Don’t Blame Joe

Outrage

Many of my progressive friends are outraged.

“We won the Presidency, we won the House and WE WON THE SENATE WITH GEORGIA!   So we should get everything we want, from COVID relief to voting reform, immigration change to climate protection, policing reform to a higher minimum wage. We’ve won it all – and you know damn well the Republicans would do it to us: #%$& bipartisanship!!!”

And in my heart I absolutely agree with them. We need to move our agenda forward – it’s what we voted for.  As the saying  goes, elections have consequences – we heard that for four long years.  And we won.

Yep, we did:  but the margins were so slim.  We actually lost seats in the House. The Popular vote for Biden was decent, but the margins in the critical electoral vote states were only slightly greater than the 2016 Trump margins we complained about for four years. 

And then there’s the Senate – tied fifty votes a piece with Vice President Harris casting the decisive choice.  

Narrow Margins

So we won, but really only by the narrowest of margins.  And the critical point, the weak link, is the Senate of the United States.  There are really two problems in the Senate.  

The first is that the Senate has a tradition of the filibuster, unlimited debate.  In the old, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” days, a Senator would take the floor and talk for as long as they wanted.  A Senator dead-set on stopping a vote on a measure, could simply just keep talking, hours onto days.  And if it were a few Senators, they could go on ad-infinitum, stopping all Senate business.  That’s how the civil rights acts were stopped for so many years in the 1950’s and 1960’s.  There was a way to stop debate, but at that time it took two-thirds of the Senators to vote for “cloture” and limit the talk.

The Senate has made it easier, on both sides of the filibuster question.  For the talkers, they no longer have to do the actual talking.  They just have to “threaten” to do it, and the Senate would recognize that they were “talking”, and hold business.  On the other hand, it no longer required the sixty-seven votes to reach “cloture”, now they could do it with sixty.  And there are now exceptions:  Presidential appointees, and votes on budget items already passed by the House of Representatives called budget reconciliation.

So what all this means is that forty-one Senators can stop most pieces of legislation in the Senate.  Unless, of course, the Senate decides to end the filibuster rule, or at least modify it.  To do that it only requires a simple majority – or in this case, fifty votes plus the Vice President. 

We Are Democrats

The second is that the Democrats are Democrats, and that means that the Party represents a broad range of ideology.  It ranges from Bernie Sander’s Democratic Socialism, to Joe Manchin’s “blue dog” conservativism.  And while the “progressive” Democrats are willing to move forward to end the filibuster, and pass their (our) agenda by fifty votes, the more moderate Democrats, including Manchin, but also Krysten Sinema of Arizona, and perhaps even Joe Biden’s “voice” in the Senate, Chris Coons, aren’t so sure.  

And every vote in the Senate counts – one break from the “blue wall” and nothing can get done.  That means that every Democrat (including two “independents” who organize with the Democrats, Sanders and the more moderate Angus King of Maine) has to agree.   President Biden and Majority Leader Schumer have to find the balance between Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin – either one can make the Democratic majority just a political organizing ploy, not able to legislate.

Don’t Blame Joe

So my progressive friends, don’t blame Joe Manchin.  He’s a Democrat, and he’s standing with the Democratic Party.  But he’s also a “blue dog” conservative from West Virginia, a state that went overwhelmingly for Donald Trump.  As he said Sunday on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, he is who he always was, and always will be.  

Don’t blame Joe – do something about it.  It’s not about getting rid of Manchin – that is, as my mother would say, cutting off your nose to spite your face.  In two years, there will be thirty-four seats up for election.  Realistically, Republicans will maintain a hold on fourteen of those.  Democrats will hold ten more.  That means there are ten competitive seats up for grabs.  Four are held by Democrats, six by Republicans. 

The battle for the Senate will be decided in those ten seats.  If Dems win all ten, then they will have a more comfortable fifty-six majority.  They can build a majority – even if one end or the other of the Party disagrees. But if Republicans can defend their seats and win just one of the four Democratic seats, then they regain control. Mitch McConnell becomes Majority Leader again.

Get to Work

In 2018 Democrats made huge strides, taking the House of Representatives and putting Nancy Pelosi back in the Speaker’s chair. In 2020, the expected “Blue Tsunami” turned out to be a trickle. The answer for each: Donald Trump. He wasn’t on the ticket in 2018, and he was in 2020. His presence brought “his” voters to the polls, and they voted down-ticket for other Republicans. He won’t be on the ticket in 2022.

Progress is being made.  Democrats will get some of progressive legislation through, though it’s likely to be “watered down”.  The $15 minimum wage is more likely to by $11, which still beats $7.25.  Go against the conventional wisdom (the President’s Party loses seats in the mid-terms) and bring the energy of anti-Trump 2018 and 2020 to 2022.  And by the way, the House is only Democratic by five seats – better be ready to fight for that as well.

Get to work.