President Biden’s hoped-for message that happy days are here again is on hold as the administration’s initially blitzkrieg-like vaccine rollout has slowed to a relative crawl and new debates flare up over public health mandates on inoculation and mask-wearing. There are already fissures in his own party, particularly among labor unions, about how far the government and private businesses should go in requiring employees to take the vaccines…

“This week I think it’s become unavoidable for all of us to feel that heat turning up again,” said Amy Acton, the former top health adviser to Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine. “We are once again approaching some sort of inflection point.”

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, a Democrat who this week issued a new vaccination requirement for public employees and urged New Mexicans to don masks indoors, said she was “one thousand percent with the president” in his toughened-up approach to vaccine distribution. (She put her own views on the issue more bluntly: “Shame on you if you won’t get vaccinated.”)…

“I think absolutely that will be a cornerstone of all these campaigns,” Ms. Lujan Grisham said. “How you responded to Covid, and what impact it had on the economy, will be front and center.”