Our only real hope at this point is that the Biden Administration and Democrats are playing the Republicans for fools. They bent over backwards to give the GOP everything it asked for with the 1/6 Commission, and likely knew damn well they weren’t going to get 60 Senate votes anyway, but now they get to say “we gave them the most bipartisan version possible for that, basically everything they asked for, and they still decided to kill it.” Hell, Joe even said at that ice cream stand above that “He couldn’t imagine anyone voting against forming the commission”.
Now it looks like they will repeat the process with Infrastructure. They will bargain with the GOP until a bill that basically gives Republicans a “win” is conceived, then they will watch as Republicans vote against it yet again. 100% opposed to passing anything, as Mitch McConnell said.
That all sounds pretty stupid on the part of Democrats, but it may not be. First of all, if both of these votes (1/6 Commission, Infrastructure) end up killed by Republicans in the first year of Biden’s Presidency, Joe Biden can claim that he kept his campaign promise and in fact did exactly what his own voters AND Republicans asked him to do and acted in good faith to pass bipartisan legislation, but the GOP were the ones on record as killing it. This in turn frees Biden from that restriction, and does so in time for the House and Senate to pass most of the Infrastructure bill in the form of reconciliation next February. It also gives plenty of cover to Manchin and anyone else dragging their heels over any parts of the bill because “we tried it the bipartisan way and Republicans choose obstruction over cooperation”.
Finally, after the bill passes via reconciliation, you do exactly what you did after the COVID bill, and get out there touting all of the good that the Infrastructure Bill is doing, including bringing much needed repairs, improvements and JOBS to every state, including majority Republican ones. You let Republican senators go out and crow about money, projects and jobs flowing into their states from a bill they are on record as unanimously opposing. Why let them take credit when all they did was obstruct? Because the people who believe their bullshit were never going to vote Democrat to begin with, but plenty of other people will hear the lies, know the truth, and make voting decisions based on that.
It is a dangerous game being played, making all the gestures of bipartisanship and hoping that the GOP will continue to play obstructionist (which may appeal to the basest of their base, but plenty of other red state folks would kind of enjoy bridges that don’t collapse, electric grids that work properly, good paying infrastructure jobs, etc…) so that you can get the win via reconciliation at the end of the day. But then again, even if the GOP were to somehow agree to pass a scaled-down Infrastructure Bill (which is NEVER going to happen, as even that would be seen as a Biden win) you can always pack the stuff you didn’t get into the budget bill come February.
I am hoping that this is the ultimate plan, and if so, that the combination win-win of the COVID and Infrastructure bills being passed against unified GOP opposition is enough to keep blue voters coming to the polls in 2022 hoping for more and maybe even some red voters deciding that they want more than just “pwn the libs” from their government representation. There is a real threat from gerrymandering, voter suppression and this new strategy of simply putting hand-picked people in positions where they can negate election results and overturn the will of the people, but all of those things can be fought, and most of them shatter in the face of voter turnout, so Dems need to be working the GOTV with an army of Stacey Abrams clones in every state for 2022 and 2024.
