The Year of Living Dangerously

Biden's expansive and leftist agenda took a major body blow a few weeks ago, when his Build Back Better legislation was (thankfully) killed off by Joe Manchin's refusal to sign onto that monstrosity. Unable to read the tea leaves, he and the Democratic Party leaders shifted focus to the mis-named Freedom To Vote Act, despite ample and repeated declarations from two of the party's 50 Senators that they'd not vote to kill the filibuster (a necessary precursor to the Act's enactment).

A rational leader would have looked at the landscape, at the loss of 13 House seats in the year Biden won, at the "but for Trump's antics, we'd have lost the Senate" reality, at the razor-thin 50+1 Senate majority, and at the fact that Biden won by promising moderate and inclusive governance, and concluded that the public wanted middle-of-the-road legislation and an effort at bipartisanship.

Instead, we hear, daily, screeds and histrionics about how Republicans are racists and traitors, how the fate of the Republic rests upon passing giant and rancidly partisan legislative packages whose contents no one fully grasps, and how our entire system has to be overhauled...

In order to keep the Democrats in power, to reward their cronies, and to curb-stomp all opposition.

They aren't telling you that last bit, but that's the unvarnished truth.

So, we bear witness to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer trying to find sneaky rules-lawyer gambits to end-around the filibuster, we hear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is losing the support of Emily's List, a group focused getting pro-choice women elected (as far as I know, Sinema remains a pro-choice woman), and we hear histrionic talk about how the legislative process is being thwarted by a minority of two (forgetting that there are 50 Republican Senators in Congress, of course).

It is highly likely that the Democrats are going to lose control of Congress at the end of this year. The gambling markets put the probability of a Republican House takeover at 84%, and a Senate takeover at 72%. The Democrats see this likelihood looming, but rather than recalibrate and find a way to do things that most of the country wants done, rather than fulfilling the agenda of the loud and scary minority that is the far-Left, they're trying to find ways to jam the tatters of their agenda into law ahead of what's near-certain to be two years of gridlock.

Gridlock, because Biden has in just one year shown himself to be ineffective, inarticulate, and incompetent. Gridlock, because he's too much of a bully-boy to emulate Bill Clinton circa 1994, and rewrite his agenda and salvage his legacy. Gridlock, because the party's base would rather spend two years screaming about the evil Republicans than working with their fellow citizens to find common ground (inflation, supply chain issues, the border crisis, the homeless-mental illness epidemic, big-city crime, Chinese economic belligerence, racial comity, and on and on).

The thing about gridlock is that it helps cement the status quo, even when the gridlock clears. That's how ObamaCare survived, and that's the Democrats' strategy, near as I can tell. Force whatever they can into law, no matter how unpopular or flat-out-wrong, and rely on it seasoning in for two years to keep it from being repealed should the GOP retake the White House in 2024.

The Democrats are desperate for a win right now, they don't care that killing the filibuster will haunt them when next they lose power, they don't care about the long-term effects or divisiveness of what they propose, and that makes them as dangerous as a cornered hyena. They have nearly a full year to work their mischief, and that means 2022 is going to be as unpleasant, in its own way, as the past couple have been.

And, who knows? Perhaps they actually think that their voting law will cook the books so far in their favor as to overcome their broadening unpopularity. Echo chambers are dangerous things.