Sadly, it is now clear that Joe Biden and progressive Democrats have no choice to but accept a Social Infrastructure bill worth about half of the originally planned $3.5 trillion to help make life better for everyday Americans.
This author and scholar is furious about the impact of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, as well as some moderate Democrats in the House of Representatives.
But this is the reality when we have an evenly divided US Senate and a House of Representatives with a narrow margin of six votes.
But consider that IF Georgia had not elected two Democratic Senators in January—Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff–the first elected African American and first Jewish senators in Georgia history—the Republicans would be running the Senate under Mitch McConnell.
So the goal now is to accomplish what can be done, and try to work in the first half of 2022 for more, or make it the key campaign issue for the Congressional elections coming up next November.
Right now, celebrating what can be done, which advances the American nation, is still a major positive for Democrats, and it still will be the major domestic initiative, along with the financial assistance to deal with the COVID 19 Pandemic, that we have seen since Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society nearly sixty years ago.
So let us be happy for what can be done, and work to accomplish more Democratic Senators in the midterms, as there are more Republican seats up for election, and five Republicans are leaving, and more extreme nominees are likely, which, hopefully, will cause a major Democratic edge, despite historical trends, as this is a crisis situation for American democracy!