House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chairs the House of Representatives vote on the $1.9 trillion bailout package that the House of Representatives passed on10. March past.
Photo:
Caroline Breman/Zuma Press
Democrats on Wednesday passed their $1.9 trillion spending and welfare bill, which would have been unthinkable even in the United States.
Obama
for years, and the great news is the ease with which they did it. The party is united by the most left-wing agenda in decades, while Republicans are divided and intellectually confused. This is just the beginning of a progressive steamroller, and it’s worth understanding why.
***
One lesson from Covid’s withdrawal is that there are no moderate Democrats in Congress. The base of the party has disappeared so dramatically that even party members in divided states are more liberal than many liberals were during the Clinton years. The Democrats lost no votes in the Senate and only one in the House. Fear of the challenges of the leftist primaries that destroyed the horses of the House of Representatives in 2018 and 2020 has taken root in the minds of those in power.
The second lesson is that President Biden is not a moderate political force. The Democrats in the House and Senate have set the agenda, and Mr. Biden is going with you. He’s the perfect front man for this agenda with his unifying talk and anti-Trump persona, but he doesn’t shape legislation. It’s signed by all the Joint Chiefs…
Ron Klein.
tells him he needs reinforcements.
So far, at least, there hasn’t been much resistance. With a few exceptions, the media is following the beat and supporting what the Democrats want. The content of the Covid bill has not been much discussed beyond these pages. The opposition to H.R.1, the state’s voting rights law, is literally seen as a resurgence of the
Jim Crow.
Racism.
Business was also co-opted, as is often the case at the start of a Democratic presidency. The industry is trying to protect its particular iron rice bowls, but one of the costs is to satisfy them with a broader progressive program. Small businesses are against a $15 minimum wage, but large companies are not afraid to impose higher costs on their smaller competitors. Big Oil is not afraid to sell independent fracking under climate rules.
Despite their large minority, Republicans are in trouble. They were united on the Covid vote, but they had no coherent strategy or message. They focus on the culture war on
Dr. Seuss,
…while the Democrats are pushing legislation that will have a huge economic impact.
This week, the House of Representatives passed the most sweeping union bill since the Wagner Act of 1935, but you wouldn’t know it from the GOP’s silent protests. The bill would repeal right-to-work laws in 27 states, but the GOP has no media message to inform voters in those states.
This is partly a legacy of the Trump years and especially the post-election debacle. The party is still concerned
Donald Trump,
who is seeking revenge on Republicans who will not bow to the throne of Mar-a-Lago. Congressmen are at war with each other, not Democrats.
The party also lost some of its intellectual footing during the Trump years, especially on spending and the economy. Right-wing populism against business has reinforced left-wing populism, and too few members of the GOP are able to make economic arguments. Predicting a border immigration crisis has been the dominant message from Republicans on Capitol Hill or on cable TV. That’s it.
***
All of this gives Democrats increasing confidence in their ability to carry out their agenda, despite a historically narrow majority. They will pass huge tax increases on party votes. In addition, they still hope to knock out enough Republican senators to raise the minimum wage to $11 or $12 an hour, and spend $2 trillion on green energy and public works. Don’t be surprised if they succeed.
Republicans are betting on a Democrat
Joe Manchin.
The continuation of the filibuster in the Senate can also be frustrating. He’s from Trump’s West Virginia, but he’s also a partisan Democrat. He said he would not vote for the $1.9 trillion bill unless it was supported by both parties, but that he would eventually approve it.
As House-passed bills pile up at the Senate, the pressure to break the filibuster will be immense. The media will turn Mr. Manchin into the moral equivalent of a GOP front-runner.
Mitch McConnell.
Dick Durbin, the second-largest Democrat in the Senate, said this week that Democrats plan to get two or three bills out of the House soon. We need experience first, he told the Capitol Hill Press. I think this is progress. Try legislation first. Second: Try adjusting the filibuster. Then we’ll see what happens. They will use the threat of a filibuster violation as leverage to get policy concessions from the GOP, even if they don’t officially rewrite the Senate rules.
Politics is never static, and perhaps this momentum will fade as Democrats lose the false cover of Covid relief for their agenda. But it would not be an exaggeration to say that the country is facing its most confident left-wing majority since 1965. This is not what
Joe Biden
promised, but that’s what we’ll get.
Wonderland: If we are on the road to normalcy today, it is not thanks to politicians and media personnel. We thank the medical staff who treated the patients and discovered the treatment in passing. And robbed the developers of vaccines. Images : Reuters/AFP via Getty Composite: Mark Kelly
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