COVID relief bill and the state of Democratic reform prospects

The COVID relief bill really is an important, beneficial piece of legislation. It's been passed by the House and the Senate and blessed by President Joe Manchin, so now it goes to reconciliation and presumably will soon become law.

Paul Krugman talks about the very good economics of the relief bill: "while the American Rescue Plan is mainly disaster relief rather than conventional stimulus, it’s a big proposal that will, in fact, provide a lot of economic stimulus." (The macro equivalent of war? Substack 02/27/2021) Obviously, we won' know the final form of the bill until it actually passes.

But the COVID relief plan is a very good contrast to Obama's initial stimulus package in 2009, which economists like Krugman were frantically warning was only about half the size it needed to be. Then Obama negotiated with Republicans and agreed to put more of it into less-stimulative tax cuts. Then the Republicans voted against it anyway. Biden at least seems to have really learned from that experience about how to deal with bad-faith Republican negotiators.

And Biden didn't spend the transition period promoting a Grand Bargain where the Republicans would agree to raise taxes and the Democrats would agree to cut Social Security and Medicare like Obama did in 2008-9. And so far, we haven't heard any talk from this administration about a new Boles-Simpson Let Grandma-Eat-Catfood Commission, which was nothing but a huge political gift to the Republicans going into the 2010 midterms.

By the way, Biden campaigned in 2020 on lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 60, the opposite of what Obama's fortunately stillborn Grand Bargain would have done.

Krugman also wants to see a good Keynesian pedal-to-the-metal approach on the infrastructure/climate crisis program. (How (not) to pay for building back better 03/07/2021)

The Republicans are currently so full-in on culture themes, like defending the nobility of, uh, Neanderthals (?!?), that they mostly haven't been using their normal "Debt! Deficit! Aaaaa--iiieeee! economic arguments very much so far. But Krugman is offering preemptive refutations, anyway.

Will Bunch points out that the Republicans in solidly opposing a minimum wage increase handed the Democrats what should be a potent issue to use against them. (How the GOP blew its chance at a 2022 working-class coalition in just 10 hours, 43 minutes Philadelphia Inquirer 03/08/2021)

But he also warns about the weakness of the Democratic performance on the issue:

Yes, there were moments when the Democrats — still no more of an “organized political party” than when Will Rogers told that joke a century ago — looked determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, confronted with a bill that, with the arguable exception of Obamacare in 2010, does more for the U.S. middle class than any legislation since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society since the mid-1960s. The macho posturing of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin — for whom getting on the Sunday talk shows matters more than his state’s high rate of poverty — nearly toppled the bill, and the Democrats’ blind spot on the $15 minimum wage is deeply disappointing to leftists who voted for Biden last November.

Still, he's optimistic about the implications of the trend of the Democrats' current performance, including the narrow Senate victory on the COVID relief bill:

But in the end, the Democrats’ resolve and unity among its one-vote Senate majority was a stunning victory for a new American political reality in the 2020s. It involves forging an all-new definition of “bipartisanship” around hardball politics for measures that are supported by majorities of citizens, rather than negotiating with a Republican Party that continues to rally behind a Big Lie around nonexistent voter fraud and the 2020 election that threatens our democracy.

Bunch also points out that without Democrats in the Senate being willing to at least partially set aside the filibuster rule, an urgently needed voting rights bill to counter the current nationwide Republican drive to restrict minority voting. "If Republicans win in the 2022 midterms not by the power of their ideas but by picking who gets to cast a vote, the rest of the Biden/Democratic agenda will be dead, and that won’t be the worst of it for the American Experiment." (Why Biden needs a prime-time, Oval Office speech to declare war on voter suppression Philadelphia Inquirer 03/08/2021)

Getting this passed means that Harris and all 50 Senate Dems have to somehow set aside the filibuster for the new voting rights bill. Every vote in the Senate to keep the filibuster in force on this bill is a vote for Republican white-supremacist voter suppression. And all the Senators, even the most dimwitted ones like Ron Johnson and Ted Cruz, are very clear about that.

If President Joe Manchin or other ConsevervaDems succeed in killing the voting rights bill by voting to keep the filibuster applying to that bill, they will be doing enormous damage not only to the Democratic Party but to the democratic system itself.

The press loves to focus on who is in which high school clique ...

My terrible, trolly opinion that I'm only sharing because I want to piss off Twitter is that, if a senator from a state that Trump won by 40 points votes yes on a bill that does 90 percent of what you hoped it would do, that senator is not your enemy and is, in fact, your friend.

— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) March 7, 2021

But getting that voting rights bill passed is critical, no matter how much it gives the pundits a Big Sad to see ConservaDems like President Manchin be called on the carpet over it.