There is a big media narrative, often echoed in diaries and comments here (sometimes for legitimate arguments, other times for trolling and morale-busting from the usual suspects), that the Dems Are Going To Get Clobbered. Why? For any number of a multitude of (conflicting in many cases) reasons:
The Dems Will Be Clobbered, according to these esteemed oracles of our political zeitgeist, if any of the following things occur:
- No infrastructure bill gets passed. Da People will decide that the Dems are incompetent and unable to govern, and vote them out of office. (The GOP, on the other hand, has demonstrated great management skill in its past two administrations, most notably W’s attempt at “reforming” social security, and Trump’s attempt at repealing Obamacare).
- The Build Back Better Act (and the bipartisan infrastructure bill) does get passed. Da People will decide that the Dems are a bunch of communists trying to debase the currency by spending large piles of money on things that aren’t tanks or bombs or highways, and will vote them out of office. (The GOP, on the other hand, is the sober party of fiscal responsibility, which would never run up a deficit on things like tax cuts, open-ended foreign wars, and forking over large piles of money to a corrupt President and his ridiculous family).
- The bipartisan bill gets passed, and the BBBA is not. Da Left will boycott the next election to teach the party a lesson. (Here the media may have a point. Fortunately, the left now is starting to figure out that it’s easier to exercise power when they DO have it rather than when they do not).
- The bipartisan bill gets passed, and a watered down version of the BBBA gets passed, see above. Perhaps nobody is happy, as the left decides the Dems are all neoliberal capitalist pigs, and the center figures out that Joe Biden is really Chairman Mao in disguise, only restrained in his lust for power by the other Joe in Washington.
Any of those happen, we’re just as DOOMED as a member of Delta House in a calculus exam.
But wait! There’s more!
- We’re doomed because Biden pulled us out of Afghanistan but wobbled on the dismount. It wasn’t perfect, TV reporters had a sad on TV, and we will all pay because he dared cross the military/industrial complex and their claque in DC. The press would rather have some other poo to fling, but this is probably the root cause of our impending doom.
- We’re doomed because right-wingers are busy ingesting horse paste and dying of Covid. Even though the sabotage by the GOP is obvious and open, it’s still Biden’s fault because the press says so. (Whereas Trump is deemed “presidential” if he manages to give a speech without pissing his pants).
- We’re doomed if they stop doing so, especially because of Biden’s mandates; Biden has no business making people get their shots and its Tyranny with a capital T. And if Covid cases go down—then golly, DeSantis and such were right; the thousands of dead Floridians were a small price to pay for freedom.
- We’re doomed because of gerrymandering and other such games in red states. There might be a point here as well, but all’s fair in politics, unless Democrats do it.
- We’re doomed because it simply a first-term midterm and the Party In Power Always Loses seats.
- We’re doomed if the DOJ doesn’t produce a shit-pile of 1/6 indictments, or nail Trump to the wall, because then it’s the Beer Hall Putsch all over again.
- We’re doomed if the DOJ does go after the coup-plotters, because it will be prosecutorial overreach and abuse of power. No fair indicting the opposition party, even if they are guilty; such is not done in America.
- While this might not apply in 2022 (midterms), I bet there will be a big pile of civil unrest in 2024 just as there was in 2020 and 2016, largely instigated by the Right, but blamed on the Left. The brownshirts will be out in force, mark my words.
- We’re doomed for some reason I haven’t thought of yet.
In short, it doesn’t really matter WHY we’re doomed, just that we are. Might as well fold up the tent, go home, and assume the position. It doesn’t matter that large number of folks on the Other Side are pissed to find that the local veterinarian doesn’t take Medicare, the cake is baked and the die is cast. It was good while it lasted, but it’s time to take the advice of noted soothsayers of literature and cinema such as Lord Denethor, PFC Hudson, and C3PO, all of whom were keen realists who accurately forecast the outcome of events in the works in which they were featured, and wisely counseled despair.
Or…. we might as well do the right fucking thing. The second Democrats try to move the Overton window even a bit to the left, the media starts screaming bloody murder; given that in his eight months in office Biden has already offended the gilded class rather bigly, nothing else matters at this point. (Unless, I suppose, he finds some other country to invade to make amends). So expect to be sandbagged from here on out, and in the meantime expect the Media to try and herd the party back to the respectable center, especially on economic issues.
But the media does not get to vote, the people do. And if we turn out, we outnumber the Trumpers. Especially with liberal application of horse paste. And even though the drama in DC at the moment is generating all sorts of poo-flinging from the press, all at the Democrats (Republicans only play hardball, never dirty)…. back home the antics of the anti-vaxxers and such are giving sensible folk in swing states many reasons to not the other side back into power again.
Winning elections is mainly about GOTV. Public perception is a big part of that, but it’s way too early to know what the 2022 electorate will look like. The 2018 election, without Trump on the ballot, saw lots of goopers staying home. He won’t be on the ballot in 2022 either.
If we succeed in passing our agenda, a lot of the DC criticism will essentially boil down to “the dread Democrats gave the people what they wanted, those fools!” Or complaints about style points and other minutiae. Nothing Biden has done or is fixing to do, after all, is unpopular outside of hard-core GOP circles, and deficit peacockery seems to be far less an effective tactic than it used to be (outside the beltway, at least). And on many policy matters, at local levels, we’ve been winning, as red states have been legalizing weed, raising the minimum wage, and doing other things that would make Reagan roll over his grave.
So we’re doomed. So sayeth the press, those noble and unbiased stewards of public opinion and the zeitgeist.
Since we can’t do anything about it, might as well keep calm and carry on.
And kick some butt next November.