We are all relieved to have a sane President. And then we have the QAnon wackos, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists, the voter suppression hard-liners, the coup enthusiasts and the election deniers.
They could take the House next year during the midterm elections, and possibly the Senate, as they continue to rewrite election rules in several states.
President Biden is popular and competent, but this may not be enough to weather the storms of authoritarianism.
Democrats can blame themselves, in part. They’ve given just enough ammunition to Republicans that a party waging war on democracy is on the cusp of undermining much of that democracy next year.
The Republican ideas include cutting taxes for the wealthy. Also, climate change is fake. They want to make voting harder. And they propagate the “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
So the Republican Party will run on what the far left Democrats have given them.
Midterms typically give losses to the governing party. Voters will accept a party that promises quite a bit but wont make it a reality. Biden has “a very narrow window to do great things” and shouldn’t squander it with reaching out for bipartisanship.
One of the hot button items that G.O.P. candidates in 2022 will happily accuse Democratic opponents of is wanting to defund the police and teach contempt for the country in schools,
In other words, Dems will make us less safe while preaching identity politics to the kids.
Remember, Republicans already control a majority of statehouses, and with them, the redistricting process. They need a net gain of only five seats to take the house and one to get control of the Senate. Joe Biden won the popular vote by more than 7 million, but Democrats suffered a net loss of 11 House seats. These lies and distortions about defund and socialism carried a punch.
So, what’s to be done? We need a unified Democratic message — helping people live better lives with a targeted hand from government — is hugely popular.
This is in both the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act and Biden’s proposed infrastructure bill. And it should be what voters think about when they think about Democrats.
In a recent congressional race for an open seat in New Mexico, Democrats in a huge win, they emphasized economic fairness while directly confronting attacks on law and order. The winner, Melanie Stansbury, ran an ad that featured support from a former sheriff’s deputy.
The rise in violent crime is now the top concern of many voters across the country. Polling also shows that a majority of Americans oppose defunding the police. Overreach on police defunding in some cities tend to have a much longer shelf life than boring talk about infrastructure.
George Floyd’s death last year should continue to expose the overlooked lowlights of history and work to get rid of the bias built into the system. But another weapon for the Republicans is the teaching of critical race theory since some educators have played into the hands of the Trumpers.
Former Vice President Mike Pence said that children are being taught “to be ashamed of their skin color,” So, the perception of being born white is a shame is bound to be a backlash among the moderate voters who came around to Democrats in the Trump era.
The administration is doing nothing to head off this impending culture war in the schools because to do so would bring the wrath of the stridently “woke” sector of the Democratic Party down upon Biden’s head.
Trump is diminished but still very dangerous. His party is stocked with brick-headed deniers. Nearly three in 10 Republicans said he will be reinstated in the White House this year. This month, Trump called his defeat “the crime of the century” and got applause when he denounced critical race theory.
Democrats won’t be able to contain the Trumpers, and common-sense politics may not be a rallying cry, but it wins elections.
President Biden declared an end to discussions with Senate Republicans over infrastructure. This is a welcome sign that Biden’s overtures to Republicans were pro forma, that he was just waiting for a suitable moment to move on.
G.O.P. wasn’t negotiating in good faith, that it was simply dragging the process out and would eventually reject anything Biden might agree to. The sooner this farce ended, the better.
And a party that was willing to sabotage the Obama economy is surely even more inclined to sabotage a president whom many of its members refuse to accept as legitimate.
Thus, the very fact that infrastructure spending is in Biden’s plan makes Republicans fear that it might help legitimize a broader role for government in general.
The reality is that if we get the infrastructure plan we need, it will be passed through reconciliation with little or no Republican support. And the sooner we get to that point, the better. And when we do that, we just may secure the House and Senate in 2022.
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Source: Timothy Egan and Paul Krugman at the New York Time