The desperate scrambling of the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives near midnight on 5th November was a self-created Gunpowder Plot narrowly escaped. After months of damage and tension, at last President Joe Biden’s more than $1 trillion infrastructure bill was passed, while the way was paved for his $1.75 trillion omnibus Build Back Better Bill, which encompasses virtually every social measure from climate change strategy to childcare to lower drug prices. The second piece of legislation in particular could define his presidency, and the Democrats’ fate.
The tortuous process exposed the potentially ruinous fissures within the party, which has been stuck in a battle between those exercising political acumen to achieve a resolution and those engaged in ideological posturing. After the fiasco of the off-year elections just three days earlier, in which the Democrats suffered grievous losses including in the supposedly safe state of Virginia, the party belatedly rescued itself—at least for the moment. Yet as the Democrats stagger forward, they face even more formidable obstacles in the form of a Republican Party that has become, under Trump’s bullying, a subversive anti-democratic force, and from the hazard of illiberalism, not only from the right but from the left.
The Democratic defeats on 2nd November were not restricted to the shocking setback in Virginia, which Biden won in 2020 by 10 points, and where the Democrats have now lost every statewide office and control of the House of Delegates. In New Jersey, a bastion that Biden won by 16 points, the Democratic governor barely survived, while Democrats were shattered in lower-profile contests. On Long Island, Democrats were swept away. The left-wing “defund the police” referendum went down to overwhelming defeat in Minneapolis, where George Floyd was murdered a year ago, and the Democratic city attorney was beaten by a Republican in Seattle.
Republicans have adroitly exploited the culture wars, using opposition to Critical Race Theory as code for racial anxieties and the need for shielding against the “woke.” The Democrats seemed helpless to defend themselves and sometimes even promoted aspects of “woke” ideology without considering the political consequences.
While some of the conservative reaction is against teaching the true history of slavery, the Civil War and “Jim Crow” segregation, or encouraging the discussion of racist policies, there is also a more widespread objection to the imposition in schools of a new ideology of divisive racial identity, part-California therapeutic cult and part-coercive New England Calvinism. This dogma instructs white children that they bear collective guilt for the sinful past and that even if they are working class or poor, they are tainted by “white privilege.” The proponents of this movement openly disdain the very ideas of merit, objectivity and in some cases, like the far right, even the scientific method, as well as banishing the word “equality” and substituting “equity” as a marker for their particular ideology. In its rigid insistence on correct language, this movement is uncannily neo-Stalinist. For any American political party, the rejection of aspiration, the ideals of equality and the promise of the country is fatal.
One exception to the dismal Democratic showing appeared in the contest in New York City for a new mayor. There, Eric Adams, a black former policeman, spoke firmly against the rise in violent crime and emerged as the hero of the black community, which, despite misconceptions, is the one most affected and concerned about the crime wave. He easily won the party nomination over left-wing candidates before clinching office.
Democrats were routed in the elections against a backdrop of social pessimism; political frustration at a Democratic-controlled Congress apparently incapable of passing its own programmes, an inevitable consequence of the decline of Biden’s approval rating; and misplaced fears of terminal economic decline triggered by an uptick in inflation. Despite the enactment in March of Biden’s first great accomplishment, a $1.9 trillion relief measure to deal with the Covid pandemic, few people gave him credit. In the light of the wrangling over the other bills, paralysis has seemed to be the order of the day.
Though free Covid vaccines are readily available to every American, untold numbers of people have needlessly died in 2021, heavily clustered in Republican-dominated states, often because they refused the vaccine. Misinformation is rampant, aided and abetted by right-wing media, particularly Fox News. Republican governors, wantonly undermining public health measures such as mask-wearing, have incited an atmosphere of violence against local officials who try to enforce them, and filed lawsuits against Biden’s proposed vaccine mandate for employers. Never before has a US political party sought to gain partisan advantage through tactics that would result in the widespread deaths of its followers. In their anti-vaxxer incarnation the Republicans have adopted the Falangist creed: “Viva el muerte!” Yet the mortality rates have a political benefit, slowing down the economic recovery, and the Republicans profit by blaming it on Biden.
Meanwhile, Democratic cohesion has been constantly rattled from within. Biden has not had anyone riding on his coattails. Contrary to most presidential elections where the winner brings into the Congress more members of his party, the Democrats lost 15 seats in the House in 2020. As a result, the majority there is precarious, and passing any legislation requires that the various factions maintain unity. The Senate only attained a Democratic majority with the election of two Democrats from Georgia this year, creating a 50-50 tie that is broken for the Democrats by Vice President Kamala Harris, formal president of the Senate. “Look,” said Biden, reflecting on the power vested in senators in a gridlocked chamber: “when you’re in the United States Senate… and you have 50 Democrats, everyone is the president.”
“Never before has a US political party sought to deploy partisan tactics that would result in the widespread deaths of its followers”
Early on, Biden held an evening with historians, who regaled him with stories about Franklin D Roosevelt and his New Deal. But FDR passed his legislation with two-to-one majorities. Republicans now, under the malignant leadership of Senator Mitch McConnell, have adopted a rule-or-ruin politics. His self-proclaimed proudest moment was his refusal to hold a hearing for President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, the moderate Merrick Garland, and McConnell invokes as his principal weapon the uniquely perverse filibuster, requiring bills to win a super-majority of 60 votes. Through this gambit, McConnell succeeded in blocking many of the Obama-era proposals and many of his nominees, making it “almost impossible to govern,” the former president stated.
Without reform of the antediluvian filibuster rule, whose true origin lies with Southern senators stymying civil rights legislation—“a Jim Crow legacy,” as Obama has rightly noted—there is only one procedure open to Biden. It is called budget reconciliation, and it can only be used for revenue bills. So, Biden has gathered almost his entire far-ranging social agenda into a single package, the so-called Build Back Better Act. It is his only recourse. But it exposes him to the centrifugal forces within the party.
Two senators from swing states, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have turned themselves into stumbling blocks to simple passage. The original bill began with a price tag of more than $3 trillion. Its vision was vast, with an extensive programme on nearly every issue important to the party. But Manchin and Sinema objected to its cost, raised conservative objections about the federal debt and whittled it down to $1.75 trillion—still a significant sum. Manchin, with longstanding ties to the coal industry, slashed at a number of the climate change provisions and even paid family and medical leave as unworthy “entitlements.” Sinema, suddenly famous for her fashionable wardrobe changes and wigs of many colours, was mysteriously silent in public about her position. Both basked in the limelight of attention as they got to play president without the ultimate responsibility.
“Democrats neglected to consider the effect of their behaviour on imminent elections against actual Republicans”
At the same time, the House Democrats, split between moderates and progressives, defied the usually stern hand of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Instead, the rival factions refused to commit to the bill until their respective demands were met and the other group agreed. The progressives linked the infrastructure bill, which had passed with Senate with more than ten Republican votes, to the Build Back Better bill, insisting they would not vote in favour of the former unless the latter was passed first. That set up a confrontation with Manchin and Sinema, and the House moderates, who called for passage of the infrastructure bill first.
In this self-destructive hothouse atmosphere, Biden’s numbers were driven down and the elections that devastated the Democrats took place. Negotiating among themselves apparently to no end, the party neglected to consider the effect on imminent elections in which Democrats would be facing actual Republicans. Just before the final vote on the infrastructure bill in the House, a journalist asked Pelosi: “At a certain point, do you worry that it starts to look like the Democrats can’t get out of their own way?” “No,” she replied, determined to succeed. “Welcome to my world. This is the Democratic Party.” She deployed the leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus to instil discipline. Finally, the bill passed. But six fervent left-wing members of “The Squad,” led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who is gifted at clever social media, voted against it. Thirteen House Republicans, scorned by their peers, made up the difference. Manchin and Sinema still withheld support from the Build Back Better bill. The two remained divided between themselves over paid family and medical leave. Eventually, the details will be ironed out, too late to save those Democrats who lost elections.
The immediate crisis, still not fully resolved, is overshadowed by the looming spectre of authoritarianism, racism and anti-scientific irrationality exemplified by the Trump-mutated Republican Party. It is a party determined to suppress voting; determined to thwart investigation into Trump’s January 6th insurrection in which Republican congressional members were complicit; determined to subvert measures for public health in the Covid pandemic; to destroy scientific agencies which refuse to toe the line on climate change; and to deprive women of their reproductive rights.
“Republicans are ultimately counting on the Supreme Court to serve as a citadel of reaction”
Despite the fact that, contrary to Trump’s “Big Lie,” there was no fraud in the 2020 elections, Republican legislators across the country have proposed more than 400 bills restricting voting access and have already passed 33 in 19 states. Ten declared Republican candidates for the key position that oversees elections in each of their five battleground states—Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada—have either declared that the 2020 election was stolen or called for their state’s results to be invalidated or further investigated.
Congressional districts are being redrawn by state legislatures, with Republicans attempting to guarantee that Democrats do not reach a majority for another decade after the 2022 elections. In North Carolina, for example, where Republicans had only a one-point popular majority in 2020, Republicans have created a map that would give them 10 safe congressional seats, the Democrats three, and leave only one potentially competitive. In Ohio, Republicans are planning to give themselves 13 safe seats and the Democrats just two. In Texas, the Republican vote share was down to 52 per cent in 2020, yet Republicans control 23 of 36 districts—64 per cent.
The process of rigging the composition of districts to favour one party, known as gerrymandering, would give the Republicans, even when they lose the popular vote in a state or across the nation as a whole, control over the House of Representatives.
Republicans are ultimately counting for support on a conservative majority six-to-three Supreme Court, to serve as a citadel of reaction for the foreseeable future. It appears likely in 2022 to overturn Roe v Wade. The court has already gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the jewel of the civil rights movement. Now, McConnell has bottled up a new voting rights bill by means of the filibuster.
Biden believed that through his decency and goodwill he could restore a sense of normalcy and calm. Having spent a long career in the Senate in a previous era, he pledged to return to his nostalgic memory of comity and bipartisanship, when there was a moderate wing of the Republican Party. Instead, he has found himself riding a fractious majority in the Congress, and even his accomplishments will probably not be sufficient to prevent the radicalised Republicans, based on gerrymandering alone, from seizing the House in 2022. Facing a greater menace than Covid in the virus of anti-democratic movements, the elections of 2021 portend a deeper crisis ahead.
This piece will appear in Aspenia, Aspen Institute Italia's journal on international affairs, in December
