How much of the Biden program will Manchinema take down?

The good news ... conservatives have been "owning the libs" over climate change for the last 30 years. So there's that for at least them to be happy about..

For better or worse - for better and worse, actually - the future is open. In the negotiations over the Biden infrastructure bills, the prospects are looking dimmer than most Democrats would like. The play isn't over until it's over. But the stakes are huge. The Democrats need to deliver visible, tangible benefits to the public, in time enough for people to experience those benefits before Novembert 2022. And they need to pass substantive voting rights legislation to block as much as possible of the Republicans' neo-segregationist voter-suppression plans which they are actively putting into place.

Howard Dean, for one, seems to think that the two-infrastructure-bill approach to which Manchinema agreed before they started stalling it indefinitely is a bad sign;

Finally, it's well worth keeping in mind that the big fights over infrastructure and voting-right legislation have been fights among Democrats. But, as Norman Ornstein recently reminded us, we shouldn't let anyone forget the role Republicans are playing in this:

David Sirota makes the case for holding a vote on the main Biden bill ("reconciliation") soon in Call Their Bluff Right Now Daily Poster 10/17/2021. Unless Manchinema decide this week they are ready to move to a substantive deal, we're at the point where it does more harm than good to keep pretending that they are negotiating in good faith. Taking a vote your side knows you're going to lose is sometimes pointless. But here, it's not. Manchin and Sinema are just helping the Republicans make Biden and the Democrats look weak and ineffectual at this point. Forcing them to actually to take a stand up or down is probably the only chance left to pressure them to support the Biden plan. It will look bad for the Democrats, but stringing out the vote indefinitely looks worse.

What are the risks and possibilities here in a worst-case scenario, which in this case I mean that the Biden infrastructure package goes down - and approving only the Republican ("bipartisan") piece would effective mean the package went down - and no substantive voting rights bill is passed? The big risks includes (1) people are disappointed that more substantive benefits weren't enacted; (2) Democratic voters are discouraged to see that a Democratic President with a Democratic House and Senate is still being slapped around by the Republicans: and, (3)the Republican voter-suppression measures are very effective.

What do the Democrats have to do in case the infrastructure legislation and the voting-rights legislation fail - both of which seem currently to be Manchinema's goal?

Obviously, doing an extremely good job of turning out the vote in 2022 is a critical priority. In theory, the Democrats understand this. Biden has even floated the idea that the get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts could adequately counter the Republican voter-suppression laws and tricks. He seemed to be using that as an excuse for the Democrats not enacting voting-rights measures, which had a bad sound. But he certainly recognizes (in theory) the need for vigorous GOTV.

The Democrats also have an active legal pushback against the neo-segregationist laws going, spearheaded by Mark Elias. Elias recognizes both the urgency of court action under existing laws, but also that new federal laws are urgently needed:

Elias' Democracy Docket blog is a good source for updates on the legal situation. In this 10/13/2021 post, he describes the current situation this way:

At the federal level, Democrats have proposed two pieces of significant voting rights legislation, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. Together they would rival the magnitude of the 1965 Civil Rights Act, yet neither has prospects for success as long as the Senate’s filibuster rule applies.

Facing this grim reality, some have begun to urge Congress to ignore voter suppression and focus exclusively on the potential for election subversion in 2024. Specifically, they obsess over the outdated and imprecise Electoral Count Act — the process by which states select and Congress certifies presidential electors. While no one questions that this Act needs reform, the idea that we can fix democracy simply by revising this one law is simplistic and wrong. It ignores the fact that election subversion begins with the rules used for voting and continues through state certification processes. It also ignores the reality that presidential elections are not the only ones being targeted for subversion. [my emphasis]

A big wild card is the ongoing but uncertain effects of the pandemic on voter behavior. On the most optimistic side, the pandemic dramatically demonstrated that government not only can do big things, but also that active government is sometimes indispensable. Since Democrats compared to the Republicans have long defended a narrative more supportive of goverment action on behalf of the people. So this could be a positive for them.

Another uncertainty is the effect of the current conspiracy pandemic, which unfortunately also got a big boost from uncertainty and fear related to the pandemic. The Republicans are using the anti-vax sentiment and also their white supremacist narrative against the alleged threat of "critical race theory" to fire up the voting base, not unlike what we saw with the "Tea Party" in 2009. On the other hand, the antivax hysteria is so nuts and to people with a better grip on reality is such an obvious danger to public health that the Democrats could also benefit from the reaction against the conspiracy-mongering.

Another big uncertainty is Trump and the Trumpistas. Polls are showing that the Republican base has embraced radical insurrectionist views that Trump has encouraged. Trump is also out in the public eye. So Trump voters can be expected to be highly motivated in 2022. But there are other possibilities, as well. With Trump very much in the news, that could potentially "nationalize" the 2022 midterms for Democratic voters. They might be disgusted with the Democrats' ineffectiveness in Washington. But if Trump is staying in everyone's faces in 2022, anti-Trump sentiment could counteract discouragement among Democratic voters. Some of the elections next month could give us a clue about these effects. The prosecutions and investigations over the January 6 attack on the Capitol are also keeping the seriousness of radical-right violence in the news.

A related wild card is the risk of an uptick in violent attacks from radical Trumpistas. No one has a better record on covering the far-right scene than Dave Neiwert, in reports like this one: Black 'American' flags at right-wing protests, on front porches vow ‘no quarter’ against liberals Daily Kos 10/14/2021. It seems like the kind of thing that would provoke an electoral reaction against the Republicans. But these are uncertain times.

If the infrastructure program fails to pass and Manchinema block voting rights legislation, there will be an ever great incentive for Biden to pursue executive actions aggressively. The American Prospect in its Executive Action Tracker is keeping track of the Biden-Harris Administration's progress or lack thereof for dozens of potential executive actions that executive editor David Dayen has identified. Even a very important option that Biden has so far largely resisted, the forgiveness of college loans held by the federal government, would be hugely popular and would provide significant, immediate economic stimulus. (See Marcia Brown's Cancel Student Debt — Almost All of It The American Prospect 09/23/2019)

It's also important to keep in mind that while the big battles over infrastructure and voting-rights legislation this year have been fights among Democrats. But, as Norman Ornstein recently reminded us, we shouldn't let anyone forget the Republicans' role in this: