In his column for New York Magazine this morning, Jonathan Chait asked if the feckless Democrats are already giving up and just ceding Congress to the fascists they profess to fear so much. "Their main response to a looming political and policy catastrophe," he wrote, "appears to be fatalistic acceptance." Pelosi is likely leaving and seems psychologically predisposed to taking the ship down with her, almost a corollary of the indispensable man [woman] or Great Man theory that has guided her life for at least a couple of decades.
Urging the Democrats to crown Joe Manchin king--a different kind of giving up than the one he's railing against-- Chait defends his proposal by reminding the party that "The Biden administration and Democrats in Congress have been highly solicitous of the demands of their constituent interest groups. But now they are headed into a disaster. They are going to lose control of Congress without having even passed any significant social reforms. They may well be headed into a recession. An increasingly dangerous Republican Party may win control of the government without even needing to subvert the election. None of the options are great, but simply coasting into November as if the plan might still work out is foolhardy. Democrats should instead be acting as if their party is on a course for disaster, because it is."
Ceding the party to Manchin and others from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- like Kurt Schrader, the Manchin of the House, who Oregon voters just unceremoniously dispensed with-- may seem like a good idea to a conservative like Chait, but not so much to actual Democrats who are attracted to the party's values and principles and see it as the party of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, not the party of Wall Street (Bill and Hillary Clinton).
Right now the Democrats are trying to pass a tremendously popular anti-price gouging bill. So what's holding them back? Chait's heroes from the Manchin-Sinema-Schrader-Cuellar wing. The bill would make it illegal to sell fuel at a price that is "unconscionably excessive" and "exploiting" the situation during an energy emergency. UPDATE: The bill passed the House this afternoon 217-207, every Republican plus 4 conservative, pro-price gouging Democrats-- Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL), Jared Golden (Blue Dog-ME), Kathleen Rice (New Dem-NY) and Lizzie Fletcher (New Dem-TX)-- voting no. By the way, the Senate Republicans have every intention of filibustering the bill to death.
Now look at the Republicans; they never give up. Colorado has only elected one Republican governor in the last 50 years but even out of power, the increasingly authoritarian Republicans have a plan. Or at least one does-- this year's candidate for governor, Greg Lopez, wants to create an electoral college kind of system and end one-man-one-vote. Sure, it's less democratic but under it Republicans could win elections despite voters hating them even more than they hate the worthless Democrats. "The plan, which would be the first of its kind on the state level," reported the CBS News affiliate, "would give far more voting power to Coloradans in rural, conservative counties and dilute the voting power of Coloradans in more populous urban and suburban areas. Even as turnout numbers vary over time, the sheer number of rural conservative counties would create a built-in advantage for Republicans... 9NEWS analyzed how Lopez’s proposal could have impacted the results of the 2018 gubernatorial race... [T]hat governor's race would have been a runaway win for Republicans, who lost the actual race by double-digits when each vote was weighted equally... 'It’s not about one-person, one-vote,' Lopez said at the May 15 campaign stop. 'It’s about true representation.'"
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