The unflappable manipulative Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, is central to returning what purports to be the Republican Party back into power. He is part of the amalgam of the GOP operation who are marching lock step to authoritarianism. While the State Republican legislators are more than doing their bit by passing legislation to suppress the vote, conducting circuses to keep alive the lie that Trump won the 2020 election and Trump hangs onto his diminishing base, McConnell knows the central deciding factor in retaining power devolves around President Biden. He needs to deny Biden’s agenda and render him impotent. This is a tactic he used with great success against Obama.
This time round McConnell has Biden as an opponent who knows how the Senate works like the back of his hand. Biden needs to pass more of his agenda to ensure control of the legislatures in 2022 but as matters stand the filibuster in the Senate, which entails him obtaining ten Republicans for non financial legislation, is an obstruction. He could bypass the filibuster if he had the full support of his whole Democratic Senate caucus but two members are holding out. A fact that he publicly alluded to for the first time in his speech in Tulsa.
McConnell who functions according to Machiavelli’s playbook has only one guiding principle - power. He has no morality whatsoever. As McConnell is not remotely interested in advancing any agenda with the filibuster he can control or obstruct legislation through the Senate. (In fairness he has a dilettante interest in electing right wing judges).
The leader of the GOP in the Senate is the only Republican that uses Trump and not vice versa. He condemned him when it was politic and now he ignores him while relying on him to deliver the base. McConnell has a symbiotic relationship with big money for it is with money he buys loyalty from his caucus. He has wads of cash to support his candidates. It was with that loyalty that the Senate Minority Leader was able to avert what he believed would have made the midterms and even the 2024 elections about Trump rather than about Biden. He averted a bipartisan vote to form a bipartisan commission into investigating the January 6 insurrection in the Capitol.
The January 6 Commission had looked like an odds on favorite to pass. Thirty - five Republicans had voted for the Commission in the House. In the Senate the Democrats needed ten GOP members to join to avoid the filibuster. Seven votes seemed assured as that number had voted to impeach Trump for instigating the coup. The behind scenes discussion looked as if three more votes could easily materialize. McConnell let it be known that he was against the Commission. That was not enough. So he asked his caucus to vote against the Commission as a “personal favor” to him. That appeal to loyalty worked as the motion only garnered six Republicans and nine were AWOL for the vote. McConnell had started a cult of his own.
BIDEN AND THE DEMOCRATIC STRATEGY Vs TRUMP AND GOP STRATEGY
While the Democrats kicked up all hell at the GOP perfidy they couldn’t have cared too much. Nancy Pelosi can set up a bipartisan commission via a special committee, Trump’s legal woes and his own stupidity will keep him in the news and ironically Biden doesn’t really want Trump front and center either. He wants the elections to be about his agenda and he reckons he can outmaneuver McConnell in the Senate. He already has with the wildly popular Covid Relief Bill which passed with not one Republican vote.
With regard to the proposed Infrastructure Bill Biden meets with Republican Senators night and day to find common ground. This is what the public want him to do but even more important his two Conservative Democrats in the Senate Joe Manchin and Kyrtsen Sinema need him to be seen to make every effort if they are ever going to ignore the filibuster rule that would allow legislation in the Senate to pass by a simple majority rather than with sixty votes. Manchin and Sinema took an unprecedented step in relation to the legislation relating to the creating of a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection. They put out a statement where they “implored” their Republican colleagues to “find a way forward… to examine “the horrendous events of January 6…”. Their Republican colleagues didn’t oblige but Manchin has indicated that this wasn’t enough to make him change the Senate filibuster rules. But the fact that he and Ms. Sinema issued that plea is being interpreted as serving notice to the Republicans and their own constituents that unless their GOP “colleagues” make a good faith effort to cooperate they will back the removal of the filibuster. Manchin specifically is going to meet an African American delegation including Reverend Sharpton to stress the importance to pass transformative legislation and not to stand by as America loses its democracy.
McConnell did a remarkable job curtailing Obama and has vowed that he has one objective and that is to see to it that Biden get’s nothing done. Biden is ignoring him for the most part and puts out that McConnell is his great friend and they can cut deals. Biden makes it quite clear on every possible occasion that he is everyone’s President. He is an empathetic uniter not a divider.
Meanwhile the rest of the GOP outside the Senate is out of control. The House is split having axed high powered Liz Cheney who believes the party cannot survive as a totalitarian entity controlled by Trump. Then there are the two revolutionaries Matt Gaetz and Majorie Taylor Greene who are running around the country talking sedition. The former, who is under investigation for sex with underage women and various other crimes appeals to crowds to realize that the Second Amendment was designed for the populace to rid itself of illegal governments while the latter spouts anti semitic mantra. Both claim that Trump is still President. They are just not going to shut up. They are being aided and abetted by convicted and pardoned felon Michael Flynn who addressed a meeting in Dallas where he responded to a questioner that a Mynamar type coup would be in order reinstating Trump as President.
Biden, Pelosi and Schumer are doing a much better job at containing the wings of their party. Biden is executing what he said he was going to do on the election trail. He can’t be smeared. He is a man of the people. The left wing of the Democratic Party are generally very happy with him. The only issue where he ran into criticism was his unconditional support for Israel where he stuck to his guns that they had a right to defend themselves against enemies who deny them the right to exist. His work will be made much more simple now that Bibi Netanyahu will be exiting the scene.
So where do we go from here?
THE CURRENT SITUATION
McConnell is cheered up by four factors. The Midterms traditionally are favorable for the non White House Party. He does not care about the overall picture just the Senate and then just a few constituencies. He will have a big fat war chest to back his candidates. He is unmoved that he might be running against Trump candidates in Primaries. He knows that his candidates will have a much better chance in a General Election. If push come to shove he will pour money into whoever the Republican nominee is. Finally he takes courage from the fact that Joe Manchin, in particular, is favoring filibuster Senate Convention over American Democracy.
Biden’s approval ratings in most polls are now in the high fifties and even sixty percent. He has under promised and over delivered - Covid is under control and the economy is beginning to roll. There is another nightmarish statistic facing the whole Republican Establishment. The generic poll on Democrats versus Republican gives the former a nine point lead. That would translate into a landslide victory in the Senate and the House in 2022. However Biden and company know that this is as a result of his successful Covid operation and could be reversed. Thus Biden too remains focussed on the Senate. He like McConnell knows that nobody cares what the internal workings of the Senate are, they are just interested in results. Biden has to deliver more. He can’t live on the post Covid glow forever. If he can’t get Republican support he has to bypass the filibuster. To do the latter he has to convince Manchin and Sinema that he had no alternative and he has done everything possible to get bipartisan support. He can also point to the fact that he has bipartisan electoral backing.
BIDEN’S LEGISLATION INITIATIVES AND STRATEGY
They are two types of bills Biden wants to pass before November 2022. One lot involves finance the other policy Issues. The former, The Infrastructure Bill and Budget Bill, can probably be passed by reconciliation which only requires fifty - one votes while the latter, The George Floyd Police Reform Act and For The People Act need sixty. The For The People Act really matters as it would negate all the State Voter Suppression Laws that the Republicans have enacted to date.
Currently the Democrats are making a determined effort at bipartisanship on two pieces of legislation - The Infrastructure Bill where Biden’s initial request was for nearly two and a half trillion dollars while the Republicans countered with about seven hundred billion and The George Floyd Police Reform Bill where bipartisan negotiations are taking place between legislators. The bona fides of both Biden and Republicans are really going to tell in the outcome of the indaba on the Infrastructure Bill. Here Biden is making a real effort to find common ground meeting with Republican Senators. The reason he wants this vast sum of money is to include a host of programs not normally associated with infrastructure, such as child care. So far the Republicans have upped their offer to a trillion and Biden has come down to one trillion seven hundred billion!. Biden could ram this through as a budget bill under reconciliation but is making the effort. If he compromises he will show that bipartisanship can work. If he doesn’t he can argue he tried.
Jay H. Ell feels Biden is going to a do a deal to make a point. If he cuts a deal it might also establish his bona fides with his two hold outs especially if the Republicans won’t come together on The Police Reform Act. Where he needs Manchin and Sinema desperately to axe the filibuster will be on the Voting Rights Bill as the Republican State efforts threaten America’s very democracy, not to mention the Democratic Senate and House majorities. Biden incidentally is proposing an over six trillion budget where, he is sure to include some of the projects that could be axed in the infrastructure deal. This bill will probably be passed by reconciliation and only need fifty - one votes.
Whichever way this is viewed every one of these pieces of legislation have overwhelming public support including The For The People voting rights bill. Biden has worked the Senate for decades. He can read a caucus and knows what every member needs to justify changing his or her mind. Neither Manchin or Sinema have a desire to thwart the President. They just have to have a rationale to present to their conservative electorates for their decisions. They can be reassured that the electorate as a whole don’t give two hoots about the arcane rules and conventions of the Senate. McConnell has illustrated this again and again. It didn’t move the electorate one point when he defied convention by refusing to allow Obama’s Supreme Court nominee a hearing over a year before an election then rushed through Trump’s choice two months before the 2020 election.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
The Republican Party have abandoned democracy in favor of attaining power. Different constituencies are using different authoritarian strategies to effect this. The State Legislators are instituting voter suppression and enshrining the right to change an election result certified by the electoral officials. The Federal legislators are involved in a cover up of Trump’s insurrection. Trump’s base half of whom still believe he is President will go to the ends of the earth or at least to the Capitol to reinstate him in the WhiteHouse. There are a group that are even prepared to float a coup and are skating on very thin ice.
Ground zero of the fight for democracy is the Senate where Biden is pitted against his old nemesis Mitch McConnell. Both the President’s proposed legislation and the 2022 midterms are crucial in deciding which way the American cookie will crumble. Central to the Senate fortunes are two Democrats who were elected from States that Trump has won in the past. They have to balance how they proceed without their destroying Democrats ability to retain and win Senate seats in their State. Jay H. Ell would tell them to put democracy first and worry about future elections later. The situation is very serious. If they don’t act they won’t have an election to fight. An op-ed piece in the New York Times pointed to the monumental compromises that were made in Israel to dump Bibi Netanyahu for the sake of the country. It surely isn’t too much for two party Democrats to ignore a fossilized law which in fact thwarts the will of the electorate to save America from Trump.
On Memorial Day President Biden warned that American democracy is in the balance. He wasn’t kidding. But just like Mary Todd Lincoln told Abe that if he wanted slavery to be abolished he needed to speak to the waverers himself, Jill Biden needs to whisper in Joe's ear, "Talk to them yourself".
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