Something tells me that the leadership of progressive forces in the Democratic Party, especially in the House of Representatives, have begun to reframe their strategy along the following lines…to the detriment of their stated agenda of support for President Biden’s “Build Back Better” program of both a trillion dollar traditional infrastructure stimulus for roads, bridges, tunnels and broadband and a new “family infrastructure” proposal for paid family leave, universal pre-K, continued child tax credits, free community college, subsidized child day care and home eldercare, and Medicare and Medicaid expansion — plus several elements of the Green New Deal.
The strategy of proponents of each of the two parts of the BBB package to this point of failure — because as yet none of this combined packaged has passed the Congress — has been essentially derived from nuclear war games — mutually assured destruction will bring all sides to their senses and agree to both packages. Asset-based infrastructure adherents won’t get anything unless they also agree to support services-based intangibles in the family infrastructure ledger; and vice versa. The problem is, these competing but awkwardly similar strategies of both “wings’ of the Biden’s party have resulted in a nuclear autumn of indecision, not even a forced but workable Kumbaya sensible compromise moment.
Mutually assured destruction of both progressives’ and moderates’ hopes and dreams seems to many neutral observers the most likely outcome at this stage — and the real losers will be those in the populace who are already suffering the worst aspects of inequity in contemporary American society — inequities in terms of jobs, wages, and access to education, health care, a wholesome family life, a comfortable old age, and upward social and economic generally. And the winners will be the politicians and party that are just waiting for the chance to vote entirely against both the progressives’ and moderates’ infrastructure plans — and may not have to even bother casting their negative, obstructionist votes!
But the worst aspect of this ongoing gridlock in one half of the national governing grid is the hints dropped here and their — it must be said most transparently by the progressive coalition leadership — is that “nothing is actually better than something’ here. That the Democratic party may be better off burning down their coalition and both linked by separate plans in order to save the Party (for a progressive takeover?). This “thinking” proceeds from the view that the 2021-22 Congress is the last foreseeable chance for Democrats to actually govern, and so “go big or go home” is a sensible — maybe the only — sensible course. This view shows a remarkable level of insecurity and pessimism — not to mention weakness — regarding the Democratic Party’s prospects for retaining any Congressional majority in 2022, or indeed in 2024 even respect of a presidency that they won last time around with an Electoral “landslide” equivalent to Trump’s in 2016.
Few if successful governing strategies start with such a premise of hopelessness about its own future. The most likely outcome of this approach among the Party faithful is apathy not animation: let’s check in on the Virginia governors’ race to see how close this comes to ‘fruition” there - Terry McAuliffe knows he is running more against the inertia in his own Party’s Congressional delegation than his GOP opponent or the risen ghost of Trump.
The final 10 days of October will test whether this witches brew of progressive tomfoolery and pathetic disbelief in the long-term appeal of their own agenda among the voting public — which consistently polls well piece by piece, a fact they site repeatedly as if trying to convince themselves it’s true — will lead to the demise of the whole BBB plan. Speaker Pelosi must be tempted to go ahead and call the question on the hard infrastructure vote on Halloween if only to confront both sides with the awful consequences (as happened with the initial vote-down of TARP and resulting stock market mini-crash in 2008). Maybe only this ploy would break through the moderates’ self-pity and over-anxious fear of spending paid for with increased taxes on those who can afford themas well as progressives’ intransigence disguised as ‘fighting for the victims of inequality’ while using those same victims as pawns in a intra-Party power game .
In the moderates’ defense, however, it must be said that their numbers — many in ‘swing” districts — would likely lose far more seats to the GOP in 2022 than the many “safe seat” progressives if the Democrats fail to deliver anything on BBB. The question that now must be asked out loud is: Is that what the progressives’ really want? Is that what’s really going on here? Would some House moderates prefer to go down swinging rather than actually compromise realistically recognizing they are a minority in the Congressional Party. Would progressives prefer (as they seem to be signaling) to wind -up as a semi-permanent opposition Party (as long as they can lead it)— or are they ready actually to govern? Biden is. What about the Congressional Democratic Party? If not, it deserves to lose big in 2022.