; a way to both buy patience from the public and persuade lawmakers to stick by the president’s legislative proposals. But pollsters warn that just because something is popular doesn’t mean voters will reward them for it. “I’m not so worried about the Biden agenda being popular,” Democratic pollster CORNELL BELCHER told West Wing Playbook. “There are things that are popular and then there are things that people vote on and those things aren’t necessarily the same.” Asked if policy polls always translate into political success, longtime Democratic pollster STAN GREENBERG laughed: “Of course not.” Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you TYLER MORAN, special assistant to the president on immigration? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com. Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. | 
