Counting the Cost
My fellow Democrats – this essay is for you. I know, we are disappointed. When Joe Biden was elected, we hoped for change (wasn’t that an Obama slogan?). There was so much to get done. The list was long: voting rights, police reform, health insurance reform, student loan forgiveness, infrastructure repair, tax reform, LGBTQ rights, early childhood education, affordable child care. And there was also Covid, Afghanistan, China, inflation, and now, the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
After a year and a half, it just doesn’t seem like much has been accomplished. Sure we managed to pass Covid relief bills. But Covid itself seems to be endemic now, something we must learn to live with. When Joe Biden took office, there were 400,000 Covid deaths in the US ten months after the pandemic began. Now, fifteen months later, the death toll is approaching one million.
Covid treatments have improved, the vaccinations seem to help, but the reality is that Covid is doing what Covid wants. The chance to “stop Covid” ended somewhere around June of 2021, when vaccinations and masks stopped being about medicine, and became all about political identity. Now Covid deaths seem to be a function of politics – did your ideology allow you to get the vaccine or not.
Frustration
We thought that the death of George Floyd and the conviction of his killers would change how America is policed. But evidence shows that little has changed. Today the news is filled with another video: an unarmed Black man killed by a police officer. He was pulled over for a car license violation. It escalated into a life and death struggle. That continues to happen in our nation, as do mass shootings. We seem helpless to make changes.
The Biden election triggered a tsunami of “voting reforms”, with the purpose of keeping people from the polls, and electing Republicans to office. The solution to those “reforms” sits in the US Senate, unable to overcome the united block of Republican Senators, aided and abetted by two Democrats.
Skin of Our Teeth
And that’s the point. While Democrats won the White House, their grip on the House of Representatives and the Senate is tenuous. In the House, only four votes kept Nancy Pelosi in the Speaker’s Chair instead of Kevin McCarthy. Those four votes allowed the investigation of the January 6th Insurrection, an event that literally would have been swept under the rug, like the broken glass from the halls of the Capitol, had McCarthy been in charge.
But a four vote margin means that any small block of Democratic Congressmen can control what becomes law and what does not. That’s not the Democrats “fault”. Republicans in both the House and the Senate have simply refused to participate in governing. Sixty Republican Congressmen even voted against military support for Ukraine. No deal can be made that brings them across the aisle, so Democrats must do everything by themselves. They even had to increase the debt limit so that the United States doesn’t go into default without a Republican vote. That empowers every four Democratic Congressmen with a “veto” on every proposal.
Minimal control is even worse in the Senate. Democrats and Republicans are tied at fifty-fifty. Only the Democratic Vice President’s tiebreaker gives Democrats control. As President Biden said, every Democratic Senator has a “Presidential veto”. And, because Republicans have, as a block, refused to participate in “running” the nation, two Democratic Senators in particular have stopped many of the most important legislative proposals.
Hope
Democrats shouldn’t focus their ire on Manchin and Sinema. It’s 2022, and there’s an election in November. I’m well aware that “history” informs us that Democrats will probably lose seats in the House and Senate. And since there are almost no seats “to lose”, Republicans are looking forward to regaining control of the Congress again.
But that doesn’t have to be. The Senate is primed for Democratic expansion, in spite of the state voting law restrictions. Tim Ryan in Ohio, John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, Cheri Beasley in North Carolina, Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin and Val Demings in Florida all have strong candidacies to win current Republican seats. Raphael Warnock in Georgia, Mark Kelly in Arizona, and Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada need to defend their seats as well. Should most of these candidates win, then Manchin and Sinema will have less impact on what happens.
That’s especially true when it comes to Presidential appointments. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has already made it clear. If he controls, Joe Biden will not fill another vacant Supreme Court seat. While Democrats thought about “Court Packing” before the 2020 election, McConnell has discovered “Court Shrinking” as a way to maintain his conservative majority on the Court.
The Bottom Line
And while Speaker Pelosi’s control of the House looks even more at risk, re-districting may ultimately favor Democrats over Republicans, despite the “Red Map” Republican efforts to gerrymander. Former Attorney General Eric Holder and attorney Marc Elias’s Democratic efforts in the Courts have held the worst Republican map-manipulations to a minimum.
The bottom line: Democrats can bemoan their failures, stay home in November, and let Republicans gain control of the House and Senate. We can say “a pox on both your houses”. And then, things will get infinitely worse. Or we can get to work. We can register voters and get them to the polls, regardless of the new voting restrictions. We can work for candidates, and most of all, we can SHOW UP in November.
If we do, the actions of Manchin, Sinema, and the Republicans; won’t matter.
