Like it or not, the 2022 midterm campaigns begin now.
The Republican strategy is already obvious, because we’ve seen it before. The GOP doesn’t care a whit about governing; its sole animating impulse is to stop the opposition from governing, then hit the campaign trail and blame the opposition for failing to govern. The GOP scored with this scam in 2010, when it won back the House by foiling the Obama Democrats, and the same plan is in the works for 2022.
The Democrats’ only choice is to deliver the strongest possible punch – right now. But that’s not their instinct, as we well know. Democrats by nature prefer to play nice, to follow the rules rather then bend them to best advantage. They shrink from using brute power. That is laudable on many levels, but the problem, right now, is that they’re confronted with an enemy that trashes democracy and worships nothing but brute power.
So it’s time for the Democrats to respond accordingly. And the wind is at their backs. A landslide majority of Americans – 73 percent overall, including 76 percent of independents, and 43 percent of Republicans – support President Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid rescue and relief package. Heck, 32 Republican mayors have signed a letter saying Yes to that package, and West Virginia’s Republican governor says it’s time for Congress to “go big or go home.” A Trump voter in rural Maine tells The New York Times: “There’s a lot of people that could use those ($1400 stimulus) checks. I don’t know about needing them, but we could all use them.”
Plus, a landslide 64 percent of Americans support the Democrats’ call for hiking the federal minimum wage to $15 (which wouldn’t even kick in until 2025, fer chrissake). And Biden’s job approval rating is north of 60 percent, something The Former Guy never got near.
A record 81 million Americans voted for action – to end the pandemic as speedily as possible, to repair and reinvigorate a seriously wounded economy. It’s incumbent on Biden and the Democrats to make that happen, and they should stomp any obstacles (Republican or parliamentary) that get in their way. This is the make or break moment for democratic self-rule.
The Senate parliamentarian said last week in an advisory opinion that the $15 minimum wage doesn’t belong in the Covid relief package? So what. Overrule the Senate parliamentarian. It’s been done before; in 1975, Republican Vice President Nelson Rockefeller did it, and in 2001, Republican Senate leader Trent Lott did it.
The traditional Senate filibuster kills most legislation because 60 votes are required for passage instead of a simple majority (mirroring the will of the American majority)? So get rid of the filibuster, which is found nowhere in the Constitution. The Senate GOP sees the filibuster as a key facet of its scorched-earth strategy. The most powerful Democratic response is to scorch the GOP first.
Think of where we are right now: Despite the overwhelming popularity of the Biden relief package and a higher phased-in minimum wage, a grand total of zero House Republicans voted Friday for its passage. All the more reason for Democrats to leverage their advantages by every possible means – knowing (or well they should) that the record 81 million voters don’t care a damn about moth-eaten Senate rules or parliamentary niceties. What they care about are results. What they will care about, in the 2022 midterms, is tangible evidence that our serious ills are being cured.
Steve Rosenthal, a veteran labor and progressive strategist, rightly warned on Facebook the other day that “the tyrannical Senate minority is going to block action on nearly every major issue – the big things that voters want and desperately need…We can get the country back on track and increase Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in 2022 by systematically moving through the agenda that candidate Biden won on, or we can do a two-year Kabuki dance and take a pounding at the polls in the next election,” because, lest we forget, “Trump or the next Trump (is) waiting in the winds and counting on more gridlock and failure.”
Rest assured that if the Republicans had recaptured the White House and both congressional chambers, and were floating policies with landslide support, they would not hesitate for instant to do what needs to be done. Heck, they’ve repeatedly punched above their weight, even after losing the popular vote in 2000 and 2016. We’ll learn in the weeks and months ahead whether Biden and the Democrats have the proper fighting spirit.