THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT

So, the Ghost of Christmas present arrived yesterday.

My daughter tested positive for Covid.

She was one of the careful ones.  Triple-vaxed. Face-masked.  Chairwoman of the Board when it came to monitoring and enforcing the family's compliance with Covid protocols.  Last Christmas, she orchestrated a testing and quarantine schedule that had her, her now-fiance and her brother arriving for Thanksgiving and then camping out for the entire month of December.  

She wouldn't allow Covid to kill Christmas.

And for the most part it didn't.

The California relatives could not travel east for the festivities.  But there was a big Zoom session on Christmas morning with everyone as the stockings were emptied and the presents opened.   My 91 year-old mother arrived from New Jersey along with my sister, and all was safe at our Covid free Christmas.

Thanks to Courtney.

This year was supposed to be different.  

We are all fully vaccinated.  

In fact, almost all of us -- and certainly Courtney --  had the  booster shot as well.  

We even  thought we had skirted tragedy earlier in the week.  

My niece, recently returned from a trip with her college friends to Nashville, had to check in to a nearby hotel for two days after learning that one of her travel mates had tested positive.  It was all hands were on deck as we awaited the results of her PCR test, which came back negative on Wednesday evening.

It looked like the virus was camping out elsewhere.

But, alas, it wasn't.

And to make matters worse, it turns out that we are not all that atypical.  

My son informed us earlier in the week that one of his co-workers had been exposed and that he would therefore take a test (it came back negative today). Our best friends told us this morning that they had to cancel their plans for a 10-person Christmas Day feast because their visiting son-in-law just tested positive.  And my colleague at work was set to welcome his son, daughter-in-law and seven-month-old grandson from Los Angeles but they cancelled their trip as Omicron invaded New York.

A big part of the problem here is . . .

Capitalism.

It turns out that capitalism is really good at invention but not particularly good at distribution.  

The government incentivized the creation of vaccines at what amounted to warp speed, and the private sector, especially Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, generated them.  The key thereafter was getting shots into arms across the world.  The original Covid virus mutated and variants emerged.  All of them, however, were seeded in the wake of effective vaccines by the existence of an unvaccinated population.  

Had everyone been vaccinated, neither Delta nor Omicron would have had their way.

But everyone wasn't.

So they have.

It's weird.

My family was all ready to combat Covid to celebrate Christmas last year.  

But vaxed to the max, it got us this year.

Screw it.

Merry Christmas anyway!

Given our ignorance . . . or obstinance . . . 

We can't beat Covid.

But God can.

And He arrives tomorrow.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

It's Christmas and I have been thinking about songs.

About Christmas carols to be precise.

Everyone thinks Christmas carols  were written long ago.  

And for most that is true. 

"Silent Night", for example, is a German carol -- Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht -- and was composed in 1818. "O Come All Ye Faithful" -- Adestes Fidelis -- was first sung in 1743.  And "Angels We Have Heard on High" -- an English carol -- was created in1862. In fact, Wikipedia lists carols from thirty-two countries or cultures going back to the 12th century. The overwhelming majority of those songs were created well before the 20th century.

Another interesting fact is that the songs composed in  the 20th century have a decidedly secular cast.

 More Rudolph than religion.

"Silver Bells" was written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans in 1950.  The "Christmas Song" -- Nat King Cole's "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire" -- was created in 1945 by Robert Wells and Mel Torme.  And Rudolph's glory as the "Red Nosed Reindeer" first saw the light of day (or night as it were) in 1947.

Secular or saintly, however, the songs unite.  

Every year around this time they come on and almost everyone chimes in with at least a bar or two, sometimes even the whole song. During the pre-Covid Christmas season in 2019, a crowd of morning commuters in a New York City subway station belted out Mariah Carey's 1994 hit, "All I Want for Christmas Is You".  Or, as Shileligh Law put it in  "Christmas in New York", their tribute to the victims of 9/11, "There's somebody singing a holiday song/You pick up the tune and start singin' along/You learned the words some time way back when/It's Christmas in New York again".

Sometimes the songs channel the Jesuits.

They challenge us to find God in the everyday.

To find the saintly in our very own secular.

Shileligh Law's 9/11 tribute was one:

          It's Christmas Eve, 11 pm

          You walk down to the church and you quietly go in

          You kneel down in the last pew right on the aisle

          And say "God I know that it's been awhile

          But can you do me a favor on this Christmas Eve

          Can you send out some blessings to people for me

          You know these last few months have been kinda tough

          And we could use a little love"

          So bless New York's finest, our angels in blue

          Giving us hope and helping us through

          And bless New York's bravest, the FDNY

          Giving their sweat and their tears and their lives

           And bless all the medics and our troops overseas

           Bless the guys in the hardhats, removing debris

           Bless the everyday people who answered the call

           Bless those who gave some and those who gave all

           Bless all the souls who left us this year

           You may be gone but you'll always be here

           Singing and dancing with family and friends

            It's Christmas in New York Again.

Another was "Do You Hear What I Hear", Regney and Shayne's plea for peace in 1962 in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis:

            Said the king to the people everywhere

            Listen to what I say! Listen to what I say!

            Pray for Peace, people, everywhere

            Listen to what I say! Listen to what I say!

            The Child, the Child sleeping in the night

            He will bring us goodness and light

            He will bring us goodness and light

The King's plea, however, was not a product of his own wisdom.   It came from one of the Bible's unwashed -- "Said the shepherd boy to the mighty King/Do you know what I know?"

I was in a restaurant last week in mid-town Manhattan attending a small dinner party my son's company was throwing in his honor.  Mid-way through the event, a half-dozen fellow diners at another table started singing "The Twelve Days of Christmas".   By the time they got to the "five gold rings", pretty much the whole restaurant -- along with the wait staff -- was joining in. 

My son this month is finishing up his second masters degree. 

This one in business administration. The first was in public administration.  

Most people choose one or the other.  He is unique.  In a world where ideologues mount their tribal parapets proclaiming the inherent superiority of one or the other sector, public or private, he has studied both and thus made himself an expert on the idiocy of all manner of present-day extremists.

He has always been like this.

In high school in a toney suburb, he and a friend decided to live in a treehouse for most of their senior year.  In college, he and that same friend traipsed over a good chunk of South America, bribing their way in and out of Bolivia. On a family vacation in Mexico, he announced he was not returning with us but would instead take an overnight bus to Guatemala to visit his girlfriend. When he told my wife that he thought "Dad was not happy about this", she explained that "Dad's unhappiness" might have something to do with reports of active volcanoes and civil unrest along his chosen route.

None of these were full on marches to "see how the other half lives".

But he definitely knew his own circumstances were not typical.

And wanted to explore the differences.

After graduating from Colorado College, he ran a family farm in upate New York . . .

With no in-door plumbing.  

While there, he resisted the political correctness of his little corner of liberal academia by hooking up with the Marines and applying to get into Officers Candidate School (OCS).  Most of his college professor friends, and not a few fellow students, raised their eyebrows.  

But he went to Quantico anyway. 

And crashed out after two weeks.

At the end, a drill-sergeant type asked him what he intended to do to "grow up".  He said he didn't know but that, right then and there, he wanted to  "speak Spanish".  

The officer thought he was nuts.

He wasn't.

He just didn't like being yelled at constantly.

I asked him how he had managed to spend a couple of years working to get into OCS if "yelling" -- their love of which the Marines do not keep secret-- was a problem.  He told me he had intentionally avoided looking at that portion of the promotional video.  

So he left OCS and got a job . . .

Speaking Spanish.

It was more than that, of course.  He represented day laborers in their efforts to get work -- and get paid for it -- in northern Westchester County. Then it was on to the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, a non-profit that for almost fifty years has been helping to bring businesses and jobs to that impoverished precinct. And most recently, as a senior officer at the National Development Council's Grow America Fund, he has been financing -- preserving really --  small businesses in America's northeastern rural rust belt.  

In all three, he has married the conscience of a public sector idealist with the pragmatism of a private sector businessman.  

To the notice of those in both.

Last year, during the height of Covid, Delaware's Sen. Chris Coons praised him for personally calling scores of his clients in that state, many of whom were getting the run around from the big banks, to walk them through the process and paperwork needed to get the Paycheck Protection Money that kept them in business.  And one Mom and Pop hardware business even produced its own video singing his praises for getting them the  financing larger banks would not provide.

Those are real differences . . .

For real people.

So NDC threw him a party.

Ostensibly for getting his MBA.

But really just for being . . .

Conor.

It's Christmas in New York again.

THE KENOSHA TRAGEDY

On August 25, 2020, a seventeen-year-old left his home in Antioch, Illinois, drove fifteen miles north to Kenosha, Wisconsin, and returned home later that night.  While in Kenosha, and armed with a military assault rifle, he killed two people and injured a third.  Today, a jury found that seventeen-year-old not guilty of both intentional and reckless homicide.  Earlier in the week, the judge had dismissed a misdemeanor gun possession charge. 

On the criminal charges, the jury verdict is defensible.  

At the trial, the teen argued that he acted in self-defense.  

Under Wisconsin law, a defendant claiming self-defense has the initial burden of production. This  means he must present facts which, if proved, could support a finding that his use of force was valid. If a defendant satisfies that initial burden, the state must disprove some element of the defense, either that the defendant was reasonable in believing he was in imminent danger or that the force used was reasonable under the circumstances.  To do so, the state must disprove one of these elements beyond a reasonable doubt. 

In this case, the defense easily met its initial burden and the jury decided that the state had not disproven any element of self-defense.  Both conclusions are defensible.   There was evidence that the first victim tried to grab the teen's gun just before the teen shot him; that the second was hitting him over the head with a skateboard and struggling to grab the gun before he was shot; and that the third pointed his own handgun at the teen before he was shot in the arm.  

As to the misdemeanor charge, the teen's possession of the  military assault rifle was not illegal because, though the applicable statute makes it illegal for minors to possess dangerous weapons, those under 18 can be found guilty if, but only if, they are 16 or the length of the barrel is less than 16 inches. In this case, the teen was 17 and the gun barrell was 16 inches long.  So the statutory crime had not been committed.

In the run-up to the trial and its immediate aftermath, all the usual suspects showed up with all their usual bromides.  On the extreme right, the teen was turned into an avatar of the Second Amendment who voluntarily put himself in harm's way to protect property from unhinged BLM protestors. On the left, his out on bail "Free as Fuck" tee-shirt while posing for pictures with men singing Proud Boy anthems made him a white supremacist.

Both pictures are wrong.

And before any more teenage boys  decide to answer any more self-induced calls to action armed with AR-15s . . .

And more people wind up dead who did not have to be . . .

It behooves us as a country to get the picture right.

So here goes.

Kyle Rittenhouse was and remains an immature, male adolescent.  

I have a wealth of experience with immature, male adolescents.  

I was once one myself.   

Like many immature, male adolescents, I could convince myself that my view of  the world  was all that mattered, that the uninformed and unwilling simply did not get it, that what adults called prudence or patience was really cowardice.  While talking myself into this excited state of euphoric certainty,  I could play the role of superhero, get in the face of authority, tell them off, courageously accept the challenges lesser men avoided.  

Unfortunately, however,  excited immature male adolescents usually forget to take a deep breath.  They lose any sense of perspective.  They unravel.

When I was 17 and unraveled, I was first threatened with expulsion and then given a stern talking to by a Jesuit who cared.  

And then . . .

I started to grow up.

When Kyle Rittenhouse unraveled, he drove to Kenosha.  Instead of  talking him down, we allowed him to grab a gun. 

A military assault rifle.

Something no immature boy wound up in his own sense of self-righteousness should ever get his hands on, no matter the length of the barrel.  

There are no heroes here.  

Not  the cops who talked to him that night while he stood outside a Kenosha vehicle dealership armed to the teeth.  Not the businesses who supposedly encouraged the presence of  self-appointed and untrained  pseudo-cops to "guard" their properties.  Not the immature male adolescents sitting in Congress -- Florida's Matt Gaetz and North Carolina's Madison Crawthorn -- offering him interships. Not the gun nuts who have no problem mixing assault weapons with unhinged levels of testosterone.  Not even the lefties blaming the trial judge and ignoring the evidence.

On August 25, the adults were AWOL.

So, instead of growing up . . . 

The unraveled Kyle Rittenhouse blew up.

None of us should be surprised.

 

THE PERILS OF PANIC

Panic is a bad thing.

Personally or professionally.

Individually and socially.

The consequences can be tragic.  

Before Keynes ushered in the era of modern economic thinking, economic panics were recurrent.  The Great Depression of 1929, itself a species of panic, was not all that unique.  In the preceding century, there had been at least three of them.  The Panic of 1837 was the then young United States' first major economic catastrophe; the Panic of 1893 its second; and  the financial Panic of 1907 its third.  

In the first two, collapsing bubbles (in, respectively,  real estate and railroads) combined with tight money (in favor of gold and absent regulation from any central bank) led to bank runs, which imploding demand turbo-charged.  As prices collapsed and unemployment surged, a perfect storm ensued.  The customers had no jobs and the producers had no customers.  In the third, the financial Panic of 1907,  a misguided scheme to corner the market in US Copper stock led to the collapse of its share price, the insolvency of banks and trust companies with large collateral positions in that stock,  and a cascading run on banks and trust companies. As the contagion spread, J.P. Morgan and a consortium of his fellow travelers came to the rescue,  pumping liquidity into the system via loans that prevented additional insolvencies.

There was no J.P. Morgan in 1929 when the Great Depression hit.  And though a fellow product of the Gilded Age, Andrew Mellon, was serving as Secretary of the Treasury, his  advice to then President Herbert Hoover was decidedly different from Morgan's two decades earlier.  "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate," he told President Hoover,  "Purge the rottenness out of the system."  

Mellon's advice was not remotely correct.  

In fact, it was its own form of panic. 

Of the intellectual kind.

Workers and farmers were not the problem or the inherently  rotten part of the system. That role, it turned out,  was being played by the speculators who had bought and sold  stock on (enormous) margin, creating a market bubble not remotely linked to actual value that burst on Black Tuesday, and the do-nothing governments -- ours included -- who refused to inject liquidity into the system thereafter as wages, prices and production cratered and  a quarter of the population could not find work.

"Dangerous nonsense" is what Milton Friedman called it.

Today, thanks to Joe Biden and the Democrats, we are not in the throes of economic panic (more about that later).  We are, however,  plagued by a different form of panic.

Of the political sort.

Political panic ensues when a system continually produces sclerotic government unable to confront, solve or even mitigate obvious problems.  

And it takes different forms in our two political parties. 

For Republicans, political panic takes the form of backlash.  Because the party at its core does not believe government can really solve problems (indeed, and to the contrary,  it believes government often makes problems worse), it blames the continuing presence of those problems on amorphous groups of others.  Whoever those others may be -- welfare recipients, immigrants, political opponents,  or foreigners --  they are defined as the source of those problems.  

Hence, they become . . .

Freeloaders (welfare recipients), illegals (immigrants), socialists (Democrats) or users taking us for suckers (most UN member states). 

Over time, the political consequence of this approach  makes someone like Donald Trump inevitable. 

Since 1980, the GOP has supported two policies, tax cuts and conservative judges.  Otherwise, it has been the party of "No".  No infrastructure spending, no universal health care, no Medicaid or Medicare expansion, no spending on child care, nothing to combat climate change, and little to no environmental enforcement. And because their two policies have not materially improved things for the middle and lower economic classes, who have either been running in place or falling behind for the last forty years, they have to justify this otherwise oppositional approach.  They do that by embracing the politics of backlash.  

Initially, this backlash was clothed in rhetorical or pictorial sleights of hand -- Reagan's 1980 general election campaign kick-off in Philadelphia, Mississippi; Bush I's Willie Horton ad; Romney's (supposedly) confidential talk about 47% of us as takers.  Sometimes the backlash became too much and the candidate actually stopped it -- McCain pulling the mic from a supporter calling Obama "an Arab" in 2008.  But sooner or later, if  what you espouse is that nothing government does will work, and what you do espouse clearly has not worked, the  vacuum left over can only be filled by the politics of anger, resentment and grievance. 

Which Donald Trump raised to an art form.

And was willing on January 6 to embrace all the way  to an insurrectionist  coup.

For Democrats, political panic takes a different form.  

It takes the form of doubt.  

For my entire life, the Democratic Party has been arguing with itself.  In the '60s, it argued with itself about civil rights and Vietnam.  In the '70s  and '80s, it argued with itself over whether it would be the party of old labor (Walter Mondale) or new ideas (Gary Hart).  In the '90s, members of its Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) like Bill Clinton trimmed the sails of liberals and centrists like New York's Pat Moynihan sidelined Hillarycare, the liberal side of President Bill's "two for the price of one" electoral promise.  In the aughts, the moderates didn't think America could elect a black man as President. Or pass Obamacare in 2010 after Ted Kennedy died and his Republican successor made the filibuster real.  

They were wrong . . .

Twice.

But today the Democrats are still arguing . . .

With themselves.

This time, it's the moderates versus the The Squad,  Joe Manchin versus Biden's Build Back Better, or, as some think . . .

Biden (as President) versus Himself (as the 2020 Presidential candidate).

This past Tuesday, the Democratic nominee for Governor in Virginia narrowly lost and the Democratic nominee for Governor in New Jersey narrowly won.  Those results upended two pieces of conventional wisdom and led to the immediate birth of a third.  The two conventions were that Virginia  was a blue state where suburban women and college graduates have elected nothing but Democrats to statewide office since 2014,  and that New Jersey was super-blue, Biden having pasted Trump by eighteen points in 2020.  The third is that Democrats are now in big trouble and had better jettison Build Back Better (BBB), pass the bi-partisan infrastructure bill and hunker down for the mid-terms (which they will probably lose).

I think much of that conventional wisdom is wrong.

Not all of it.

But a lot of it. 

And here's why.

First, the underlying notion here is that the Biden presidency is a failure and that is not remotely true. When Biden was sworn in on January 20 the unemployment rate was 6.6%. Today it is 4.6%.  When it scored the administration's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which passed without a single Republican vote in either the House or the Senate, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said we would not hit 4.6% until 2023.  Biden and the Democrats beat that forecast by a substantial margin.  In October, the Biden economy created 531,000 new jobs and the figures for August and September were revised to show an additional 235,000 jobs in those months.  In Biden's first nine months, 5.6 miilion new jobs have been created, more than any created during that period in the last three Republican administrations.

Second, though political prognosticators typically read a lot into the results in Virginia and New Jersey in the year before the mid-terms, the tea leaves this year are not as clear as they have been in the past. In 2009, the last time a Democrat was in the White House, Republicans won the gubernatorial races in both those states.  And by comfortable margins.  In New Jersey,  the incumbent Democrat, Jon Corzine, got only 44.9% of the vote.  54.3% of the voters went with either Republican Chris Christie (48.5%) or the independent  Chris Daggett (who for his entire life 'til then had been a Republican  and who won 5.8% of the vote).  And in Virginia, the Republican won in a landslide -- 58.6% to 41.3%. In Virginia, the  Republicans also controlled that state's House of Delegates until 2018 and they controlled the state Senate until 2019. 

The notion of Democratic inevitability in either state  is thus a canard.  

The accurate and more relevant claim, however, is that the results in both races counsel message discipline for the Democrats going forward.

In Virginia, though the Democratic nominee, former Governor Terry McAuliffe, was a centrist, he put his foot in his mouth when he said parents shouldn't be telling schools what to teach their children.  Parents are critical in the education of their children and of course can and should have input into  curriculum.  The real problem is that they should not be lied to about what is being taught or how it is being taught 

Governor-elect Youngkin's  education pitch was that Virginia's kids are in effect being taught to race hate and that teachers are being indoctrinated with some sort of anti-Enlightenment version of Critical Race Theory (CRT). 

Neither claim was true. 

I have read the same sources Andrew Sullivan and other CRT opponents have cited in claiming the contrary and they are wrong.  

These are the facts: 

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd last year and other similar tragedies, educators in Virginia were alerted to some CRT literature as one among many resources they might consult in an effort to teach about the issue of race in America.  Those teachers were not told to ignore or otherwise de-emphasize the Enlightenment or engender guilt in white kids on account of their race.  Nor did the state Department of Education or its school districts endorse CRT. Those claims are myths.  In fact, of the documents Sullivan and other opponents of CRT  cite, the one  from the Loudon County Schools expressly states that Loudon County "has not adopted CRT".  And the other -- cited for the proposition that Virginia's Department of Education (DOE) "embraced CRT in 2015" -- did in fact endorse CRT.  But that document was from an outside consultant, not the Virginia DOE,  and the CRT it endorsed in at least one place was  the acronym for "Culturally Responsive Teaching", not "Critical Race Theory".

Andrew et al. need to read what they cite.

Before citing it.

As for New Jersey, it provides even less support for panic.  The Democratic Governor, Phil Murphy, was re-elected.  He is the first Democratic governor reelected in that state since 1977.  As noted, the state had a Republican Governor, Chris Christie, from 2010 to 2018.  Though the GOP has not controlled the legislature for twenty years, Republicans are not an endangered species there.  The gubernatorial race was closer than expected and that too counsels message discipline.  Murphy's foot in mouth during the campaign was as bad as McAuliffe's.  Murphy said "If taxes are your issue, then New Jersey's probably not your state." Now, in context, he was pointing out all the good reasons people might come to New Jersey -- good schools, pleasant towns, a clean environment, a good transportation system, etc. -- and saying that, if you're a one issue voter who does not care about all of  that but does care about taxes only, then you'll probably go elsewhere.

But c'mon Phil.

This wasn't your first rodeo.

Of course the opposition will snip that comment from its context and air it a million times in a negative commercial.

So . . .

Please be smarter than that.

(Meanwhile, as the commentariat waxed eloquent on the (overwrought) meaning of New Jersey and Virginia, two other factoids from those states underscored the form  political panic takes among Republicans .  One was Donald Jr. calling Murphy's New Jersey win "a blatant crime being committed". In contrast, Terry McAuliffe congratulated his opponent and delivered a gracious concession in Virginia.)

Third, the notions that Build Back Better is some radical socialist construct or that Biden himself opposed it as a candidate in 2020 are also false.  

As Greg Sargent pointed out in yesterday's Washington Post, the Biden campaign in 2020  ran "TV ad after TV ad after TV ad and [delivered] speech after speech after speech [making] a core promise: Higher taxes on the rich and corporations to fund large investments in climate, job creation, health care, education, infrastructure and even the care economy."  I don't know whether Biden ran to be the next Franklin Roosevelt, or whether the voters do not want him to be.  But I do know that  he did not run to be another Republican . . . 

Or another centrist who refuses to deal with long term problems because of electoral risk and just kicks them down the road. 

The bi-partisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill that passed after liberals allowed the House to vote on it last night is major progress and  will help fund maintenance and improvements in hard infrastructure -- roads and bridges, airports, tunnels,  rural broad band, the electric grid and coastal improvements to deal with the consequences (but not the causes) of climate change.  It will do nothing to combat inequality, promote pay equity or improve health care. For that, we need Build Back Better. Even a small version of it will be  better than nothing.

The moderate Democrats in Congress want infrastructure without BBB because they think BBB will hurt them next fall.  Though they have succeeded in paring down BBB to under $2 trillion, and though five of them last night agreed to vote for BBB conditioned on how the CBO scores it so that liberals would allow an immediate vote on the bi-partisan bill, the moderates are channeling their inner Republican by worrying about the effects of BBB on the deficit and inflation.  That worry is silly.  The $1.7 trillion or so in the latest version of BBB will be spent over ten years.  During that time, given projected GDP of approximately $250 trillion, the expenditure will be a mere bagatelle and not remotely inflationary. In fact, by increasing productivity, especially among families who will be helped with child care, paid family leave and free community college, it will improve productivity and therefore reduce inflation.

If the Democrats lose in 2022, it will be on account of re-districting, voter suppression and cultural issues, not BBB.  Of those three problems, they can only solve two of them, the first by jettisoning the filibuster and passing a Voting Rights Bill to eliminate state suppression efforts, the second by more nuanced messaging that talks about race but pivots to economic class and doesn't demean parents or taxpayers.  If the pandemic ends, mask and vaccine mandates will be rewarded. And in any case, since you cannot end the pandemic without them, a responsible government really has no choice.

When the infrastructure bill was finally voted on late last night, President Biden correctly called it "monumental".  To get there, the vote had to remain open for fifteen hours as leaders cobbled together the deal that allowed the vote to go forward and Biden then worked the phones to sell it, convincing moderates to vote on BBB once the CBO scores it later this month and liberals to trust a written pledge that such a vote will actually occur.  At the end of all this torture, Nancy Pelosi said "Welcome to my world -- this is the Democratic Party.  We are not a lock-step party."

No kidding.

Hers -- and mine --  is the party of doubt.

It's our form of panic.

But it beats the other side's.

FALLEN LEAVES

This morning was chilly. 

And even as the sun burned away the clouds, it is still a bit cold.  

So, maybe fall has finally come to my home town in New York. 

But maybe not.

For the past three weeks, it's been unseasonably warm during the day but comfortably cool at night. We retired the  air conditioner for the year but the heat, though on deck , has not yet had to bat.  In New England, the colors have already turned and the "peaks" have begun to move south.  But they are not here yet.  The leaves are still fighting. Though some are down, others resist what is inevitable.  They know they all have to die someday. But not necessarily this day.

In this season at war with itself, politics finds a companion. 

It is now a schizoid mix of the normal and the existentially threatening.

As to the former, Biden is trying to hammer the Democrats into some unified approach to the infrastructure and Build Back Better bills.  The first enjoys bipartisan support; the second the support of all Democrats but two and no Republicans.  Hence those two Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema,  are more or less the ball game on that second bill.  As are the progressives who will not vote for the first unless some version of the second moves as well.  Since neither can have it all, both will have to compromise.  In the meantime, each is wondering when the other will blink.

In this realm of "normal" politics, Biden's GOP opponents are claiming he is Jimmy Carter, the  one-term Democrat who fell in 1980 amidst the twin peaks of roaring inflation and the Iran hostage crisis.  Though neither exists today, Republicans have had to make due with some pandemic created supply chain bottlenecks that have temporarily increased prices and a messy departure from Afghanistan that they now lament but did nothing to avert.  

In their world, we are back in the '70s.

Even though we aren't.

Inflation is running at about 5% annaually, not the 13.5% that helped put Reagan in the White House in 1980. It  also has not been at that rate for any length of time, again contrary to the experience of the 1970s.  Though the data on core (important) versus volatile (less so) inflation can be read to signal trouble, the pandemic radically changed buying patterns (from services to stuff) and created supply chain problems in today's world of just-in-time inventories that did not exist in the 1970s.  Both the consumers (you and I)  and the suppliers (all those tankers in the Los Angeles Harbor waiting to off-load their containers) will presumably revert to the norm, as will prices, once the pandemic abates.  Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has its eyes on the data, as does the European Central Bank.  Both are poised to tighten credit if they must.

And . . .

There are no hostages in Afghanistan.

Then, however, there is the existentially threatening.

The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection just recommended that the entire House refer Trump henchman Steve Bannon to prosecutors for criminal contempt in view of his refusal to honor the committee's subpoena for relevant documents and testimony.  The report accompanying the recommendation quotes extensively from insurrection participants specifically linking their attack to Trump's false election fraud claims.  It also quotes from Bannon's own social media posts on the eve of the attack telling would be revolutionaries to be in DC the next day.   "[W]e're on the point of attack tomorrow," he said, and joined others that night -- including Trump lawyers Giuliani and John Eastman, campaign spokesman Jason Miller and felony convict Roger Stone -- in meetings at the Willard Hotel.

Eastman has clearly usurped Giuliani  as Trump's most dangerous -- and dangerously insane -- lawyer.  Thanks to the Washington Post's super duo --  the aging but intrepid Bob Woodward and his young and never-exhausted sidekick Robert Costa -- we now know that Eastman wrote a memo literally laying out the coup Trump planned and attempted to implement this past January just as Congress was to meet to certify Biden's victory.  

Step One was to declare that there were competing slates of electors in seven states, thus rendering uncertain the results in those states.  Step Two involved either declaring Trump the winner based on the electoral vote count in the remaining states (where Trump would have won a Constitutional "majority of electors appointed") or sending the election to the House (where Trump would have won because each state delegation would cast one vote and twenty-six of those delegations were controlled by Republicans) on the theory that neither Biden nor Trump had won the required 270 electoral vote majority.   

As Woodward and Costa recount in Peril, the plan was an absolute lie.  

There were no competing slates. Just as there had been no election fraud.

Even then, however, neither Eastman nor Trump relented. 

In an evening meeting on January 4, in Trump's presence and with his full support, Eastman told Vice President Pence that he, Pence, could unilaterally declare the results uncertain so that Republican legislatures could then hold special sessions and send alternate slates of electors to Washington.

Pence wouldn't do it.

And because he wouldn't, Trump's rioters threatened to hang him on January 6.

In the run-up to Biden's election and inauguration, and as also reported in Peril, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, thought Trump "crazy" and twice reached out to his Chinese counterpart to assure him that the United States was stable and, contrary to their belief that the US was secretly planning to attack them, would not initiate any kinetic action. The first call was made four days before the election and the second two days after the January 6 insurrection.  After the insurrection, which he characterized as an attempted coup, Milley also summoned senior officers from the National Military Command Center to remind them of the procedures in place should Trump order a nuclear strike and literally exacted an oath from each of them that they understood they were required to and would report any such order to Milley, to the Secretary of Defense and to a set of attorneys before it could be carried out.

Trump doesn't care about any of this. He is still lying about the election.  And he is demanding that all other Republicans lie with him.  Last week, he announced that Republican voters should not vote in 2022 or 2024 unless his fictitious "fraud" claim is resolved in his favor.  Roughly half the Republican voters believe his claims and even those that do not are willing to suppress Democratic turnout with new laws that limit mail-in, early and drop-box voting.  Meanwhile, in Congress, voting rights legislation that would counter the GOP's suppression efforts is being held hostage to the filibuster.

This is how you lose a country.  

Yeats said it best:

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre

    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

    The best lack all conviction, while the worst

    Are full of passionate intensity.

Gen. Colin Powell died this week.

The cause of death was complications from Covid-19.

But that wasn't the real cause.

The real cause was that . . .

Someone else refused to get a shot.

The worst. 

Full of passionate intensity.

HERE'S THE DEAL -- BRIDGES FOR BALLOTS

What's wrong with the Democrats? 

Biden's numbers are underwater by about three points.  Moderates and progressives in the party are engaged in a stand-off over the two (one small and bipartisan; the other large and not) infrastructure bills. Neither bill at this point has been passed. 

To right the ship, Biden spent most of yesterday huddled in meetings with Congressional Democrats.  According to media reports, the meetings were cordial.  "We're calm, and everybody's good, and our work's almost done," said Nancy Pelosi, trying to sound upbeat.  But Biden's press secretary, Jen Psaki,  struck a more ominous note.  Biden, she said, recognizes "there needs to be deeper engagement" by him; he "sees his role as . . .  working to bring together people over common agreement and on a path forward."

In other words, they aren't there yet.

The problem is thorny.  

Stated simply, the Democrats are divided.  Progressives want the second infrastructure bill voted on and passed at the same time as the first.  Moderates want the second bill scaled back appreciably and some would even agree to pass the bipartisan package first and then deal with the second later. Progressives know that if they agree  to that, there either won't be a second bill or the bill will be a shadow of its former self.

Although the competing factions are all Democrats, it's not clear that they trust each other.  The moderate with the most muscle,  conservative Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has made it clear that he will not vote for the second bill if the price tag is anywhere near the $3.5 trillion it now carries.  Manchin -- whose vote is needed to move the bill through the reconciliation procedure that avoids a Senate filibuster -- has intimated that he may support a bill priced at $1-1.5 trillion but no more. 

To progressives, however, Manchin sounds like a Republican.  

His argument against the big bill is that it will be inflationary and add to the nation's debt. 

Progressives think both claims are bogus. 

For at least two reasons.  

One is that Republicans do not give a damn about debt when they vote for deficit-financed tax cuts or massive (and always bigger) defense budgets. 

The other is that the bill spreads its spending over ten years and that the actual projects -- roads, bridges, airports, broad ban, alternative energy, pre-K, community college, child care and elder care -- will increase productivity and therefore reduce inflation. Though conservatives claim that the tax increases included to finance the bill reduce private investment, the alternatives (principally user fees and hiking the gas tax) are more regressive and therefore exacerbate the inequality that our second Gilded Age has itself turned into a massive problem.

There is no solution here other than . . .

Compromise.  

So . . .

Here's mine.

Progressives should agree to swallow hard and reduce the price tag on the second infrastructure bill.  If necessary, they should agree to a $1.5 - 2 trillion bill in exchange for Manchin's vote.  In exchange, however, Manchin will have to agree to modify the filibuster and allow the Senate to pass either the voting rights bill sent to it  by the House or the different but acceptable bill Manchin wrote but cannot get any Republicans to support. 

What Manchin and his progressive colleagues have to understand is that they share a problem.  

The problem is that the GOP is working overtime to have all of them removed and has fixed upon voter suppression as the means to that end.  

Early voting, mail-in voting, absentee voting and drop boxes were the keys to increasing the turnout of registered voters to over 60% in 2020 and the record 81 million votes cast for President Biden. In states where they control the legislative and executive branches, however, Republicans are significantly limiting those options in order to suppress Democratic turnout.  If those efforts are not stopped, the GOP will succeed and the Democrats' (bare) majorities in the House and Senate will be lost come the 2022 mid-terms. 

Manchin is not up for re-election in 2022 but is in 2024.  In 2018, his last time on the ballot, his margin of victory was only 3%.  In 2020, Trump won the state with almost 70% of the vote.  If Trump is on the ballot in 2024 and Manchin wants to win, he'll need all the new (and old) voters he can find. 

Suppression will kill him.  

But either the House voting rights bill or his own will probably stop that.  

Both bills guarantee early and absentee voting.  They also increase the locations and require a minimum number of drop  boxes, make Election Day a federal holiday and  make it a felony to limit voter access to the polls.  They require disclosure on dark money and ban the removal of election officials for other than misconduct.  If passed, they will stymie Republican efforts to rig future elections in their favor and give Democrats at least a fighting chance of prevailing in fair contests. 

If they are not passed . . .

Elections will no longer matter.

The GOP is a schizophrenic party.  In the capital, leaders like Mitch McConnell pretend nothing is different and run the same play they ran against Obama.  It's the politics of "No" coupled with the hypocritical claims that spending will return us to the inflation of the '70s and bequeath a crippling debt.  In their world, inequality is a myth and the white, non-college working class has been Trumpified, buyers of a continuing but faux populism that now includes the lie that the last election was stolen.

The greatest problem in the country is still Trump.   

And the only way to eliminate him is to beat him and his enablers at the polls.

So . . .

There's the deal.

Call it bridges for ballots.

A little less of the first for a lot more of the second.

Get it done Democrats.

The country is at stake.

SUMMER HEAT

The New York Mets are a National League baseball team.  

For most of their fifty-nine year history, the team has been star-crossed.  At their birth in 1962, they lost 120 games, a record that stands to this day.  In their first seven seasons, in a then ten-team league, they finished last five times and second to last twice.  After professional baseball divided the leagues into divisions, their miracle in 1969 and another World Series appearance in 1973 were followed by eight years of mediocrity punctuated by the disaster of having given Tom Seaver away in 1977.  

In the mid-'80s they rebounded but never achieved the heights their talent foretold.  They were champions in 1986 and won a hundred games in 1988 (only to be eliminated by the Dodgers in the divisional series). They made the play-offs in 1999 and snuck into the World Series as a wild card in 2000 (which they lost) .  And they made the play-offs again in 2006 and went to the World Series again in 2015 with a solid record (but lost that one as well). Between these intermittent successes, they have basically been a .500 team.  Along the way, they were even one of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi victims.

For a while this year, it looked like things might be better.

A lackluster April was followed by a lights out May, when they went 17-9 (a .604 percentage).  In June and July they held their own.  All told, they were in first place  for ninety days.

And then came August.

They are 6-15 in August. 

They aren't hitting.  Of the thirty teams in the two leagues, their team batting average (.234) puts them in 26th place. So does their slugging percentage.  In runs batted in (RBIs),  they place third to last.

Their two best pitchers are on the injured list (IL).  

One -- Noah Syndergaard -- hasn't played all year and is still recuperating from Tommy John surgery.  The other -- Jacob deGrom -- was putting together a Cy Young season with an unheard of 1.08 ERA but was sidelined with right forearm tightness on July 18 and has been on the IL ever since.  He won't be back at the earliest until mid-September (and there are rumors he won't be back at all this season). On July 18, their starting shortstop, Francisco Lindor, also went on the list and will not be returning until next week.

The Mets aren't losing because they are poor. They are a major market team. They have the third largest payroll in baseball, behind only the Dodgers and Yankees.  They are losing because they have had a bad August.

The conventional wisdom is that the Democrats have had a bad August too.  

This is not just a view shared by Republican Trumpers, for whom any month is a bad month for Democrats regardless of facts.  

Even the non-Trumpers are exhaling a bit, confident that an actual factual record may energize their comeback in lieu of the voter suppression they previously depended upon (and which the party itself has no intention of pulling back).

Inflation.

Cuomo.

The California recall.

Afghanistan.

Just as the Democrats were hitting their stride, a bi-partisan infrastructure bill having passed the Senate and budget reconciliation (allowing for a second and larger package) satisfying early procedural votes, the combined effect of which was to paint the party as the adults in the room setting the rusty wheels of government  in motion and getting something done, they ran into . . .

August.

The first thing to say about August is that it requires perspective.  

Inflation at this point is probably a short-term response to supply chain bottlenecks brought on by the pandemic and not a signal that the economy is overheating on account of on-going pandemic relief or stimulus.  The Federal Reserve, moreover, has its eyes on the data and is more than able to hit the brakes if that becomes necessary.  

The California recall effort is a regional issue and the result next month will depend largely if not exclusively on whether Democrats in that state take the possibility of a Larry Elder as Governor seriously enough to create the result -- defeat of the recall -- everyone expected only a short time ago.  Elder is a libertarian radio talk show host who promises to end mask mandates and vaccine requirements. The expected result is now in doubt only because recent polls show energy among  Republicans to approve the recall and boredom among everyone else over the fact that it is even happening.

Memo to California Democrats -- get off your asses and vote.

The two A's -- Andrew (as in Cuomo) and Afghanistan -- were and are more serious.

Cuomo will resign tomorrow.  This follows a report by the state Attorney General's office concluding that he sexually harassed eleven women and otherwise was difficult to work for.  His rebuttal, such as it was, was that he didn't do any of the physical stuff and didn't understand that the verbal stuff crossed any lines (which he claimed had changed over time).  There was no full on trial on any of the claims and the soon to be former Governor argues that the lawyers who conducted the investigation were biased.  

Though the bias claim is difficult to square with the reputations of the actual lawyers, the absence of any ability to confront the charges and cross examine the complainants is a fair criticism.  Be that as it may, however, there is some truth in numbers on the serious physical claims (harassment is generally not a one-off event and there is more than one accuser here),  and the verbal allegations to which he appeared to cop some form of an I-didn't-think-it- crossed-the-line plea reasonably provokes one big "C'mon".  Did he really think it was OK to ask a married aide if she'd cheat on her husband?  Or disclose to twenty-something female employees that he would be fine dating anyone their age? 

Maybe some of that wasn't harassment.

But it was creepy.

Afghanistan is, of course, a tragedy.  Not because we should have stayed.  If the mission was to get Osama bin Laden and degrade Al Qaeda, we did that long ago.  If the mission was to stand-up a western democracy, we probably should have known long ago that we were not succeeding and that throwing additional resources at the region was not going to change the likely outcome.  The ethnic and tribal rivalries in Afghanistan had thwarted the efforts of one empire (the British) and one superpower (the Soviet Union) before we arrived in the wake on 9/11.  And those rivalries were not put on hold once we got there.

This does not mean the initial invasion was wrong. 

Al Qaeda killed more than 3,000 Americans on 9/11 and the Taliban supported them and gave them a base from which the attack was launched.  Taking them and bin Laden out was more than right; any President who refused to do so would have rightly been shown the door.  In retrospect, the problem was staying beyond that point.  The new government was corrupt, and the military incapable or unwilling to fight.  The good that was done, especially in freeing women from the Taliban's inhuman interpretation of Sharia law and allowing a generation of girls to go to school, remains and will be difficult to undo.  More than 60% of the Afghani population is less than 20 years old and has no allegiance to either the Taliban's past or its sexist exclusions.

What remains is the chaos that enveloped our withdrawal and the on-going efforts to retrieve Americans still there and Afghanis who supported us and will now be targeted.  

For the past week or so, the airwaves have been agog with claims that Biden has screwed up, that he had intel predicting the Afghani government/military's imminent collapse, and that in any case he should have planned for a more orderly removal of Americans and those Afghanis who supported us.

Here, too, however, perspective is in order.

As well as historic accuracy.

To begin, this is not Saigon in 1975.  The vast majority of Vietnamese refugees did not leave on American planes or helicopters as Saigon was about to fall.  They left in boats over time -- sometimes years later --  and were allowed to enter the US as refugees.  In contrast, and as Matthew Dowd pointed out yesterday on CNN, over 20,000 people were removed from Afghanistan in the last week without one American death.  More will be coming out in the weeks ahead.  Is it the smoothest process?  No.  But is it Saigon 1975, or Dunkirk 1940, two events to which critics have compared it?  Not even close.

Biden owns this problem because he is the sitting President.  Unlike his immediate predecessor, he is not ducking responsibility or shifting blame.  The success of the current evacuation has been and will be his responsibility.  The cause of the implosion, however, cannot be laid at his feet.  Almost uniquely among executive officeholders in the last twenty years, he opposed mission creep.  He wanted us out when he was Vice-President. Trump to his credit wanted us out when  he was President.  

But Trump  wouldn't pull the trigger.

Why not?

Because the generals told him it would be messy and Trump didn't want the bad pictures.

What Biden understood and accepted, and Trump just avoided, is that it was always going to be messy.  There was not going to be a time when the addition of 5,000 troops tasked with evacuating Americans and at-risk Afghanis was going to proceed in an environment where the Afghani government retained control and its military fought effectively.  To the contrary, any evacuation at any time was going to be a signal to those institutions that American support was over and they were on their own, a signal they would almost certainly have taken as a green light to the abandonment they ultimately practiced. 

To forestall chaos or defeat or whatever anyone wishes to call what is now going on would have required troops on a more or less permanent basis and more of them as the Taliban’s control increased.  And those like Liz Cheney who wanted that forever war outcome are a distinct minority in the country at large.

So August has been bad.

For the Mets and the Democrats.

But it has not been fatal.

Largely because both the team and the party have weak opponents. 

In the National League’s Eastern Division, where the Mets sit, their opponents are more or less .500 teams as well. The Mets are seven games behind at this writing. But a May in September could resurrect their hopes. 

As for  the Democrats, they have the Republicans.

The Trump-supporting, insurrection-inciting, COVID-denying, vote-suppressing Republicans . . .

Who refuse to get rid of the sexual harasser-in-chief  in their own ranks. 

August is almost over.

SEARCHING FOR UNITY -- CELEBRATING THE FOURTH ON THE LAKE

It's raining on the Great Sacandaga Lake this 4th of July.

The great lake occupies a little more than forty-one square miles at the southeastern edge of New York's Adirondack Park.  

Both the park and the lake were government projects. In 1885, New York designated publicly owned lands in the Adirondacks and Catskills as "forest preserves" and in 1894 the state mandated that those preserves would be "forever wild". In 1902, roughly 2.8 million acres of that wilderness was then defined as the Adirondack Park, and in the hundred plus years since, it has grown to over six million acres.  For its part, the great lake was created in 1930 following six years of study and construction that damned the Sacandaga River at Conklingville to create what was initially called a reservoir. In the '60s, the name was changed to the Great Sacandaga Lake.

If it seems that very little in the nature of public works has ever gotten done in America without some argument in favor of economic growth, that is because . . .

Very little in the nature of public works has ever gotten done in America without some argument in favor of economic growth.

The park and the lake were no exceptions.  

The former owed its genesis to an incipient tourism industry that took root there in the mid to late 19th century combined with lawyer-engineer Verplanck Colvin's 1875 survey report warning that lumbering was destroying the Adirondack watershed and imperiling the survival of the Erie Canal, then a major source of New York's economic empire. And the latter was basically a flood control project. The Sacandaga River flowed into the Hudson, which in the spring surged and flooded Albany.  Damning the Sacandaga helped to regulate that surge and abate the flooding.

Back then, the Republican Party ran New York and supported both projects.  And  when he became the nation's 26th President, New York's Republican  former governor, Theodore Roosevelt, championed both the  conservation of the nation's  natural resources -- signing legislation that created five national parks and executive orders that preserved 150 million acres of forest -- and the regulation of its waterways. In 1907, he created the Inland Waterways Commission,  and after World War I highlighted the nation's rail congestion crisis, the work of that commission over time resulted in completion of the Atlantic and Gulf intercoastal waterways projects that created navigational barge channels from Maine to the nation's Mexican border, re-canalization of the Ohio River, and later development of both the Columbia River in the west and the St. Lawrence Seaway in the east.  

All of this was supported for the most part by the Republican Party and, when added to Democratic Party projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority (which electrified the south)  or completing the Hoover dam (which irrigated the southwest), made infrastructure truly bi-partisan.  That unity continued into the 1950s when President Eisenhower inaugurated construction of the interstate highway system and was even preserved into the early '70s when President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and signed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the latter of which required that federal projects be assessed for their environmental impact.

NEPA, however, was as far as the GOP would go.  Two years after it was passed, Nixon vetoed the expanded Clean Water Act, and though his veto was overridden by the Democratic Congress two hours after it was issued, it marked something of a limit for his party.  Since then, the party has been at war with itself on the environment.  On the side of de-regulation and rollback were Reagan and Trump, whose appointed heads of the EPA -- Anne Gorsuch (mother of the current Supreme Court Justice) in Reagan's case  and Scott Pruitt in Trump's -- pushed to weaken the anti-pollution laws.  On the side of accomodation were the two Bushes, both of whom championed so-called market-based solutions to pollution like cap and trade.

Today's America, it now goes without saying, is polarized in the extreme. 

Trump's voters still believe the lie that he did not lose last year and GOP legislatures are turning that lie into statutes designed to suppress Democratic voter turnout in future elections, limiting all the measures (early, mail-in and absentee voting) that significantly increased turnout in 2020.  Meanwhile, at the federal level, the anti-majority rule  filibuster survives and was used to kill the Democrats' voting rights bills that would have mitigated the GOP's state legislative assaults.  On the cable shows, the right wing is all abuzz on critical race theory, pretending it will destroy George Washington's legacy.  And in Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott says he'll build Trump's border wall with federal Covid  relief funds . . .

Even though Abbott has no authority to do so. 

If, therefore, you are looking for any signs of governmental or political unity on this 4th of July, the pickings are slim to non-existent.

Except on infrastructure.

Where the are some green shoots.

Earlier in the year, President Biden and the Democrats proposed a $2 trillion infrastructure bill designed to fund the nation's desperate need to re-build its roads, bridges, highways, airports and water and rail systems and extend broadband to the nation's rural and ex-urban precincts.  The proposal, however, also sought to increase spending on electric cars and charging stations, on green energy, on child care and on health care.  These latter efforts were proposed as down payments on the need to combat climate change and in recognition of the fact that things like child care and health care often drive employment decisions.  Put simply, you can't work if the kids have no baby sitter or you are sick without insurance and can't afford care.

The GOP opposed the Democrats' proposal more or less in unison.  It claimed that anything other than traditional infrastructure (the so-called hard stuff like roads, bridges, airports and railroads) was just a  mask for the Democrats' socialism (which is what the GOP calls all measures  that expand health coverage or child care, combat climate change or are advertised as part of the so-called Green New Deal), and that anything increasing taxes was a non-starter.  Into that breach, however, stepped a group of ten Senators (five Democrats and five Republicans) who -- mirabile dictu -- came up with a bi-partisan bill.  That proposal was substantially higher than what the GOP had offered Biden early on but did not include the Democratic proposals on climate change and health and child care.  For those, the Democrats will have to fashion a second package and pass it via the budget reconciliation procedure to avoid a filibuster.  

So there you have it.

As you pledge allegiance to the flag on this 4th of July, the nation -- thanks to the Civil War -- is still indivisible.  

Thanks largely to Trump and his continuing hold on the fact free, however, it is still very much . . 

Divided.

But then there is the Adirondack Park, the Great Sacandaga Lake , and their progeny . . .

Which remind me, even in the rain, that it was  not always thus.

And Joe Biden and Joe Manchin and Mitt Romney and Rob Portman et al's infrastructure compromise.

Which reminds me that even now . . .

It does not have to be.

Happy Birthday America.

ON PSALMS AND SONNETS -- BIDEN'S DAY 146

It's Day 146 in the Biden Administration.

There is nothing particularly special about this day.  

No historian ever praised FDR for what he accomplished in the first 146 days of his administration.  There are no 146-day wars. Or diets.  The number itself is not featured in any song.  Or poem. Nor is the number  devilishly transcendental (like 666).  

At the same time, the number is not meaningless.  

Far from it.

Two of the world's most famous authors used it to identify some of their work.  One was Shakespeare.  He wrote Sonnet 146. The other was the Biblical psalmist with his (or her) Psalm 146. 

The Bible's 146 is one of the five "praise psalms" that end the Book of Psalms.  It tells us not to "put [our] trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save."  The sonnet is equally forbidding, lamenting the soul's bodily imprisonment.  In the end, both advocate escape.  To "the Lord" in the psalmist's case, He who feeds the hungry, gives sight to the blind, "frustrates the ways of the wicked" and "upholds the cause of the oppressed". To "Death once dead" in Shakespeare's, where the body's end can become the soul's immortal beginning.

The Bible and Shakespeare are enigmatic. 

Even when they pretend not to be.  

The psalm and the sonnet capture their enigmas almost too perfectly.  It's easy to read the psalm as a pox on politics ("Do not put your trust in princes"), on a world that cannot be saved by us in our time.  It's also easy to read the sonnet as a call to ascetic withdrawal ("Poor soul, the centre of [our] sinful earth, [Feeding] these rebel powers that thee array").  Neither view, however, works. The psalm embraces God in the here and now to "frustrate" the wicked, feed the hungry and vindicate the oppressed.  And the sonnet's "rebel powers" embrace passions and affections (like love) that can enliven far more than they ever imprison.

If we let them.

So, on Day 146 . . .

Is Biden letting them?

The administration is receiving and deserves high marks for its thorough and completely competent response to the pandemic.  It organized and delivered vaccines to America in record time. As of this writing, 65%  of those 18 or older have received at least one dose and  55% are fully vaccinated. Among those 65 or older, more than 80% have received at least one shot.  All this has made an enormous difference.  The number of daily deaths from Covid has declined by more than 90% since January, and the rate of death among those 75 or older has been cut in half.   

Biden wants 70% of all adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4 and is pulling out the stops to get there.  If we don't make it, vaccine hesitancy will be the cause.  The rate of vaccinations has slowed measurably since April, and the infection and death rates that still exist are being driven largely by the unvaccinated population. Thirty states are unlikely to reach Biden's July 4 goal even if the nation as a whole does.  And a handful of states are projected to fall anywhere from six months to a year short.

Pandemic policy is not supposed to be political and with Biden it has not been.  That was not the case, however, with Trump, and his effects linger.  Vaccine hesitancy has been more pronounced in Trump states and among Trump voters.  And while it is important not to over-generalize here (hesitancy is also more pronounced among Black Americans and they are not Trump voters), as late as April, 40% of identifying Republicans said they would not get a shot.

Biden, however, believes in government and knows that progress is incremental. 

On the pandemic and vaccinations, he will not give up.

On other fronts, however, he is being stymied.  

After passage of the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill,  the administration's biggest legislative priorities -- its infrastructure plan and its voting rights bills -- have not been passed.  They haven't even been voted on.  On voting rights, the Republicans have made it clear that they will not support the bills and will filibuster any attempt to bring them to a vote. This is critical because, in the first five months of this year, fourteen states have already enacted restrictive voting laws designed to put statewide offices out of reach for Democrats.  These include Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Arkansas, Texas and Arizona.  In Texas, that state's attorney general even admitted that Biden would have won there had the GOP not succeeded in stopping Harris County (home to Houston) from sending out absentee ballot forms to all registered voters.

To make sure nothing like that happens, Republicans are creating regimes that suppress turnout among Democrats in future elections.  Two-thirds of registered Republicans have swallowed Trump's lie that the 2020 election was stolen and that Biden is not a legitimate president, and GOP elites and elected officials have for the most part either embraced that lie or silently allowed it to fester.  In both instances, they have also used the lie to justify the new voting restrictions, claiming the new laws are needed to restore confidence in the integrity of our elections,  the lack of which was generated by the lie in the first place.

Orwell is turning in his grave.

Meanwhile, the GOP is playing rope a dope on the infrastructure bill.  After Biden shut down talks with the GOP on infrastructure, a bipartisan group of Senators (five Democrats and five Republicans) emerged to claim they had agreed on a bill that approaches the numbers Biden himself has indicated might be acceptable to him in any final package.  Those numbers are way short of the President's initial $2 trillion proposal but also far north of the Republican's original counter-offer. The problem, however, is that this group has not said it can deliver enough votes to avoid a filibuster by the rest of the GOP caucus and unless it can, there is no reason Biden should compromise when he can just go ahead and pass his original bill (or something close to it) via reconciliation.

Biden, however, desperately wants a bipartisan package.  He wants this for two reason.  First, he still believes Congress can work and wants to deliver on the promise he made during his campaign to lower the temperature and create at least some semblance of unity in the wake of Trump's civil wars.  Second, he (and the Democrats) have what can charitably be called a Joe Manchin problem.

Manchin is West Virginia's lone statewide Democratic office holder.  Trump won the state with almost 70% of the vote last year, and in 2018 Manchin himself saw his statewide margin decline to around 3%.  He has steadfastly refused to even think about ending the filibuster (which means it is here to stay) and has also refused to vote for the Democrats' federal voting reform bill (designed to counter the GOP's state-based restrictions), claiming it is too partisan. 

On infrastructure, Manchin is part of the so-called group of ten claiming to have found a bipartisan alternative. But he also has not said it can avoid a filibuster.  Earlier in the year, when legislation to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol was coming up for a vote, he seemed pretty confident that there were "ten good solid patriots within [[the GOP] conference" who would vote to end debate and send the bill to the floor of the Senate for an up or down vote.  When they didn't, Manchin said the GOP's actions were "unconscionable".

Not, however, unconscionable enough to get Manchin to kill the filibuster.

Or even vote for S1-- the voting reform bill.

Democrats can argue with Manchin until they are blue in the face.  It will be useless. He represents a massively Trump state.  He has always been more conservative than his Democratic colleagues, especially on social issues.  He voted to confirm Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and would have voted to confirm Coney Barrett but for the fact that her nomination was made only weeks before the election. 

So, he is not changing.

What should Biden do?

Three things.

1. Pass the infrastructure bill.  If the group of ten can deliver a filibuster free bill, pass it.  Otherwise, pass anything under reconciliation that Joe Manchin will vote for.  I said above that he is more conservative than his Democratic colleagues on social issues.  But he likes infrastructure and his state thrives on it.  His mentor, Robert Byrd, more or less turned West Virginia into a federal office park, and no matter how many Trump voters it produces, the state would die without the massive amounts of federal spending that annually flow into it.  Manchin will vote for something. And that something will be a lot of what Joe Biden is now demanding.

So, as the Nike people say, just do it.  

2. Litigate on voting rights.  If S1 can't be passed -- and it can't be -- the only solution is to take the GOP's restrictive voting bills to the courts.  The bills are designed to thwart Democratic turnout and disproportionately burden minorities.  Make the Supreme Court decide whether that is OK.  When John Roberts overturned the pre-clearance provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, he did so  on the ground that the country "has changed".  The 350 plus voting restriction bills now passed or coursing through the nation's various Republican led legislatures refute that claim. 

Tell him. 

It's a lot harder to pretend things have changed if you start looking like Roger Taney and your decisions start sounding like Plessy v. Ferguson.

3.  Keep governing. And keep doing it calmly.

It is impossible to over-estimate the relief America wakes up to every day knowing that the current President of the United States will not be burning the house -- or the world --  down.  Drama is a fact of life in politics, especially in  the polarized politics of this era.  Trump made that worse.  He was all drama all the time, a pathological liar,  and pretty much nothing else.  On his best days, he was exhausting; on his worst, dangerous and frightening.  That is over, at least for now.  As I write, President Biden is in Europe revitalizing alliances and resurrecting dialogue. They're less exhausted too.

In the days ahead, there will be more drama.  

This week, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)  may decide that the church should not give Joe Biden communion on account of his political views on abortion.  The Pope has advised against this but the USCCB has many within its ranks who like neither Francis nor Biden. So who knows.  The church whose members could not become president before 1960 because the rest of the country feared they'd take orders from its Princes may be on the verge of excommunicating the second Catholic president because . . .

He refuses to take orders from its Princes.

Biden is a devout Catholic.  In many respects, he is more devout than JFK (whose wife thought it would be a shame if he lost the presidency on account of being a Catholic, principally because, as she put it, he wasn't a particularly good one). If Biden is excommunicated or refused communion, he will suffer.  

But he will not change.

And he shouldn't.  

Pro-choice Catholicism is more than defensible at a number of levels.  Embryos aren't people. They are cells. The church itself has been all over the map on why abortion is wrong, and two of its guiding lights -- Augustine and Thomas Aquinas -- never thought embryos were ensouled or that killing them was murder; they thought abortion was a form of birth control and any likely sin venial.  Apart from all that, the notion that prelates can establish binding moral rules is dangerous.  They are human and can be wrong. 

Morality is too important to be left simply or only to priests. If the right or wrong of abortion is a moral matter, the Catholic Church is not necessarily an expert on matters moral; individual conscience still matters. And if it is a theological matter,  no one who respects the Establishment Clause should be legislating anything.

The psalmist was right.

"Do not put your trust in princes."

Not even those who wear red hats.