The conventional wisdom is that the Democrats will pay a price at the polls for the prolonged, dramatic, and frustrating failure to pass Build Back Better.
It seems that indeed that’s how things are heading. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
The Republicans bet that they could get the electorate to blame Biden and his Party for those failures. And it looks now as though the Republicans will win that bet.
But Biden and the Democrats can turn that whole thing around to make the failure of BBB a central part of their arsenal for the upcoming midterms.
The essential point is that
- large majorities of Americans want many of the components of BBB, and
- the Republicans did all they could to prevent the American people from getting what they want.
Another way of putting the essential point: The Republican strategy of across-the-board obstruction is completely indefensible.
Why should it be impossible for the Democrats to enlist the support of the American majority by turning what people now see as a “Democratic failure” into the “Republican disgrace”?
In the campaign for the Midterms, the Democrats could say:
“You – the American electorate -- can have all those things you want. [Listing things like Medicare negotiating lower prices for prescription drugs, more funding for affordable housing, and the other parts of the package favored by 60-80% of Americans.]
“But that will require that you elect a Congress in which the Republicans no longer have the ability to block them, which is what they’ve consistently been doing.” [Admittedly, with the help of two of the 50 Democratic Senators.]
“Just give us a Senate where the Republicans can’t thwart the will of the majority.
“Give us a Senate where there’s a big enough Democratic majority that a single Democratic defector cannot give the Republicans the ability to use the filibuster to enable the minority to frustrate the will of the majority of the nation’s people.
“The past two years have shown: a vote for the Republicans is a vote for paralyzing the nation at a time when we have a historic opportunity to move the nation forward in a great many ways.
“Historic opportunity – because we face multiple crises, and times of crisis are times when both the dangers and the opportunities for progress are especially great. And because President Biden has proposed measures that the American people know will improve their lives and move the nation forward.
For the past two years, the Republicans have made the failure of the President, rather than the success of the nation, their top priority. They’ve deliberately hurt the country as a way of gaining power for themselves.
“No real patriots would ever make such a choice.
“The Republicans have bet that the American people will reward them for their unpatriotic choice. It’s up to the American people to prove them wrong, by voting for Democrats almost all of whom have shown a dedication to getting good things done for the American people.
“And by voting against Republicans, who have shown continually that they care only about how to get power for themselves, and not at all about getting good things done for the American people and the nation.”
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Postscript: Another aspect of conventional wisdom says that the Democrats should place their emphasis on the things they were able to accomplish. I think there’s some room for that, but not much. The American people are not happy right now, and that means that they are not going to give much credit for things that Biden and the Democrats have accomplished that make things better, even if they are significant (like the Covid relief and the infrastructure packages).